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There’s Nothing Old-Fashioned About Discovery Ice Cream
 If you combine three things kids love—robots, interactivity, and ice cream—into a single product, you should have a winner. At least, that’s what Discovery Ice Cream of Awendaw, South Carolina, is hoping to achieve with its innovative new creation, the Robotic Ice Cream Experience.
The product is the culmination of five years’ work on the part of innovators, engineers, roboticists, and ice cream experts. Discovery Ice Cream is collaborating with Stoelting Foodservice Equipment, which is responsible for manufacturing the unit, and Denso Corporation, which provided the robotics expertise.
The Robotic Ice Cream Experience is a kiosk that allows consumers to choose not only how a robotic arm will produce their ice cream creations, but what ingredients are used, from the flavors of the ice cream to the toppings.
 “The reason people are attracted to this is that it’s just so different,” says Allan Jones, CEO of Discovery Ice Cream. “There’s not another robotic application in retail in the world— there is no other robot in customer-facing retail applications, and certainly not one where you can push buttons and get an effect. This is the only one that is more than a one-off.” He says robotics developers often don’t think of people first—those who will be interacting with the robots—and that a complicated piece of technology needs the right business model to make it work in the marketplace.
Jones also made a special point of noting that Stoelting was the right choice for manufacturing the Robotic Ice Cream Experience: “They’ve been in business for about 100 years, and they’re known for their precision engineering and manufacturing—they have an impeccable reputation, so they were just an obvious choice for this product.”
The original idea for the Robotic Ice Cream Experience was Jones’, but he says it grew out of practical experience, not grand inspiration. “I’m not a roboticist, but my background is branding innovation, and I’ve always been interested in ice cream, and I’ve got six kids, so we’ve always got something going on around the house with ice cream,” he says. “About five years ago, I just thought that kids should be able to press buttons and make it happen—it wasn’t any grand idea; it was just something simple I thought about.”
Using the Robotic Ice Cream Experience’s touchpad, the customer chooses one of four “host” characters, and that choice determines the music and the animation of the figure that appears on an LED screen. “The unofficial lead character is Cid, the techynerdy fun character is Irvy, the little sweet sister is Reis, and the crazy wild guy is Rev,” says Jones. “They build their six-layer ice cream over 90 to 120 seconds. The robotic arm plays, dances around, and shows off. It grabs a cup, which is clear so that everything is visible, and it layers the ice cream and candy. When it’s done, the robotic arm waves good-bye to them.”
Customers pay at the kiosk with cash or credit card. The cost is determined by the venue where the kiosk is located.
Discovery Ice Cream is targeting the Robotic Ice Cream Experience at locations that are high-traffic areas for kids, like FECs, amusement parks, resorts, and other vacation destinations. The kiosks are distributed through revenue sharing agreements.
www.discoveryicecream.com
Holiday World Stays Top of Mind Through Offseason
When attractions transition out of the busy summer months into the fall, as kids go back to school and people’s focus turns toward the holidays, it can be difficult to keep attention on themselves and get guests excitedly anticipating the next season. But Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari in Santa Claus, Indiana, did just that with a search to find the park’s number-one fan.
 The promotion was the idea of Paula Werne, the park’s public relations manager. “We’d have people saying to us, ‘I’m your number-one fan,’ and I thought, ‘Well you can’t ALL be our number-one fan, so it sounds like a contest to me!’” So that’s exactly what Werne created.
She wanted to drive traffic to Holiday World’s blog, Facebook, and Twitter pages, so she created “Are YOU Our #1 Fan?”—a video contest that would allow park fans to upload videos to YouTube explaining why they thought they were Holiday World’s biggest fan.
The park posted a short video on its website of its matriarch and director of values, Pat Koch, explaining how the contest worked. Fans could submit videos of 60 seconds or less telling why they thought they were the #1 fan. Each week throughout September, the park chose one winner from all of the videos posted that week. The winners received two one-day admissions to the park. On Sept. 30, the park posted the four winning videos on its “HoliBlog” and allowed visitors to vote for their favorite until Oct. 6. The overall winner received four 2011 season passes.
Werne promoted the contest on Twitter and Facebook, but she was careful not to actually hold the contest on Facebook because that would involve a fee. She says the contest was good for pushing traffic to the park’s web pages and also presented an opportunity to promote its season passes.
“We were able to say, ‘If you don’t win, this is the best time to buy season passes because we do our deepest discounts, under $100, until the end of this season,’” says Werne. Also, the park benefitted from the fact that at least two of the finalists used social media to their advantage, and they were the top vote getters. “One of the finalist’s father is a coaster enthusiast involved with a coaster club that does podcasts, so he could spread the word about his son’s video that way,” she reveals, “and another [finalist] posts on CoasterBuzz and Theme Park Review.”
Werne says the contest also created a lot of word of mouth for the park, and a local NBC affiliate mentioned something about the contest on its morning show each week and even showed some of the video entries.
In the end, the contest received about 20 entries, and the four finalists got more than 10,000 viewings on YouTube. The contest winner was a 5- year-old from Bloomington, Indiana, named Mark Bolstridge, though his father was the winner of record since contestants had to be 18 years old.
“This is one of the great things about being a family park,” notes Werne, “because I can come up with some idea and just make one or two phone calls or run it by someone and get a “yeah, do it” and launch it a week later. I don’t have to run it by lawyers and through 20 different offices to get approval!”
www.holidayworld.com
Pleasure Beach Blackpool Lands Nickelodeon
 Pleasure Beach in Blackpool, England, has landed only the third Nickelodeon- themed amusement park area outside the United States, scheduled to open April 6, 2011. Pleasure Beach terms the £10.3 million (U.S. $16.5 million) section its single most important development in the past 10 years.
A construction ceremony last fall featured Gerald Raines, senior director of Nickelodeon Recreation, who flew in from the United States, and John Collins, nonexecutive director of Pleasure Beach Blackpool and former IAAPA chairman.
Consisting of 14 rides and attractions, Nickelodeon Land will feature several firsts. It will be the first Nickelodeon- branded attraction in the United Kingdom, it will feature the kingdom’s first Nickelodeon retail store, and it will showcase the very first Twist ‘n’ Splash from Mack Rides, to be called “SpongeBob’s Splash Bash.” The twirling interactive water ride affords 54 guests the chance to soak their friends with water jets, as well as blast jellyfish harassing the boat from the water. Another water ride, “The Rugrats Lost River,” lets guests explore a mystic jungle before confronting a flume-drop finale.
Commenting on the short timeline to finish this work, Pleasure Beach Managing Director Amanda Thompson says, “Construction is well under way … there is just so much work to do as we are not opening just one ride, but an incredible 14 attractions, which will offer family fun alongside the other 36 acres of Pleasure Beach.” The park is pushing for the April 6 opening to take advantage of the Easter holiday.
 As to why Pleasure Beach chose Nickelodeon as the theme for this major investment for the park, Thompson tells FUNWORLD, “Nickelodeon was chosen as it is the number-one entertainment brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. Pleasure Beach Blackpool is a first-class amusement park and a popular destination for families in the U.K. Both brands working together represent fantastic family fun.”
Nickelodeon Land will replace 6 acres formerly occupied by the Beaver Creek section of Pleasure Beach. An existing wood coaster with 60-foot drops that has operated in that section since 1933 will be transformed into “Nickelodeon Streak,” with redeveloped coaster trains and a new orange color scheme on its 2,290 feet of track. Young thrill seekers are also the target audience for “Avatar Airbender,” which spins riders through the air on a giant rotating disk.
There will also be rides for little kids, like “Dora the Explorer,” which takes guests on a boat ride through a Tanzanian village and a Russian palace, and along the Great Wall of China. “Diego’s Rainforest Rescue” is a rotating hot air balloon ride that provides a treetops view of Nickelodeon Land.
Dining options will include The Big Pizza Kitchen, which will be one of the largest restaurants in all of Blackpool, with seating for 300. It will feature fresh-baked pizza and salads.
Popular Nickelodeon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer, and Chucky from The Rugrats will be among the characters to appear in the park section to greet guests. The Nickelodeon retail store will offer Nickelodeon-themed toys, gifts, and clothes.
www.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com
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