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Book Tells How Parks Offer an Escape from Truly Awful Realities
 For some around the world, amusement parks are an escape from the reality of an everyday life with stresses so intense they can be truly life and death. This stark truth is the subject of a new book, “Dream City,” by writer Eefje Blankevoort, with images by photographer Anoek Steketee, who together traveled the world between 2006 and 2010 and visited amusement parks in Iraq, Lebanon, China, Rwanda, the Palestinian Territories, Colombia, Indonesia, Turkmenistan, and the United States.
The idea for the 168-page book came about in 2006 when Blankevoort and Steketee were in Iraq doing a story about war and the effects on the Kurds and Kurdistan. This was a time when the conflict with insurgents was still intense and there was constant news about deaths and kidnappings. Yet Blankevoort and Steketee saw something remarkable within the gates of Dream City, an amusement park in Duhok.
“People would go to Dream City for a day and relax and escape the war,” says Blankevoort. “All these people who were at war with one another on the outside were having a good time inside the park.” He notes Dream City is in a location that was once “a terrible place”—a military post under Saddam Hussein where executions occurred. But he says it’s become a symbol of freedom for the Kurds. “We asked ourselves, ‘Is this an exception or is this something we can find at places all over the world?’” he recalls. “So we went to different kinds of countries and places with different situations.”
The two noticed that though the surroundings, cultures, and politics differed in the places they visited, there was a fairly consistent, uniform appearance to amusement parks, represented by fairy-tale settings and impeccable landscaping. But behind this veneer were some harsh realities.
“Dream City is built on the grounds of a military base; Beirut Luna Park in Lebanon had a car bomb explode outside that destroyed parts of the park and killed seven people,” Blankevoort explains. “In Colombia, Hacienda Napoles [park] is built on grounds once owned by [drug kingpin] Pablo Escobar. He was one of the richest and cruelest people in Colombian history, yet it’s a park where you go to have fun. Some people aren’t comfortable with that, and others think that it’s purified the area.”
Blankevoort and Steketee came face to face with the stark reality of one place when they visited a park in Turkmenistan. “One day we were grabbed by two guys and taken to the manager, who was very upset and said we were spies,” Blankevoort recalls. “He forced our photographer to go back to our hotel and get our films while I was held. In the end, I think he just wanted to make his point and we were released, but it was so bizarre, being kidnapped in an amusement park.”
When asked what conclusions they came to following these park visits, Blankevoort says, “Parks are where people go to relax and escape reality, and that reality might be very harsh. It sounds really cheesy, but I like that it’s really cheesy because it’s so true. The desire to go into this ‘dream world’ is everywhere. Amusement parks are a universal thing, but each park has a unique story to tell, and each tells you about the place it’s in.” Dream City can be ordered at www.dreamcity.prospekor.nl.
ScareHouse’s Success Is Frightening
Over the past 15 years or so, as Halloween attractions and events have become increasingly popular, many haunted houses, mazes, and other scare-season operations have come and gone, due at least in part to the challenge of making a profit over a very compressed operating season. But one haunted house that’s grown steadily in popularity and received national recognition for its creativity and quality is The ScareHouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
 The ScareHouse receives some 40,000 paid visitors over its short fourweek operating season and has been named one of America’s scariest Halloween attractions by the Travel Channel and one of the country’s top haunted houses by Haunted Attraction magazine. But the attraction itself has modest origins.
Its founder and creative director, Scott Simmons, started working at YMCA haunted houses as a teenager in the 1980s and was joined by his dad in building some of the sets. After college, he worked in television production and learned to do long-form videos and commercials. But he says it was the Internet that really jump-started The ScareHouse.
“It was the late 1990s, when the Internet took off, that we connected with others in networking and exchanging ideas,” recalls Simmons, “and in 1999 we introduced The Scare- House. It was nothing like it is today, but we just kept banging away at it and continually expanded.”
 Twelve years later, The ScareHouse name has been trademarked and it’s owned by a holding company, Undead Productions, which consists of Simmons, his wife, and his father, all of whom have played integral roles in the attraction’s success. Simmons says his creative staff consists of eight year-round team members and about 135 employees during the Halloween season.
Simmons notes one of the watershed moments in the evolution of The ScareHouse occurred a few years ago when he and his staff found the “perfect” location to stage the attraction— one that was up to code, had proper zoning, plenty of parking, and a yearly rent they could afford since they only operate six weeks a year. “It’s an old Elk Lodge,” he says. “It was built in the early 1900s, and it’s big—about 18,000 square feet.”
The ScareHouse has three haunts— “The Forsaken,” a more traditional haunted experience; “Delirium 3D,” which, as the name says, has visitors wear 3-D glasses; and this year’s new experience, “Pittsburgh Zombies.”
Simmons explains why they have three separate haunt experiences instead of one: “A lot of it comes back to the creative element. The attraction takes 30 minutes to go through, but you couldn’t just have 30 minutes of people jumping out to scare you. Anticipation is the secret, so for instance, in ‘Forsaken,’ we constantly hint at horrible things happening, but it’s not until the final scene that it really happens.”
Simmons notes that one of the biggest surprises in operating The ScareHouse is in the demographic makeup of its guests. “Our number-one demographic is not teenage guys, but women age 18-24,” he says, “and our second largest group is women 24-35. They want to be scared, but they don’t want anything to do with hardcore gore. I run an event that attracts thousands of women ages 18-35—I would think that advertisers would be knocking our doors down!” www.scarehouse.com
Museum Brings Local Life to Liverpool Exhibits
The new National Museum of Liverpool (www.liverpoolmuseums.org. uk/mol/) opened July 19 in Liverpool, England, and in just its first two weeks of operation it welcomed more than 150,000 visitors, including more than 20,000 on one day. Much of this success can be credited to the unusual and imaginative design provided by BRC Imagination Arts, which served as the facility’s exhibition master planner.
The £72-million (US$117 million), 51,600-square-foot museum tells about the city of Liverpool, but not just the history of the places, structures, and significant artifacts there; rather, it tells the stories of the people of Liverpool.
“I think when you look at the rich history of Liverpool, it’s not like any other city,” says Christian Lachel, vice president of BRC and creative director for the project. “We saw this incredible mix of stories and cultures, and I think it’s why so many great writers and artists and musicians have come out of Liverpool.”
So from Day 1, BRC brought into one room the people with knowledge in different fields—curators with expertise in history, archaeology, transportation, geology, art, and music, as well as architects and engineers—and together they developed the plan for the museum.
One of the most crucial decisions made early on was that the exhibits wouldn’t just present objects that are significant to the history of Liverpool, but they would revolve around the compelling personal stories of the people attached to those objects, and all to embrace the museum’s over-arching theme, “Liverpool, a Wondrous Place.”
“It’s kind of like the Frank Capra quote that the thing that most fascinates people is people,” says Lachel. “Museums sometimes present an object and say, ‘Here it is—-you should appreciate it.’ But it’s the stories of people that bring significance to objects. So what’s great is that we tell stories about everyday objects, and that evokes everyday memories of your own life, and you can see yourself in those stories.”
So, the museum and BRC interviewed citizens involved in the life and events of Liverpool, including those who now live elsewhere, and the experiences and perceptions they shared about the city became a part of the exhibits. The objects and stories are organized into four central themes: “Great Port,” “People’s Republic,” “Global City,” and “Wondrous Place,” each with its own large gallery. The displays are made interactive through the use of touchscreens, video, and other multimedia effects.
One of the most crucial decisions affecting the future impact and effectiveness of the museum also came out of the coordinated planning team concept. When the group realized the museum had more than 3 million objects in its collection and that only a small percentage of those could be displayed at any one time, they built the flexibility to continually show more objects and tell more stories into the final master plan design.
“I think this is the most unique thing that came out of this vision,” says Lachel. “Only a small percentage of museum collections are ever displayed. So we developed a flexible system that could be worked fairly quickly, within a couple of weeks, to change to another exhibition. That required engineering it with the architects, having a flexible grid system, and having certain attachment points within the museum.
“I think that in terms of attracting people, you have to give people reasons to come back,” concludes Lachel. “Museums usually have one flexible gallery, but we did it with every gallery.” www.brcweb.com
Madurodam: Tiny City Exhibits Extraordinary Craftsmanship
As Legoland Florida opens this month and adds another iconic “Miniland” to the theme park chain, let’s go across the Atlantic Ocean for a look at a predecessor: Madurodam park in The Hague, Netherlands, which has been open for more than 60 years.
The miniature city, which consists of 4.5 acres of the 15.5-acre park, was built on a 1:25 scale as a monument to George Maduro, a young man who died in the Dachau concentration camp in Germany in February 1945. Madurodam officially opened on July 2, 1952.
The models are crafted in incredible detail. In addition to buildings, houses, and streets, there are tiny figurines of people, cars, bikes, dogs, trees, lampposts, fire hydrants—virtually everything imaginable. The city even changes with the seasons; in autumn, many of the people hold umbrellas, and in winter, an ice rink appears.
One of the most amazing scenes is Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, which took two years and four months to complete. It includes 32 aircraft, 20 baggage vehicles, 500 hand-painted suitcases, 1,500 hundred miniature cars, the tiny figures of 3,000 passengers, and a people- mover tram.
“The miniature city would not be complete without an airport and would certainly lack a key feature,” says Peggy Scheepens of Madurodam’s marketing and communications department. “The layout of the airport and focus on the multi-modal transport hub at the front of the terminal were starting points for Madurodam. A footpath crosses right through the airport area, having arisen from the visitors’ desire to approach aircraft in the miniature city as closely as possible.”
Madurodam has some 80 year-round employees, with more temporary workers added during the busy summer season. All of the models, railways, figures, and decorations are made by park staff, which includes model builders, decorators, and technicians. The model builders are educated at a school for furniture construction, and then they are trained at Madurodam in the specifics of making miniature buildings.
The staff calculates the precise scaled-down dimensions of every structure based on architectural drawings. Detailed photographs are taken of the real structures that not only help in construction, but also in painting and decorating.
Scheepens says the most difficult part of the modeling process is adding special features. “Recently we [added] Instituut Beeld & Geluid (Institute for Audiovisual Archives) to Madurodam,” she explains. “The facade of the building contains colorful, translucent images abstracted from various television programs, similar to the front of the real building in Hilversum. The builders have covered the glass facade with color film, including 748 TV pictures. The glass that covers the color film was embossed. Subsequently, the individual glass panes—2,244 pieces—-were cut and placed one by one on the glass and foil layer. It took months from the actual drawing to the finishing of the building.”
The city also includes an electronics system, from lighted buildings to working streetlights to taxiing aircraft. But it’s all computerized, so Scheepens says a single staff member can start the program and it runs automatically. Madurodam has almost 3,800 square feet of solar panels, the first step toward eventual complete solar power, supplied internally.
Open year-round, Madurodam re - ceives about 600,000 visitors annually. www.madurodam.nl
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