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Funworld February 2012
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Cedar Fair Makes Charity a Priority
What are your most successful charitable events? We also work with the Susan G. Komen foundation for a cure for breast cancer; it started at Kings Island and this year Kings Dominion and Carowinds also did it. Guests purchase a little pink rubber duck for $5, which also enters them to win a new car. Then they chuck the ducks in the parks’ fountains; it’s great to see all of these little pink ducks floating around! This year it raised over $200,000. What are some of the other events your parks coordinate? Do all of Cedar Fair’s charitable efforts involve events in the parks? How do you decide which charities to help and which parks will participate? Though many of these benefit events deal with serious situations like life-threatening illnesses, all seem to have an overriding element of fun and playfulness. Why is that important? I can’t tell you how much thanks we get from the charities. It’s not about the bottom line—it’s just about being a good neighbor. It’s just the right thing to do. www.cedarfair.com Darklight’s Little LEDs Leave a Big Impression
Based in Santa Clarita, California, and with a manufacturing and R&D facility in Shanghai, China, the company was born out of a pressing need for lighting products that wasn’t being served by the marketplace. Darklight is a spin‑off of E5 Design, which in 2009 opened Shanghai Nightmare, the first Halloween-themed haunted attraction in mainland China. One of its creators was Quan Gan, who is now president of Darklight. The budget for Shanghai Nightmare was tight, and its technical crew couldn’t find anything on the market to serve their specific lighting demands, so they had to create the lights themselves. “We were making our own LEDs, but it was very difficult with all of the soldering—a big hassle,” recalls Gan. “Not only did the lights need to fit in tight spaces, but they had to be safe because the materials used in haunted houses are very random and very haphazard.” He notes that fire safety is also a big concern: “If you use a higher voltage line for incandescent lights, what happens if a customer knocks something over or causes a short? You have to make them safe for your customers, so a low-voltage system using LEDs is perfect.”
Fire-safety concerns are almost nonexistent. The UL-listed lights are low voltage so they don’t require traditional metal conduit and can be hung or run anywhere. Gan says attractions don’t have to worry about the light being close to materials and fabrics because of their low operating temperature. “You can wrap your hand around our fixtures and be completely comfortable,” he asserts. “The lights can be placed outdoors in rain or snow, and Darklight’s Pro series can be submersed underwater.” He recalls that at IAAPA Attractions Expo 2010 many attendees told him they needed tiny spotlights that could be controlled from a central location. So last year Darklight introduced the Precision DMX, dubbing it the world’s smallest standalone DMX light, and he believes it contributed greatly to the company winning the Brass Ring Award. Beyond haunted attractions, Gan thinks Precision Spotlights will prove invaluable to any attraction: “Anywhere—in theme park dark attractions where you want to light a scene or character, on parade floats because they’re low voltage, on costuming so you can wear the battery, in museums because LEDs don’t [emit] infrared or radiation that decays a specimen—they are just much better for themed attractions.” Pacific Park Unveils Wind-Powered Amusement Park Game If an attraction wants to embark on using alternative fuels, it certainly helps to have land for solar energy panels, large wind turbines, geothermal heat exchangers, or bio-gasification units. However, Pacific Park in Santa Monica, California, has no such land because it’s located on the historic Santa Monica Pier. But that hasn’t stopped the park from taking steps toward the pursuit of ecological sustainablity. Pacific calls its latest effort the world’s first wind-powered amusement park game—the “High Striker” —which has a silver-plated bell that rings each time a player is strong enough to hit the striker pad with a rubber mallet and shoot a puck up 25 feet to the top.
“The PowerHub has batteries and the wind turns the turbine, which feeds the PowerHub about two to five amps on a slow day and about 10 to 15 amps when the wind is really pushing,” says Jeff Klocke, director of marketing and sales for Pacific Park. “The batteries hold enough power to continually provide 600 watts to the game for a 10-hour period, so if the wind doesn’t blow we can still provide power to the game.” The “High Striker” was an existing game at the park, and Klocke says he and Dana Wyatt, Pacific’s director of operations, developed the wind-power concept. They also took out the incandescent lighting that lines the game and replaced it with LEDs. Klocke explains the park’s motivation for converting the game: “Santa Monica is one of the most sustainable cities in the world, and we sit on an historic landmark. One of the things we’ve tried to do is be respectful of that. So that’s our goal—we want to run the park sustainably.” The park’s most renowned effort along these lines came in 1998 with the introduction of the world’s first solar- powered Ferris wheel, the “Pacific Wheel.” The wheel was built in 1996 and converted to solar in 1998. In 2008 the wheel itself was replaced but the solar generation stayed. Klocke says it remains the only solar-powered Ferris wheel in the world. “The wheel has 163,000 LEDs, which run on less power than the old 3,400 incandescent lights on the previous wheel,” he says. Klocke credits EWorks Pro and Chance Rides for making the new wheel a stunning attraction. Each evening, the LEDs allow the park to present dynamic, custom, computer-generated visual entertainment. “From a marketing standpoint, the Ferris Wheel was the smartest thing we ever did because of the continued positive press we’ve received from it,” he says. Kennedy Space Center Offers ‘Once in a Lifetime Opportunity’ The end of NASA’s space shuttle program has opened a rare opportunity for visitors to Kennedy Space Center in Florida—one that hasn’t been available for 33 years. For a limited time, guests at the visitor complex have the chance to tour the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the most capacious single-story building in the world. This structure is where NASA constructed and housed some of the largest and most advanced spacecraft in history, including the biggest rocket ever built—the 363-foot-tall Saturn V.
Adding to this special experience, for a limited time, visitors have the chance to see a space shuttle orbiter inside the building. Three space shuttles are being rotated in and out of the VAB as they’re prepared for their new permanent homes in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the KSC Visitor Complex in Florida. The shuttle headed to the visitor complex is Atlantis, and it will be housed in a new $100 million facility set to open in 2013. The visitor complex’s public relations manager, Andrea Farmer, tells Funworld why tours of the VAB haven’t been offered for more than three decades: “We were assembling and working on the space shuttle in VAB, and there are chemicals and things we couldn’t expose the public to. But we can now safely do them again.” Farmer says the reason the tour offering is for only a limited time is that once NASA’s next space exploration program begins—the Space Launch System—the building will be needed again, and the tours will have to end. But she thinks the visits will probably be offered through the end of 2012. The VAB is just one stop on the “KSC Close-Up” tour. Guests see the Operations & Checkout building, which serves as astronaut crew quarters prior to launches and where they board the Astrovan to ride to the launch pads. Another stop is at the NASA Causeway, offering a panoramic view of the Banana River and the Liberty Star and Freedom Star, the two recovery ships used to retrieve space shuttle solid rocket boosters from the Atlantic Ocean after launches. The tour also shows visitors NASA’s two crawler transporters. At 3,000 tons each, these gargantuan machines are said to be the largest self-powered vehicles on Earth and were used to transport the Saturn V rockets and the space shuttles to the launch pads. The final stop on the tour is at Camera Stop AB, where guests get a view of historic Pad 39A, from which every manned mission to the moon and many space shuttle missions were launched. With the space shuttle program now over, Farmer says the KSC Visitor Complex hopes this unusual tour will attract guests until the new space shuttle venue featuring Atlantis opens in 2013. So far, it’s working. “Most of the tours have been selling out,” Farmer says. “It’s the first time the public has had access to the space shuttles. For many people, this could literally be a once in a lifetime opportunity.” “KSC Up-Close” is $25 for adults and $19 for children ages 3-11, in addition to cost of admission to the KSC Visitor Complex. www.kennedyspacecenter.com/visit-us.aspx
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There’s a famous saying that it’s better to give than to receive, and Cedar Fair has certainly taken this proverb to heart. The park chain contributes to a remarkable number of charitable causes, not only at the corporate level, but at each of its park properties in the United States and Canada. Bryan Edwards, spokesperson for the Sandusky, Ohio-based theme park company, answers a few questions for Funworld about some of the causes Cedar Fair supports and how it organizes these efforts.
At IAAPA Attractions Expo 2011 in Orlando, a company in only its second year took home a surprising win for Best New Product in the Brass Ring Exhibitor Awards. Darklight Precision Lighting System won first place in the category of Services, Equipment, and Supplies for its Precision Spotlights—tiny, energy-efficient LEDs that can be used in a variety of amusement park and exhibit applications.
So Gan, his wife, and a friend who worked at CREE, a market leader in LED lighting, decided to manufacture an LED system that would make installations safer and easier for the haunt industry. Gan believes it has distinct installation, energy-consumption, and safety advantages over systems previously on the market. “We created a point-source LED lighting system with user-friendly safety features all in a tiny package,” he says. “They are very easy to install and swap out. Energywise, they use only one watt but have the same output as a traditional light using 15 to 25 watts, and they have a rated life of 50,000 hours.” 
The game is powered by a small wind turbine attached to the top of the building next to where the “High Striker” sits. Three fiberglass blades cut in and supply power when the wind speed reaches about 4.5 mph. The power is captured and held in a self-contained storage unit at the base of the game called the PowerHub, made by Xantrex Technology. All of “High Striker’s” components are entirely wind powered, including the 100-bulb chaser lights, the multiple spotlights, and the sound system.
The guided two-hour tours, called “KSC Up-Close,” started Nov. 1, 2011, and are offered eight times a day. Guests take a bus from the visitor complex to the VAB. There, tour guides and signage tell them about the remarkable achievements made behind the building’s four 456-foot-tall “high bay” doors.