Changes
Episodes

Changes On The Horizon

By 224

Coming up, changes on the horizon. Today we’re discussing ways the industry will change from the Russian invasion, the Galactic Starcruiser, Harry Potter Exhibition, Peppa the Pig, and the new Attack on Titan exhibition.

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Philip: From our studios in Los Angeles and Tampa, FL, this is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30. I’m Philip from Gantom Lighting and Controls and the Haunted Attraction Network, and I’m joined by my co-host, the wonderful Scott Swenson of Scott Swenson Creative Development.


Scott: Hello Philip, how are you this week?


Philip: I’m here.


Scott: Well, that’s certainly better than the alternative, because otherwise, I’d be hosting the show by myself. Which would be really difficult because I don’t know how all the technical stuff works.


Philip: You are great at monologue, Scott, you’re just fantastic at it.


Scott: I could probably talk enough, that’s true, but the challenge would be nobody to hear it because I couldn’t get the recording to start, so that would be the frustrating part.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine And How It Might Affect The Attractions Industry

Scott: So gosh, you know, I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but there’s a little thing that has kind of happened in the world. It looks like there’s been an invasion in the Ukraine. I know it kind of probably went over everybody’s head, kind of wasn’t a real big blip on anybody’s radar. But Russia and the Ukraine have… well, Russia sent troops into Ukraine obviously, and we figured that we’d probably best hit this one first, because this is the largest elephant in the room when it comes to what may or may not affect our industry. It certainly has the potential to affect the world in general, but we kind of want to break it down and see how this kind of thing was going to affect the theme park and attractions industry. I know, Philip, not only have you done your research on this, you’ve also formed some very strong opinions as to what’s going to happen. So, let me kick it over to you and I’ll let you get it started, because I think you’re far more educated about this situation than I am.


Philip: I think we’re being a little bit glib about it, but of course, it is a terrible situation, and we want to underscore that it’s a terrible situation. I think where I wanted to walk with our audience on the line is, we’re really just looking at the impact that that would be felt by tourist attractions, and that’s the kind of line we’re walking on. So, we’re not really going to talk about the other issues with it, even though it is a serious matter. For me, I think in terms of how it’s affecting our listeners, it’s a pretty straight line that there are going to be economic echoes that are going to impact us. I think the most direct one which I’m sure one you’ve already been hearing about all over the news, is the oil prices. But the main things that are going on are oil prices and grains. Those are the two main things that we’ve been hearing, but I think the larger impact of those is oil prices directly impact transportation costs, which not only impact the cost of raw materials that parks use for development, but they also impact the end consumer in terms of prices at the gas tank. We know if you put all these things together what that does is, potentially, discourage travel, because you put the oil price on that. That’s how it impacts us directly. The delay on this is going to be maybe four to six months, so it’s kind of we’ve been talking this whole time about the timeline for this year and how parks and haunts, the haunts are getting ready, but how parks have been opening a lot of assets and trying to drive, kind of setup to dominos to have a really good summer and then holiday season, working on staffing all that kind of stuff. So, this is potentially a wrench being thrown into that situation of discouraging travel because costs are getting high. 


Philip: The other wrenches potentially thrown into it is, the cost of raw materials. For example, I talked to two manufacturers this past week about the transportation costs and the increase it potentially would have on them, and both of them agreed that from what they’re seeing, as a theming and a fabricator, the cost of raw materials is doubling if not tripling around the July time period. So that means your costs for latex, costs for foam core, costs of those kinds of things, would double or triple. So, I think all this being said, if you have not paid for a project already that’s already contracted, that you are looking to do in the Q3 or Q4 time range that involves any of those raw materials, the price of those could significantly increase if you’ve not already quoted it. So, that’s like manufacturing stance on it. Then the end stances, people could be more reluctant to travel distances that rely on gas or any of that kind of thing. So, it could be another situation where tweaking your marketing to local audiences might be more beneficial in that time period, just because of the increased travel, oil, and transportation costs overall.


Philip: The bigger question, which I’m not sure I could really give an answer to, but the bigger question is, is that going to overall discourage tourism and lead to a little bit of a mini recession for the travel entertainment industry? I’m not sure about that. I think the thing we talked about last time, which is that inflation in the entertainment and tourism sector, is like half of what it is in some of the other sectors. So, I think if you combine that, and it depends on how long this goes, they may kind of cancel each other out. So, I’m not sure. I think that the demand is so high, and everything is so strong right now, I’m not sure there’s really going to be that much of a dip. But you could see people that have less disposable income, if your target is on that end, if you’re a nonprofit or the people you are targeting have less, they may be less like more reluctant to travel further distances, basically, for tourism and kind of stay local. But we’ve been dealing with that over the years, so those are my thoughts.


Scott: I would like to echo; I did not mean to be glib in the beginning. I was being glib about the fact that it is has been all over the media and we are very much aware of it. That is not to make light of the situation with people in the Ukraine having to deal with… Anytime you have to deal with a conflict situation there’s nothing to be made light of. My purpose was more to make light of the fact that it has been all over the news and we all know it. It’s always difficult for me to come on and talk about the really obvious things because we’ve already heard so much about them, and we’ve already seen them.

How To Prepare For All Possibilities?

Scott: As far as how it’s going to affect our industry, I think Philip could be very right. I also think, based on what we’ve seen with the pandemic, if this were three years ago, I would say Philip is 100% right. However, what I’m going to suggest is, as we’ve learned with the last crisis we’re still coming out of, the best way to be prepared is to stay prepared. So, when it comes to those things like oil prices, transportation, raw materials, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Have multiple parallel paths, this is the best thing you can do. Again, if I could sit here and say, “yes, Philip, you’re 100% right. It’s exactly the way it’s going to happen,” which I’m not saying that’s what you were suggesting. But, if I could sit here and say that I’d say, “great. Stick to your guns, get your stuff bid in, plan for these higher prices.” But I cannot sit here and confidently say that. What I can say is, it’s possible.

But one of the things, like I said, what we learned from the pandemic is you can’t decide, “I’m going to have one supplier for my widgets.” You’ve got to have multiple suppliers for your widgets that are preferably in multiple parts of the country, some local, and establish those early. Get those established so that you already have a working relationship, so that you can shift from one parallel path to the next as you need to.

As far as people attending parks, I have been shocked and amazed as to what has happened in the last, actually, even in the last three months when we never thought that the attendance, certainly here in Florida, would return as quickly as it did. But they’re having to close the doors at Walt Disney World for certain parks almost every day, not quite, but almost every day because of high attendance numbers. We still haven’t recovered from really anything of the pandemic, I mean there’s less concern about the actual spread, there’s more vaccinations, which is great. But you know, gas and oil prices still have not dropped to a basement low, they’ve come down a little, but they haven’t dropped to a basement low. People are traveling more, there are some people who never stopped traveling throughout the course of the pandemic.

So, I guess the advice that I would give is be prepared in multiple ways. Don’t think that you can just sit there and go, “well this is the way we’ve always done it. These are the vendors we’ve always used. This is how we’ve always had to transport hard goods and materials and whatever.” This is true whether you are a park or whether you are like me, a contractor who works with the park systems. If you’re doing bids now, make sure that you include in there a percentage of error, and I would say it’s it should be significantly higher. And if you were a park hiring a contractor, you should be open to this, and if you question it, hold their feet to the fire when they when the price goes up by 20%, 30%, 40%. Make them prove it, but recognize this is probably, or may, happen. It may not, but it may.

I think we just need to take what we’ve learned throughout the pandemic, and I think we need to be prepared on multiple levels with multiple options. I know people will say, “well I don’t have time to do that.” My response is, “you don’t have time not to.” It’s not that I disagree with what Philip is saying, I’m just not as certain about it as he is, and that could be because of my own ignorance so I will admit that. But I think that with any sort of situation, whether it is a conflict or a disease or whatever, there’s going to be right and left turns, and they’re going to happen at the most unexpected times. So, once again I say, have multiple paths.

Philip: I agree with having multiple paths overall, I think that, again to take back learnings from these past few years, everyone should understand now that we are a complex economy that is interconnected, and it is definitely difficult to perceive how this is going to shake through. So, I also think that all these things can be true at the same time and probably will be true at the same time. You will have some areas that will not struggle at all, maybe like your Disney because they’ve been, as we mentioned, kind of choosing their own audience, they’ve been kind of selecting a certain group of people, and they’ve been raising their prices. So, if you’re already intending to spend that much, transportation probably will not deter you because you’re planning this once in a [lifetime visit.]

Scott: A perfect example, let’s face it, a whole bunch of my clientele are zoos, aquariums, and museums. One of the things that I found interesting with my clients is, zoos usually operate as a local industry, their target is local. If they are relying on tourism traffic, my guess is this will not impact them negatively. If airfare goes up, I think it may impact them positively because more people are staying in town. Therefore, instead of flying to Hawaii to go on a dolphin watch, they’ll go see the dolphins at the local zoo or aquarium. So, again, I don’t know either, and I don’t think any of us do. I think the most important thing we can say is, just prepare on multiple levels for the same thing, because that way you won’t be stuck with your wallet hanging out.

Disney’s Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser: Media Embargo Lifted

Philip: OK, well our next section is kind of a, what did you miss in the past few weeks in terms of big things that have opened? So, we talked about kind of some of the oxygen being sucked out of the newsroom, but there have been a lot of big openings and big news in our world, in our industry. The first one is this past week has been the Star Cruiser. The media embargo was lifted, so we are finally seeing a lot of media takes, film, and video of the Star Cruiser experience. What do you think, Scott?

Scott:  Yeah, well I haven’t experienced it firsthand so I really can’t say what I think is interesting from a social media standpoint is does anybody really like it?

Philip: I really haven’t found many.

Scott: I have heard so much negative. But what’s interesting is I really haven’t heard a whole lot of negative from people who’ve actually experienced it, I’ve heard a whole lot of negative from people who have either seen it or will, as we’ve talked about before, will never be able to afford it. There’s been significantly less, that I’ve seen, and it may be out there, there’s been significantly less about people who’ve actually experienced it. I do find it interesting because I was talking to somebody who’s not at all involved in the theme park industry and they saw some of the new images and that sort of thing and they said, “wow, the rooms just look like really cheap cruise line rooms.” I said, “well, that’s kind of the mindset that they’re going for.” 

With the ongoing discussion in our industry about things being immersive, things being interactive, and things being gamified. How impactful is that? How important is that? Because what you’re really paying for is the possibility of engaging in the engine room, engaging in being trained to do XY and Z, having a variable story or plotline that’s going to engage one or two people. For me, the jury is still out. I will say that I think it is very pricey, I think that it is clearly targeting a very high-end market, and I think it is much more of a brag tag than it may be an experience. I also think it’s unlikely that people who are going to pay that much money are going to come away from it and say, “it wasn’t worth it. I was taken. I feel foolish.” It takes you back to kind of a Mark Twain story. I’m curious to hear from people who have actually experienced it, who went through the whole 2-day story arc. It may not be for everybody. 

Let me take you back, let me let’s hop back in the old guys Wayback Machine and let’s go back to when Walt Disney World first opened here in Florida in the 70s. There was a magical place called the Contemporary Resort which nobody but the richest of the rich could get in. Or more accurately, no one could get in unless you knew somebody, you had to be connected somehow. There was discussion even back then that this was not the Disney brand. This is just the next Contemporary Resort. I only say that because I went to Walt Disney World the second year it was open and then again, the third year. The second year we could not get into the Contemporary Resort, we didn’t have any connections, we didn’t know anybody, we didn’t book at the moment they started taking bookings; they were taking bookings two and three years out. The second year we did stay at the Contemporary Resort, and it was only because my dad had a connection through somebody he had worked with.

So, this idea is nothing new to the Disney brand, nothing new at all. It’s pricey, and when there was only one hotel or two hotels because Polynesian was open as well, but when there are only two hotels on Disney property, everybody wanted to stay in them, you had to have connections, it was exclusive as hell. This is just the next level of that. There were people who would say, “well I’d much rather stay in the Holiday Inn down the Street, Holiday Inn in Kissimmee, than spend twice that much to stay at Contemporary.”  But having done it, the experience and just the ability to eat, sleep, feed, all within a brand, it’s kind of fun, and that’s what you’re paying for. So, again, I haven’t seen much positive, I understand all the concerns, but it’s really not that new for Disney.

Philip: I would push back a little bit, not in the concept like the link to the Contemporary and capturing someone’s attention over and over with the brand and et cetera, I think you’re on the mark with that. I push back a tiny bit because, to me… Before I disagree, I also agree with basically what you’re saying with your overall stance, that is like, we are too in our own bubble to see it from like the guest perspective. The people that are paying to come to this experience, they’re so outside of our bubble because they have this amount of disposable income, and they’re not in the industry. I mean, they’re so outside of our perspective. 

I also agree with your psychological argument, kind of thing, where like if you’re going to spend that much to do it, you’re actually biased to say it was a good experience, even if it wasn’t, because look at how much you spent, and look at how inclusive it is, and they have bragging rights thing. This is the crux of the argument, it would be a big deal to us, but if this were the price of a Starbucks to you, then you probably wouldn’t care. It literally is like the same as me being like, “Well, I didn’t really like that new Frappuccino flavor that I got last week, but whatever”, and you just go on with your life. That could really be it, you know? 

Starcruiser Experience Is A Test For This Experience Genre

Philip: So, I think the thing I push back on is, I do think this is a big testing ground for Disney, in terms of testing this, this like genre of an experience that is like a storyline, kind of like with the actors and all that kind of thing. I don’t really think they have any other assets that they’re really testing this type of thing on. Now, that’s exactly almost the problem I have with it. It feels too much like a test, it feels like, to use industry terms, that it’s been value-engineered way, way too much. 

I do think everything looks cheap, I do think that there’s a lack of droids, which is very confusing and just weird, I do think the designs are cheap, I do think that there’s hardly any aliens, there’s not a full band, there’s upsells everywhere, I think all those things. But overall, I think the theme is that it’s been value-engineered too much, which in my brain is like, seems like they’re just testing it, seems like a thing they’re just trying to test to figure out the perception of the audience. So, exactly Scott’s point. 

I’m sure the people building this design themselves can’t even really get in the mind of the consumers, so they’re really just testing it. They’re trying to test to see, is this type of model going to work? How is it going to work? Then they could flesh it out later and deploy it in different places, just like the community thing we talked about last time. I think this is, if anything, this reads to me like a test, just overall like a beta test kind of, of this concept; of a much higher spend and also combining theme park and story elements together. You’ve never really had that before, to my knowledge, of the Disney brand where you’re combining a VIP park experience, you’re combining the park IPs, with the actors and the story experience inside with the hotel, these things together. Ultimately, it’s the same thing we’ve been talking about over and over, which is just a stronger vertical, kind of like they’re combining all of their assets together into a stronger vertical. But I think it is the first time they’re testing something like this.

Scott: Well, I would agree with you that it’s the first time they tested something like this on this public level, but there have still been experiences like this where you spend the night in the castle. There is an apartment there that they have rented out in three years. So, eh.

Philip: Capacity though.

Scott: Oh, absolutely. I agree with you 100%. It’s the first time they’ve done it publicly, that’s why I say publicly.

Philip: And no actors involved in that.

Scott: Actually, there were. There were character experiences involved in that, but welcoming, it wasn’t story-driven, but it was welcoming and private encounters with. But to your point, I think I think you’re right, I think it is a test. From what I’ve seen, to me it doesn’t look nearly as cheap as many people have said it does. To me it looks clean, which may make it look cheap because it’s not weatherworn like so much of the stuff that we’ve seen in the movies. So maybe that’s the mistake, maybe they’ve made it look too much like a galactic cruise ship and not enough like Star Wars, because Star Wars has never been clean. You know, the only thing that’s clean is the bad guys. It’s Imperial star cruisers that are clean, everything else is kind of ragtag and scuffed up a bit. So, maybe that’s the level that that is making people say it looks cheap. 

The lack of droids, it doesn’t really affect me one way or the other. Lack of aliens I would like to see more, but that’s because I’m always about the actor, you know? But again, I think it is a beta test. I think that it is what it is, and it’s kind of like going back to the E-ticket days only this is the E-ticket that is more expensive than a car. The two nights on the Galactic Cruiser is like 2 seven-day cruises for two. So, it just depends on where you place your value, where you want to have fun, or how you want to have fun.

Fun New Openings For Everyone

Philip: Well, that is a great segue into some of the other big things that happened this week.

Scott: Because there’s a bunch of new ways to have fun.

Philip: There is a bunch of new ways to have fun, so the Harry Potter: The Exhibition premiered on February 18th and it’s running through September 18th at the Franklin Institute. Scott, you know the people over the Franklin Institute.

Scott: I do, and I love the people at the Franklin Institute. Franklin Institute is one of my clients and I had nothing to do with the selection of the Harry Potter Exhibition, I was just one of the ones cheering when they told me that they had it. I’ve known this was coming for a little over a year now, and I couldn’t be happier. I really couldn’t be happier for them. The thing that I love about it is, although Franklin Institute is very much a Science Center, and they are very stem-based, they don’t ignore the fact that there are other ways to bring people in and engage them in learning and engage them in science. I think, from what I’ve learned about the Harry Potter exhibition, this is just a perfect fit for them, it’s a great way to help bridge the common person into a science environment and a Science Museum. I applaud them for not being so paranoid, to include something that is clearly fantasy, that is clearly magic, and yet makes that transition; acts as a bridge once again into the world of science and the world of education. So, kudos to my wonderful friends at the Franklin Institute. I can’t wait to see this exhibition. I will see it actually in the not too distant future, a couple of months, I’ll be up there, so I’m looking forward to it.

Philip: Another big opening, for which Scott knows the people at, the Peppa Pig theme park opening at Legoland Resort in Florida.

Scott: Yeah, so Peppa Pig with Legoland, oh yeah. Now, I will tell you, Peppa Pig is a brand I did not know a ton about. I knew it was popular, I knew of it, but not having children of that age I really was not aware of the impact of this brand. The impact of this park I think is going to be even more impressive, and that is the fact that it is targeted for children who are on the autism spectrum. The park is designed to be not overwhelming for children who may have some additional issues when it comes to focus, reaction to noises and colors and movement, et cetera, et cetera, and yet it still is designed to be a lot of fun. So, I am very excited to see where this is going to go. I know that other parks, I’m sure there’s a certification or a designation that I’m missing, that have been approved for children with autism, but this is a whole park that is dedicated to that, and it couldn’t be in better hands than Legoland because I think Legoland has always been focused on the youngest of the guests without being dull to grownups. So, kudos to them, I’m excited.

Philip: Yeah, I like the idea that it is designed specifically with children ages 6 and under in mind, which is kind of what they said here in the release. To Scott’s point, it’s designed for all children under that age range in mind. So, it’s a really big step forward in terms of inclusivity. Also, I think it’s a big step forward in terms of this idea of crafting an area that is kind of just designed from the beginning for a slice that really hasn’t been touched that much in the past. But it’s just interesting to say we’re going to have these slices of experiences that we’re just telling people they’re designed for this age group, right off the bat. Even down to them thinking about how the longevity, kids 6 and under are not going to last. They said on here, ” ‘The preschool market doesn’t have that longevity to last 8, 9, or 10 hours at a theme park,’ explained [Rex] Jackson. The park can be experienced in as little as a few hours and serves as a complementary addition to the overall resort.”

It’s smart, you know, for that age range, you know a complementary addition, you can take your kids over, just the layout, all of the assets are just designed specifically for that age range in mind, and even the duration that they want to experience things.

Scott: It’s clearly been put together with their target audience in mind. Someone has been a great cheerleader and advocate for this particular demographic’s guest experience, and pretty much on all levels from what I’ve seen. Now, again, I’ve not visited it yet myself, I don’t have my little pink ears which I saw everybody wearing after the opening, which were absolutely adorable. I am tickled that this park exists, and I look forward to checking it out myself.

Philip: So also opening on February 19th, already opened on February 19th, Attack on Titan opened at the Art Science Museum, and I’ll read here from the release. “Hit manga series Attack On Titan will arrive on Singapore’s shores as part of a major exhibition at the ArtScience Museum, opening on Feb 19. This will be the South-east Asian debut of Attack On Titan: The Exhibition, which will showcase the immersive world of the manga series written and illustrated by Japanese creator Hajime Isayama.”

Philip: So again, I think all these stories are related. You know, here is also an example of the art Science Museum, to Scott’s point, accepting that they can look into the fantastical world to make connections to art and science. You know, it doesn’t have to be all the classic science examples here. Also, this is an example of somebody, a curator, looking at what’s important to their core market and acknowledging how popular this IP is in their local market. This all reminds me of when you’re in school and you’re trying to teach a lesson as a teacher and then you’re trying to think of, “how do I explain this concept, but use it in a way that the students can understand because they interact with something in their daily life? How can I make this example speak to them?” That’s why I like these examples. 

Scott: Yeah, I think they’re great and I think it’s important for everyone to recognize. You may have an agenda. If you are an attraction who’s listening to us who happens to be an aquarium, zoo, museum, you may have an educational agenda, but you also have to recognize that agenda cannot be accomplished unless you have the interest and the attention of your young audiences who are the recipients of your great knowledge. Just because kids are having fun doesn’t mean they’re not learning, and I think that’s really important to recognize and incorporate into your overall product mix.

Tearing Them Down
Episodes

…Tearing Them Down

By 222

Coming up, Storyliving by Disney represents a walled garden approach that Disney is taking, but other attractions are tearing walls down by encouraging guests to come in for their seasonal offerings.

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Transcript

Philip: From our studios in San Diego and Tampa, FL this is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30. I’m Philip and I’m joined by my co-host Scott Swenson of Scott Swenson Creative Development.

Scott: Hello, how are we all doing? We’re punchy already and the show has just started. This could be a big problem. Actually, this is kind of a carryover from last week’s show. But, before we dive into that there is some news I think we need to talk about.

COVID Update: Relaxing Mandates and CDC Update

Scott: You know we spent a lot of time on this show talking about mask mandates and where they are and how they’re doing. That’s changing in California. So, for example, California listed lifted masks indoors in LA County. Universal Studios Hollywood is now saying no masks outdoors, but it’s still requiring them indoors. Disneyland and Walt Disney World here in Florida are saying no masks except for transportation. Yeah, it’s sort of like the airport I guess, I don’t know. 

The idea here apparently is we are finding what we’ve hoped for all along, we are finding new ways to not hide from, but rather deal with the pandemic and keep things moving forward. I’ve always said I’m going to select an expert source and follow it through, and for me, that was the CDC, and the CDC has continued to update and reevaluate and make new and different recommendations. So, I’m going to follow them and hope that it’s all right.

I think that where the focus has been now, and I think appropriately so, is on making certain that everybody is vaccinated who can be, as well as boostered, so if for some reason they do come down with any of the variants, they’re less likely to get sick, which I think is exactly the right way to do. I think we’ve kind of overcome a lot of the challenges. But for those people who do still choose to wear masks, because they are either immunocompromised or there are concerns about either them spreading it or it being spread to them, there was a report that came out that said, if you are able to wear either N95 or KN95 masks, that you really are roughly about 80% protected. The reason it’s not 95 is because, obviously, not all of us have been fit tested, some of us have facial hair, et cetera, et cetera. So, if you still have concerns or have legitimate health issues and would like to continue to wear masks. The N95 and the KN95 masks are the way to go. 

I just want everybody to recognize that just because they’re not required does not mean anyone going to chastise you, let me rephrase that, should be chastising you for wearing them if you choose to. I just think it’s important to put that out there because mask-wearing has been such a regional thing, and I just got back from Tennessee, and I didn’t see a single mask except in the airport. I’ve also been to Philly not too long ago and Indianapolis not too long ago. Indy is somewhere in the middle Philly is masked everywhere, so different people, different areas are handling it differently and I think that’s fine. I just think we need to make sure that we continue to move forward as to how to live with this situation as opposed to thinking it’s all just going to magically go away.

Philip: Yeah, and the location, I think to underscore we’ve been talking about this entire time, like everything is changed and nothing is changed as well in that the locations are still handling it differently. That means that attractions in different areas have different guidelines. You know, even in this example, California said they are releasing, they’re taking off the required indoor masking, but LA has decided they’re still going to keep it for about a month, and that means that Disneyland can get rid of masks, which they did, but it means that Universal can’t because they’re still in LA County. So, it’s even down to, like they’re not that far apart, you know, these two parks and there are different rules. To Scott’s point about elective wearing, I like to wear my mask at the gym, but that’s mainly because I make weird faces when I’m lifting and I don’t want people to see my faces that I’m making, but I get like mad shade thrown at me and it’s just so funny and puzzling. But yeah, it’s really just for me because I want people to see the faces, just like the pushing out. Who wants to look at that?

Scott: Put a mask on now Philip, don’t ever make that face on the show, again, that’s really scary. For me, I spend so much time traveling to climates that are colder, that mask wearing is something that I’m going to do anyway whether it’s an N95 or whether it’s a scarf around my face, because you know this Chicago boy has been living in Florida too long. So, when I go to Indianapolis, Canada, or wherever, especially in the winter it’s cold, so I want my face covered. It doesn’t bother me at all.

I think that we need to continue to do what is right for us, and again, we’ve been saying that from the very beginning. Follow your heart, follow your own personal experience, and stay safe.

Philip: Well, you know, Disney would prefer that people followed their hearts to spend more time with Disney, and that’s kind of what we talked about last time. Which was the idea of this concept of building up walls higher. Last week on the show we talked about how Disney was trying to increase the spend per person, essentially, and they were successful at doing that, and how that really is building up barriers to entry, essentially, which is the wall concept for their properties. We kind of tied together Chapek’s vision in his memo and about Bob Iger’s exit interview. We talked about the strategy of building up IPs and trying to kind of go up against the Metaverse and all these forces that are coming in.

So, this week we thought we’d start off with giving a little bit of examples on other types of walled experiences, some of them have physical worlds that people are building. Then we’ll talk a little bit about what smaller attractions that really don’t have the IPs that are as strong, what they can do to kind of tear those walls down and bring in more guests, so kind of like the opposite strategy of what Disney has been doing.

Storyliving With Disney: Disney Residential Areas

Philip: So, our first example of physical walls is, of course, I think the biggest news from this week, which is, “Storyliving by Disney“. Yikes. “The Disney Touch is at the heart of it all.” Sorry, I couldn’t get through that with a straight face. I tried. This is serious stuff. OK, I’m serious.

"At each location, including some neighborhoods for residents ages 55 and older, Disney cast members trained in the company’s guest service will operate the community association. Through a club membership, Disney will also provide access to curated experiences, such as wellness programming, entertainment ranging from live performances to cooking classes, philanthropic endeavors, seminars and much more. Disney Imagineers will play a key role in developing the creative concept for the communities, working in conjunction with respected developers and homebuilders."

InPark Magazine

Scott: Well, when I first read this, the first thing I thought of was, it’s about time for the folks living in Celebration to retire and they need someplace to go, so this seems to be the next logical step. Maybe I’m a little cynical, I don’t know. I love theme parks. I work in theme parks. I love Disney. I love Disney and the Disney experience, I grew up with it. But I will say, I personally wouldn’t want to live there. I think the other thing that we have to recognize, if I’m not mistaken Philip, and correct me if I’m wrong here, this is not all Disney, they’re working with some rather significant partners who are actually either co-owners or actual owners of these experiences and environments, is that true?

Philip: I think that the details have not been 100% released yet. But, from what I understand, the way it’s working is, there are builders and those builders are the ones that own the property just as a regular HOA or any sort of builder that’s building a master-planned community. So, there’s going to be homeowners, and there’s going to be the master planners, the builders, and the HOAs, and all that as normal. That’s all normal. But, the difference here, from my understanding, is Disney is kind of like consulting on how the master plan will actually work. So, they’re sitting down with the architects, basically, and being like, “you know it would be great if you worked in a hidden Mickey into this wrought iron fence.”

Scott: You know, here we are with Epcot Community Consulting. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I think it’s I think it’s interesting.

Philip: Well, what I think is actually brilliant here is the second part of it, which is the piece I read about how, it seems to me like, essentially your fees are going to go towards Disney cast members who are going to be placed, like real Disney cast members, that are going to be stationed in the community rooms and they are going to bring curated Disney-esque experiences to plan out in your area. So, I can’t imagine what the HOA fees are going to be, but I imagine they’re going to be pretty large, and then you’re going to get that Disney touch, IE the cast members that are there.

So, again, it speaks almost directly to what we talked about last week because it is like Disney looking for more of your attention. It’s also the walled garden experience. These are going to be expensive. Just look at Golden Oaks, right? Golden Oaks, millions of dollars for the same concept, you know, and Celebration was expensive too, you know?

Scott: I think it’s important to recognize that Disney is not the first to do this, by any stretch of the imagination. Here in Florida, there’s a senior citizen community, and it is gigantic, called The Villages. There’s also another one, Sun City, here in Florida and they’re all right. I mean, these are all just within spitting distance of Tampa. For example, The Villages has multiple entertainment facilities, you know full performance and production locations. They have golf courses, they have swimming pools, and they’re all just part of the living experience and the HOA fees go directly to that, it just doesn’t have the Disney name on it. So, this is nothing new and I recognize that.

Philip: Push back time a bit, I think the thing that is new is I’ve never seen them straight up say that Disney cast members will operate the Community Association.

Scott: Yeah, but that’s just saying that people who’ve gone through some sort of guest interaction training. Which, I would venture to say, knowing people who work at The Village, they’ve been through similar training, if not the same thing.

Philip: But then the second sentence, like Disney will provide access to curated experiences.

Scott: Which is exactly what The Villages do. They hire artists. Each one of their performing arts centers has an artistic director who curates what comes into each of their areas based on the guests, based on their needs, based on what’s been successful. It’s like these little, tiny villages. They bring in the same thing, and they bring everything from the, what I call they were once stadium tour acts, but aren’t any more, to cooking classes, to art classes, to the past winners of America’s Got Talent. You know, it’s all that kind of curated experience just for the owners, the only thing it doesn’t have is the Disney name.

So, the concept, I don’t think, is new. The fact that people are saying that it’s Disney is. I mean that the Disney Hospitality training is second to none, I agree with that, so I think that’s really exciting. But, to say that it’s just because they’re providing curated entertainment and that they are using cast members, or staff members, who have gone through hospitality training, that’s not new.

Disney Has More Control Over Content Delivery?

Philip: That’s fine, I totally agree that. I don’t know. First of all, aside from the concern, I do think, strategically, it is smart because for the reason we talked about last time. We talked a little bit about their hedging against IPs and I brought up the concern last week that the biggest hole in their strategy of Disney Plus and the strategy of the walled garden they’re losing access to more volume of people. Since Disney Plus, that’s what they’re betting on for the wide amount of people, you know for the masses. The masses they’re betting on Disney Plus because the parks are getting more constricted capacity-wise. The issue with that is that they don’t own the delivery mechanism of Disney Plus. 

So, in that sense, this is smart because, essentially, they’re bringing programming to communities, there’s no one getting in the way, it’s Disney and then it’s the people at the communities, and there’s nobody that can get in the way, there’s nobody that can say they’re not going to allow the Disney Plus app on their phones. Which, you know, Apple could do. I mean there are ways in which people that own the rails, essentially, could interfere with Disney Plus, which is what makes it a leaky strategy. But this allows them to directly influence the people at these communities without any barriers in between them.

Now the danger…

Scott: That’s why I asked, who owns the properties? As you said, we believe, we’re not certain, but we believe that it is the home builders and the developers. So, in theory they could. I don’t see why they would, because again, the Disney affiliation is why they’re selling it. But, that that option still is there looking forward if, for some reason, there was a falling out or something ridiculous happened.

This Is A New Walled Experience For Disney Fanatics

Philip: Well, my larger concern is also that I feel like this ultimately just creates more walled garden experiences in the more traditional sense, because, you know, we know that the best way to reduce division is to have diverse groups of people, diverse living situations, to have opportunities where you come into contact in mutual community spaces with people that you normally wouldn’t come into contact with. I feel like all this is doing is the opposite. It is “curated experience,” i.e., means what Disney thinks is appropriate, and then it’s a Disney freaking themed HOA. So like, who do you think is going to be able to afford and buy houses in this place? It’s like they’re just creating… To me, I read this as, “we are creating a safe space where we can bring all the stuff that you want to you.” And it’s like, yeah, but how we build understanding empathy is sometimes being uncomfortable. You know, it’s having to go to the community pool and interacting with our neighbors that we normally would not have ever met in our regular day-to-day lives, except they live next to us. So, then we learn about them, and we learn that they’re actually just humans, just like us too. You know, on 4th July they grill stuff just like we do.

Scott: I agree with you 100%. I think we have to recognize that this is for people who would rather go to Epcot than Europe. I can’t tell you how many times I have been to Epcot where I have heard at least one person say, “you know it looks just like Europe, only it’s better, it smells nicer.” So, you know, at that point you kind of have to say, “OK, you don’t want the real experience you want the replicated experience,” and that’s fine. You know I’m not being judgmental there at all. But, I think that reinforces what your concern is Philip, and that is that we’re not going to go with what is real, what requires us to interact with people that we may not necessarily understand or know anything about. We’re going to take a curated view as to what that is. So, like I said, Epcot versus Europe.

Philip: Yeah, and who is doing that curation? The concept of who is doing that curation was actually mentioned by Iger after he left Disney, and it was the one piece of the interview that we haven’t talked about yet. He mentioned, so I’ll read his quote.

“...having spent almost 50 years on the creative side of our business, it became more and more clear to me that while data was already playing a very important role, that it should not be used to determine what stories are told. If we had tried to mine all the data that we had at the time to determine whether we should make a superhero movie that was essentially about an Afrofuturistic world with a Black cast, the data probably would have said, don’t do that… There are a number of examples of that, where someone’s instinct or a group of people’s instinct on whether a story is worthy of being told and is in the hands of people who will tell it really well— I don’t think a machine or data, no matter how much technology enables, essentially, input of massive amounts of information to be processed— I don’t think you get the right answers to that.”

Iger

Philip: Which sounds great on its head, but then you start to read into it and you ask questions of, “hmm, maybe if your data set was more culturally balanced, the computer would give you more culturally balanced responses.” And maybe when they say people instinct… Essentially, when I’m reading into this, I’m hearing, first, the data you gave it was the data from your park attendees, which are not very, just like Scott said last time, they’re choosing who they want to come to the parks, so ergo they are deciding the data set and then plugging it into the computer and then blaming the computer for not bringing out a diverse end set. Well, it’s starting from a not diverse point. Second, he’s essentially saying people’s instincts didn’t want to produce these types of things, they didn’t think it would go well, that’s what I’m hearing. Yet, then in the next breath you’re like we’re going to curate the experience for these homeowners as an HOA, and I’m like, you already admitted that your instincts are not to do diverse stories.

Scott: Right, but their instinct did do a diverse story and it was a significant hit. I think we have to take a half step back here. This is not Westworld, we’re not going to plug things into the computer and it’s going to make decisions. The idea here is data is a tool. Period. It’s not should you or shouldn’t you, it’s how do you use this information? How do you add the human element to this information so that you can use the data to either support or work against what your gut tells you? Data should be used to refine an idea, not to make the decisions for us, that’s a sort of really creepy sort of George Orwell kind of moment there. I don’t want computers doing the curation, I want people doing the curation. I think data has to be recognized as it’s an important tool. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I heard this back when I was working in the theme park, if you followed strictly the data, we would never have, in the automobile industry, minivans or electric cars, or even hybrids. So it’s one of those you’ve got to have those people, you’ve got to have those outliers, you’ve got to have those thinkers, and the question is, who are they? I think that’s your real question Philip, and that is who are these people? Who are the gut instinct folks? And is that a diverse group? And you know what, if it’s not, don’t support their curation, that’s the bottom line.

Philip: Correct.

Scott: It’s not as though you have any right to say, “Disney, here’s the people you can hire and here’s the people you can let into your park.” You don’t, you can’t say that. What you can do is choose not to participate in that product if they are not being as diverse as you feel they need to be, or what they are curating doesn’t speak to you as an individual.

Philip: That’s a lot, but overall, that that’s my biggest concern with it is, who is doing the curation? That’s exactly it, Scott. 

Scott: And I think it’s a valid concern.

An Experience For A Small Audience: Lost Spirits Distillery

Scott: But, you know, there are always going to be those experiences that are designed for a very specific group. For example, let’s leave Disney for a moment, let’s not use the D word for the rest of the show. We’ll stay away from Disney, we have certain experiences that have been curated for very small audiences, things like Lost Spirits Distillery’s new themed restaurant serves–yes, this is correct–just one dozen people weekly. 12 people, could you just imagine any restaurant… you talk about data. Let’s use some data to try to define, “yes, we’re going to create a restaurant that is only going to serve 12 clients each week.” I don’t think there’s a single in the culinary arts industry who would say, “oh, there’s a good idea!” But it is, because it creates such a unique experience for those people. Do you have problems with that?

Philip: I think this one I have less problems about, because they are starting from the point of saying this is a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea restaurant, and so you’ve started off already walking into it knowing that like it’s just going to be about 20 Leagues Under the Sea. So, I suppose just like, I went to this Mary Shelley thing, so I suppose… Oh God Scott, you asked me a terrible question, I feel like I just walked into a trap. 

Scott: Yeah, I’m good at that.

Philip: Remember when I went to that that Mary Shelley kind of like experience? Well, I had studied Mary Shelley in graduate school and written papers on it. So, I was like, “well you’re missing XYZ!” But everyone else loved it, right? So, having not done a thesis in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea I would be fine with walking into 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and understanding though, that’s what this is about, and this was that is the curation they’re making, they’re creating what they think is important for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Where I would have the problem is if you were walking into like an Epcot and they’re like, “we represent all the most important things that culturally in the world, and for all these different countries this is what’s important in these different countries.” That’s where I kind of I’m like, “no, I don’t see that like you are the experts in that.” I don’t mind when the lens is so narrow that it’s just this one IP of 20,000 Leagues. I’m like, that’s fine. I trust Disney to accurately represent Ratatouille in their Ratatouille…

Scott: We weren’t going to say Disney anymore. We’re not going to talk about, you know… You’re pulling the prank of, that has nothing to do with this. That has nothing to do with this, so yes, you did walk into a trap, and it just snapped around your foot. This is part of Area 15 in Vegas. It is $240 per person which includes alcohol and drink tickets. So, it’s a wall, it is a closed environment for high-end clientele. Again, if it’s targeting the right high-end clientele, I think that’s great.

Philip: Yeah, 16-course dinners, and they do have entertainment as well, so it’s like a whole evening event. And honestly, when I read this, the thing that jumped out to me was $240 a person, I feel like they could have doubled that. It doesn’t seem that high at all.

Scott: Especially in Vegas.

Philip: This is Vegas. This is Area 15, which means you get entry into the whole Area 15 immersive environment. You need to have some sort of ticket or whatever to get entry into that area. So, you get entry into the whole area, then you get to do this experience, there’s a show included, there’s alcohol included, there are 16-courses and it’s only $240? Like, I feel like it should have been double that. But maybe it will be, maybe next week it will be.

Scott: They’re listening, they listen to the show all the time you know, and next week next week it’ll all be changed.

Attractions Use Seasonal Events To Tear Down Their Walls

Scott: So, another way I think that theme parks are trying to get more and more people and trying to be more and more open is something that is so very near and dear to both Philip’s and my heart, and that is the seasonal entertainment industry; finding ways new ways to create seasonal events. I think that now is, of course, the world of Mardi Gras, and I can’t think of too many theme parks that haven’t ventured into this realm in some way or another. 

Obviously, Universal Studios, both in Florida and in California got in there. I would say got in there first as far as the major players. I know that last year Busch Gardens Tampa started a small event and it brought it back this year. I actually attended that event, it was a lot of fun. SeaWorld San Diego is starting it for the first time and that is running from February 5th through the 27th. SeaWorld Orlando 7 Seas Food Festival is pretty much a staple now, and they do it incredibly well, they do it very, very well.

I think it’s interesting that Universal is taking a slightly different approach, Universal Studios, Japan. Although, I guess it’s a cultural thing, I’m going to leave this up to you, Philip, to help define this a little bit in terms of how it’s different for the culture versus the company.

Philip: Well, I think to take a small step back what I think is interesting is that Scott and I have talked, our specialty is seasonal, and so we talk about Halloween, Christmas, and we talk about all that, and then we get to this kind of void which is Q1. What I find so interesting about Q1 is that kind of everybody is allowed to take their own spin based on the local community and what they think is best for that area. So, you see Mardi Gras, you see Saint Patrick’s Day, you see Valentine’s Day. Then in other cultures you know you’ll see Chinese New Year, which I talked about as well, but then you’ll see, like in Japan, Universal Studios in Japan is doing their Cool Japan, and this has been around for a while. 

What it is, it’s kind of like a partnership with local popular IPs and they do like a celebration of things that are cool in Japan, like cool not like cold but cool as in trendy, just to clarify, I don’t know. So, this year they’re running until August 28th, which is an extremely extended run, quite a long time. They’re doing Sailor Moon, they’re doing Attack on Titan, they’re doing Hunter X Hunter, they’re doing Monster Hunter: Iceborne XR Walk, and they’re doing Detective Conan. This is a phenomenal example of a truly incredible seasonal event where they are partnering with IPs to create seasonal activations, and those IPs are the strongest in the area. They’re doing full storylines to match them, like this is not just a, “we’re going to stick stickers on something.” Just to be clear, there’s story integration. It’s like they’re taking a 3D theater and they’re creating a show for the 3D theater, it’s that level of creation. It’s wildly popular, these IPs are wildly popular, and the team that works on them does a fantastic job.

Scott: Help me understand this Philip, is this sort of like IP pop up within the Universal Studio?

Philip: Yup. It’s brilliant. Yeah, it’s so good.

Scott: I love it. I mean, because yeah, you’re right, these aren’t stickers, these aren’t, “Let’s throw a couple of stilt walkers in costume out there.” These are, 40 shows, these are rides, these are 40 theater experiences, these are XR walks. I mean they’re… wow there’s… this is all over the place. Is it possible that this is a way to test for future expansion? Is it possible that that’s how they’re looking at this for permanent installations?

Philip: I’m not sure. They’ve done this for a while, and it doesn’t seem to be leading to a permanent expansion, but I don’t know if that’s just because on the other hand, maybe the Ips are kind of like, eh.” You know, you don’t know if permit expansion with getting the IP is something that they will agree to or not.

It is interesting that you mentioned permanent expansion, because over in Abu Dhabi the Warner Brothers are introducing the first-ever Batman season, which features different Batman-inspired activities and live shows. That’s running until March 31st to coincide with the release of the new Batman movie. So, that’s kind of there where they’re, again like you say, using their existing assets, they have a Gotham area there, but they’re finding a way to turn it into a season of fun by tying it into IP that is being released outside of the park.

Scott: Well and another perfect example of utilizing their assets is Busch Gardens, Williamsburg. You know they have a whole Ireland section, and so they’re doing a Saint Patrick’s Day experience for March 4th through the 27th. Which, again, makes total sense, right on brand with them. Of course, Universal Orlando is bringing back Mardi Gras like we said. They’re just popping up all over. Of course, we have Sesame Place in San Diego opening, which I can’t wait to see. I think that would be really fun. We just had Peppa Pig open here in Florida. There’s a whole bunch of neat stuff going on that doesn’t involve the D word, but that’s kind of what’s happening in the industry, what we feel is important, and certainly our opinions. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t, but that’s the joy of this show.

Building Walls
Episodes

Building Walls …

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We’re talking all about how Disney is building walls around their experiences. We’ll dive into the details behind the latest earnings call, and then we’ll look at the strategy which Chapek has laid out for the company.

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Transcript

Philip: From our studios in Los Angeles, CA and Tampa, FL, this is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30. I’m Philip and I’m here with my co-host and owner of Scott Swenson Creative Development, Scott Swenson.

Scott: Hey, how’s it going everybody? I hope you’re having a great week. I know I sure him. There’s been some interesting stuff happening in the news, so instead of just yammering pointlessly let’s just dive right in, shall we?

Disney’s Earning’s Call Summary

Philip: We shall, indeed, and we shall begin with the information from the latest earnings call that Disney gave. This comes via the DIS at wdwinfo.com. They always do great writeups of the earnings call summaries and let’s kind of breakdown it down. There’s really only a few points we want to hone in on. First is there’s lots of profit, it was actually a two-fold increase from 2021 in the same period, so yay for them. Disney Plus added 11.8 million subscribers in Q1 2022, which I kind of think is bananas. So, total subscriber count is now 129 million, which is getting there, right? It’s not at Netflix which I think is 220, so it’s still way behind Netflix, but it is getting there. Now, the big pieces here I will read from the report here.

“…we believe the opportunity for the Walt Disney Company goes well beyond these channels, including sports betting, gaming, and the Metaverse.” 

“For Q1 2022, approximately one-third of all parks guests purchased Disney Genie Plus, Lightning Lane, or BOTH. This rose to more than 50% of all guests throughout the 2021 holiday season.” What? How is that not a separate article anyway? 

“Disney Parks is performing better than 2019 with lower attendance numbers, while attendance continues to strengthen at domestic Disney Parks.” What?

Disney Is Building Pay Walls Around Their Experiences

Scott: That’s what happens when your prices skyrocket, you do well financially with the same number of people. First of all, let’s start with the last one, because I think it’s really interesting when they say, “we’re doing better than 2019 with lower attendance numbers.” What that basically means is, “we are now catering to rich people, because they’re the ones who are spending the money.” I’m not sure I’d want to lead with that. I know that this is probably the nicest way you can say it, but it’s pretty much saying, it costs more to come to Disney now. Yeah, in order to have the Disney experience, you have to spend more money, or people are spending more money. It doesn’t say you have to necessarily, but it is saying people are spending more money if the attendance is down but the finances are up. So, there’s only one way to explain that, and that is that each individual person is spending more. So the per capita has gone up. OK, got it. 

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is clear, based on all the other news that we’ve reported on over the last couple of weeks, Disney continues to elevate their cost and elevate the cost of experience for guests. Not a bad thing, not a good thing, just what they’re doing, apparently.

Philip: They’re building the walls higher.

Scott: Oh yeah, they’re definitely putting in some sort of financial separation, at least, between their guests and their parks, or the masses of their guests. The other thing that I think is very, very interesting here, sorry Philip, I know you want to tag in here and I’ll shut up in just a second.

The other thing that I think is really interesting is 50% of all guests throughout the 2021 holiday season were either Genie or Lightning Lane or both. So now you have a VIP experience that is no longer the minority. How? I don’t know? I mean I’m sure that the Disney folks are far smarter than I am, I don’t question that, but I just don’t understand how the VIP, front-of-line, virtual queuing, all of that, I don’t understand how all of that can be more than 50%. That just doesn’t make sense. Even 33%, which is what it was before, 1/3, even that’s pushing it. But now that it has exceeded 50%, then it’s not really, this is something that’s added, it’s something that is needed in order to do anything in the park. Help me understand this Philip, what am I missing?

Philip: No, you’re not. I love that you put that together in that order, because that is exactly what people were worried about when they announced this program, is that it would become a floor, basically. Like, this is required. The first floor is you have to be able to pay the ticket price, which is what like $160 on some days for a single day, which is bananas, and then the second floor is in order to do the rides you have to have access to this, so it’s adding another floor which is increasing the base ticket price, not to mention the food, and now there’s all of the festivals and the seasonal stuff that’s going on forever–like we talked about last time with the Epcot festival which might as well be happening all year long–and then the alternating food festivals, and there’s passes for all that. You’re just continuing to raise that floor of spend by the per guest.

Scott: It’s no longer an elevation of your ticket, it is now an expectation of your ticket. So, you buy the ticket, you buy the Genie Plus, the Lightning Lane, or both.

Philip: Correct.

Scott: So, again, being old, because I went to Walt Disney World before I went to Disneyland, and I remember going back to going to Walt Disney World the second year it was open and they still had tickets, so the A, B, C, D, and E tickets. At that point, the way it was positioned was, this price gets you in and then you get tickets for each of the events, each of the rides, or attractions that you want to experience. The thing about it is, if you got a book of tickets and you were a family of three, which we were, or family of four when my grandmother went, you could do roughly your book over a day and a half or two days. So, it was just expected. You’d buy the ticket, they were packaged so that it was a slight discount over the individual ticket pricing. 

Well, this is exactly the same thing, only it’s hidden. It’s like you can get in, you can’t do anything, but you can get in. Or you can get in and you have to pick the one thing or two things you want to do while you’re there. I’m sorry, this just doesn’t sound fun to me anymore.

I think the thing that is most disturbing to me is, this seems to be sort of the antithesis of the intent of Disney parks originally when they first started. It may make sense from a business standpoint, short-term maybe? Or maybe the wall is just going to get so high that it becomes this exclusive, nobody else can experience it kind of thing, and if it does do that, I’m wondering how sustainable that will be.

I will tell you right now, my friends who I would consider stupid wealthy, they don’t go to Disney Parks. They go to Europe, they don’t go to theme parks. Instead of going to Epcot, they go to the real countries, that’s the way to describe it. So, I don’t know whether tapping into the upper-middle is going to last long enough, because the upper couldn’t care less and the lower and middle can’t afford it anymore. So, I’m curious to see how this turns out, because on paper I’m sure it looks brilliant, but we’ll see.

Philip: You know, you mentioned that it doesn’t look fun to you, but I think, probably, to the 50% of people who pay it, it probably is fun because there’s less people overall, then you get to jump ahead of half of them. So to that 50%…

Scott: You get to jump ahead of half of them, but if they capped it at 30%, you could jump ahead of 2/3 and it would make it worth more. No, I don’t get it. I don’t want to pay extra to only be ahead of 50% of the people.

Philip: But overall, less people. It’s interesting, because we talked about this way, way, way earlier with the first announcement, and I think at that point, remember, we had the same similar argument where I was like, “if Disney grand theory is to overall reduce their attendance so that they don’t have to have as many people in the park, which means less expense, kind of, but also a better experience, but then they can also make more per each person and increase their profitability, that would be a win-win.” It seems like, at least for now, it’s working.

Scott: Right, I think they just need to change the ticketing levels and just make it the “have tickets” and the “have-not tickets”

Bob Chapek’s Strategy For Disney

Philip: Yes. Well, let’s try and widen the context on this discussion, outside of just what’s going on with that earnings call. Bob Chapek sent a staff memo, it’s been a few weeks now, but he sent a memo to all the staff and in it, he outlined their strategy for going forward for, you know, like the next 100 years or whatever. In it, he said they had three pillars that he was focusing on. 

The first one is storytelling excellence. “I am establishing a new standing monthly meeting with our senior creative leaders to discuss the opportunities we face as a storytelling enterprise. This will encourage collaboration, sharing of best practices, and stimulate 

Second pillar is innovation. “We should be especially innovative as we seek to bring stories to life in new ways—particularly if they enhance what many call our “franchise ecosystem,” which is one of the things that sets us apart.” OK, we’re going to get to that.

Third, relentless focus on our audience. We’re also going to get to that one. “Right now, [our consumer] behavior tells us and our industry that the way they want to experience entertainment is changing—and changing fast thanks to technology and the pandemic. We must evolve with our audience, not work against them.” Scott, we must not work against our audience, we must evolve with them! Sorry, so punchy.

Scott: So, let’s start with the first one, shall we?

Philip: We’ll go in order.

Storytelling Experience And IP Acquisition

Scott: So, here’s the thing, it’s going to sound like I’m arguing both pro and con of Disney, and to be honest I am. I think that what they’re doing, and I said it before, but I just want to reiterate it, what they’re doing makes sense from a business standpoint. From their standpoint, this makes total sense, and if they need to make up some money from the money lost during the pandemic, more power to them. 

As an advocate for theme park guests, which is like the way I’ve always framed my job as a creative director and a producer within the industry. I have to be an advocate for the guest experience so that the creative ideas that come up at the beginning are the same creative ideas that the guests actually see.

So, with that in mind, let’s start with storytelling excellence. To me, this translates into, “let’s continue to develop strong IP, let’s continue to reinforce our brand, and let’s continue to find new and different intellectual properties we can own and control.”

Philip: Yes.

Scott: Because I think we’re at the point now where intellectual properties are going to be almost as valuable as gold at this point.

Philip: I’m glad you said that, because that’s exactly what we talked about last week, Bob Eiger’s exit interview he did with the New York Times. In it, he laid out that domino of like, it wasn’t just that they were like, “oh, these would make nice properties to have.” It was like, “look, we need to become big enough and have enough IP to kind of combat the metaverse and big tech coming into content creation and all that stuff.” So, they needed to acquire IPs, and he straight up drew that line. 

I agree with you, I think that’s why this is important, right? What he’s saying, but kind of what does it mean in reality? How do we extrapolate what they’re actually doing? What I think he’s actually saying is.”yes, they’re going to continue to just focus on IP,” like to hedge against competition. We even see that with their renovations of the parks. Disneyland, California adventure is progressing from a celebration of California and a celebration of culture to a celebration of Disney. It’s the same thing at Epcot, Epcot going from the experimental prototype community of tomorrow to we’re going to showcase Ratatouille.

Scott: Welcome to Ratatouille, which is everything in France, and welcome to Frozen, which is everything in Norway. I totally get it. The thing is, at the same time as I am chastising them, I’m also saying thank you because I think it is important to maintain the story. I think that is absolutely essential. I think it is important to find new stories to tell, and I think it’s important to find new ways to tell them. 

Innovation And Content Distrubition

Scott: Which I think a very smooth transition into the innovation side which was point number two, finding new ways to tell stories. This kind of goes into what Disney has always been, and you’ve heard me say it ad nauseam, which is basically Disney wants you to eat, sleep, drink Disney so that the Disney IP are there in everything from giveaways at fast-food restaurants to Starcruiser. So, you have all these multi-levels, they’ve always done it, they always will, they actually pretty much wrote the book on it.

Honestly, it’s why Disneyland started to exist was because Walt wanted to find a way to give kids the opportunity to live the movies, even though that’s much more aligned with Universal’s marketing. He wanted to give kids an opportunity to actually meet some of the characters that they were seeing in the movies, then buying the coloring books for, then buying those stupid little toys that you push the bottom and they collapse and come back up again; again, I’m going back to the early days of Disney. So, that was the next step. Now you can get a Disney waffle maker, and that’s been around a long time too.

So anyway, I think that continues to make sense, it seems right in line with Disney’s legacy. Now they’re taking it more into a technology technological view moving forward, so it’s the same theory, it’s just new toys.

Philip: Yeah, essentially you’re right, he makes it sound so exciting with his like words of innovation and blah blah blah, but ultimately he’s like, we’re looking at new ways to distribute our stories, and those new ways include ones we’ve talked about, which also again, back to the Bob Eiger, interview that he talked about as well. Metaverse development is a big piece of that right, and also is the streaming thing. Last week we talked about how Bob was saying that streaming has kind of lower barriers to entry, so it allows for more creativity and there’s like a renaissance happening in stories. 

Well, yeah, what they’re really saying is, we can dabble in a lot of different stories and test them out, basically, in Disney Plus, and have a wider distribution of them. We can innovate with our distribution there, test out different types of stories, test out new markets. Like, look at Encanto and how well that went for them. Now they’re taking that and trying to use the Bruno Song out in other capacities, in other music capacities. Basically, they’re saying what are more ways to distribute our content and more ways to do content partnerships? 

I think one of the big holes in that is, who owns the rails, essentially? It’s the same problem of who is actually controlling the distribution. It’s the same problem that Facebook is facing. You can’t have Facebook just by itself, which is why it’s having problems, you have to have it paired with a device, a phone or a laptop or some kind. When the phones shut down capability for tracking, Facebook loses its business model, and oh also then it loses half of its revenue, or half of its valuation, because they are losing that ability to monetize. I think that is a big problem.

So, they’re taking their physical parks, and they’re building the walls up. The physical parts are the ones that, actually, they control the whole thing. But, they’re putting up the walls and they’re leaning into this “extended distribution network”, which is like Disney Plus and other partnerships franchises, blah blah blah. But, they don’t control the full distribution to those channels. You can’t just exist where you just Disney Plus, right? 

Even with the metaverse you know, I find it highly suspect they are going to be the people that develop the baseline hardware that the metaverse will operate off of. You know, they don’t have an Oculus basically. So, I feel like they’re boxing themselves a little bit into a corner where they’re kind of like, to your point in the previous section, where the thing they can control is that parks and they’re allowing less people to experience that less and less and less right and then they’re trying to make up for it with this wide distribution, but they don’t control the full distribution network.

Scott: But I don’t know whether they necessarily need to control the full distribution network in order to create a sense of aspiration. You know, they’re creating the next velvet rope and they’re getting to the people that can’t afford it right off the bat, but then they decide, “oh gosh, I want to elevate my experience. I want to experience this film, this product, this entity, this story, whatever this content in the next level, in the next level, in the next level.” I agree with you in the fact that you need to be able to have some sort of algorithm that’s going to track stuff, because let’s face it, knowledge is money. But, I think it’s also OK, at least at this point in time, to control what you are putting into the world or the technological world, as long as it is tied to something else.

Let me give a perfect example. In my world, my other podcast A Scott in the Dark, is not monetized, it’s my marketing. When people listen to it, and I’ve had this happen multiple times, people will listen to my show and then come to do what I actually get paid to do, which is develop content. In this particular case, I think by putting stuff out there that isn’t necessarily monetized, it continues to create buzz, it continues to raise aspirations, and then they can monetize it. Bottom line, I think Disney plus is people paying to be brainwashed into the Disney IP.

Philip: Correct.

Scott: Which I think is great. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m going to call it what I think it is.

Philip: Yeah, I don’t think that there’s so much to discuss right now because we’re at the early stages, but I would push back a little bit because I think what I’m more meant is that, when they’re looking at these different distributions stuff, they have to go through a gate keeper. There’s something that has to enable you to be able to watch Disney Plus, that is the problem. Nothing has to enable you to go into Disneyland or to go into any of the Disney parks, they only property, they own the land, they own, I don’t know, probably the air, the weather, some people think they own the weather and can control the moon.

Scott: That’s what guests complain about most actually.

Philip: Yes, but they don’t control the rails, they don’t control the hardware that you consume this other content on. That is the problem. That’s the problem that, like other people are facing right now. I think that’s where they’re kind of giving up a space in which they control the full distribution for something where they don’t control as much of it. But, to your point, that’s exactly how you get wider distribution.  That’s exactly how you cast a wider net.

Scott: Yeah, we’ll see where that one goes, because I think that’s interesting. If you look back, The Wonderful World of Disney, they didn’t control television, but I will tell you that The Wonderful World of Disney, every Sunday night when people were tuning in–and again I’m going back into ancient history–and then the moment they announced Disney World, I mean people were planning decades in advance. No lie, there were people who were having children and planning a trip 5 to 7 years out so that they could get into the hotel they wanted, they could get their finances in order to make it happen. So again, we’ll see where it goes.

“Relentless Focus On Our Audience”, Which Audience?

Philip: I think that the last point on the audience, I know we want to circle back to this one, relentless focus on our audience. I think the key there is when he says, “relentless focus on our audience”, is as you’ve been saying earlier, you said that doesn’t sound fun to me, and we’ve been hearing all the people and the guest, there’s that petition that circulated around to remove Chapek, and there’s all this crazy nonsense for all that. I think the question to ask is, what audience? Who’s the audience? That’s the missing piece of this.

I think if you look at it in the lens of, we’ve decided our audience, basically, rich white families. I don’t know how to say that. I mean just will be a little bit not politically correct, but you know wealthy families that are able to purchase that kind of stuff. Then actually, yeah, it sounds like he’s making a better experience for you. If you don’t care that you’re spending $200 a ticket for a person, you get a great experience, and you can skip the line from 50% of the people who were there and then go in, you know what I mean? That’s, I think, what’s couched into this, who is the actual audience that we’re talking about here. Because for some people the experience has gotten better, for some people. Those 50% of people probably have a better time now at Disneyland, than 2019, because there’s less people and they can jump the line.

Scott: But again, it was like three weeks ago you brought in the story of the guy who said it’s not the most magical place in the world anymore, it’s not the happiest place on Earth.

Philip: But he’s not in that demographic, because he’s not a family that has this much disposable income.

Scott: Here’s the bottom line, I think. I think the “there should be a relentless focus on our audience”, should be rephrased to, “a relentless focus on creating an audience that we want.” 

Philip: That’s brilliant.

Scott: I think that’s exactly in line with what you’re saying. Going back to the, if you want only people above a certain financial demographic to be able to get into the parks, Disney is doing it better than anybody else. Again, I’m not sitting here saying there’s something wrong with that. What I’m saying is, let’s see how sustainable it is, because there’s going to come a point. If I know Disney, and I don’t, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that this is a short-term approach to make back, and they already have a plan so that somewhere down the road, the $200 a day per person experience that they’re selling now will eventually, magically, come down, because they care about the guests. It may be five years down the road, it may be 20 years down the road, I don’t know, but it’s part of a much grander scheme.

I don’t believe that Disney even thinks for a moment that this is… I think what they’re testing is what flies and what doesn’t, and the things that don’t fly they’re going to adjust. That’s just good business. So again, we’ll see, I’m not all enraged by what Disney is doing. I think that if this is what they want to do, if they want to control their audience, and as Philip said earlier this show and we’ve said in multiple shows in the past, if they want to make it so that this is a high-end experience that fewer guests participate in and pay more per guest, they are doing just that, they are following that business model beautifully, and they’re putting a lot of nice words around it.

Philip: So, actually, I’m glad you said that, especially the enragement comment, because if anything I would say I am not enraged, I’m more kind of like looking at everyone who is enraged and being like, “wake up.”

Scott: I agree.

Philip: You know, to go back to the interview from last week, Bob talked about it last time a little bit where he’s like, the goal of an entertainment company is to make money. You know he, he said that, that was his kind of thing. We talked about the division between you, as a creative, and us as people that are kind of tools for those people, basically.

Scott:  Did you just call me a tool?

Philip: Well, a little bit. Our job is to make the experience better, their job is is to make money, and I think that is the crux of the mindset shift. Basically, a lot of people would argue that what this doing, and a lot of people have argued, is it’s cutting down the diversity. Not only in the diversity of culture of entertainment that is in the parks, but also the diversity of the people in the park.  My response to that is, like is that their responsibility? They’re a private company that’s goal is to, as I said, to make money. Their goal is not to inform their audience, to present a diverse thing, or to whatever, it’s to make money. They can choose their audience, like you said, for that. They don’t have to be diverse, that’s not a requirement.

Scott: And that is unfortunate, but you’re right. I will tie into what I tell my friends who get enraged, or the people that I’ve seen who get enraged about this, and I’ll say, “don’t go.” In the United States, and really, this is one of the few things that that translates all over the world, we have a great way of voting. It’s called spending. If you are enraged that Disney World is charging X blah blah blah dollars, cancel your Disney Plus subscription. Let your dollar speak for you. I’m not enraged, of course, I don’t have Disney Plus, I’ll be honest.

Philip: I don’t either.

Scott: I’m not enraged by it, I think it’s a smart business move from a business standpoint, as long as they have a sustainability plan, that’s all. So, let your dollars speak for what your heart says.

Shedd Aquarium Is Lowering The Walls

Philip: Speaking of letting your dollars speak for your heart, I want to do a throwback to the Shedd story that we talked about. Shedd announced, and this is kind of the complete polar opposite, right? This is an example of lowering guard rails.

Scott: I love this. I mean they built walls, now here’s an example of something that is lowering walls, which is going diametrically opposed to what Disney is doing.

Philip: Yes, so Shedd revealed their exterior plans for their big renovations. This is a little bit of talking out of school. I interviewed the Shedd team for InPark Tracks, which the episode has not gone out yet, so I guess listeners get a little bit of preview. What I thought was most interesting is that they talked about that when they looked at doing this redesign, they really had to think about the overall North Star. They decided to kind of shift their perspective from them being the North Star to like community action. They’re like, well, if the community action is in North Star then what do we need? Well, we need conversations and we need accessibility. They talked about how many people haven’t even seen the natural water area and the natural life in the area, and especially lower-income families. So, their exterior now, they’re redoing it so that that essentially it’s kind of like mixing like a public park and display. So there’s going to be exhibits and animal encounters and outside interactive stuff that everyone will be able to enjoy in the community, and it’s not going to be behind a wall. Whereas before you had to like pay to enter the aquarium to get everything, and now it’s like a lot of it’s going to be in the entrance experience that’s just available for the public. It’s physically aimed at creating those spaces for the community, which I thought was brilliant.

Scott: I think it is brilliant, and I think the one thing that we have to do take into consideration here is being a nonprofit organization, the majority of their funding does not come from ticket sales. The majority of their money comes from grants, it comes from the whole charitable side. What better way to get grants than to say, “we are serving the community. We are providing this piece of education. We are providing this piece of conservation knowledge to the community.” It’s, again, targeting and catering to their specific audience. So, is this something that every for-profit company can do? Probably not. 

I will say that I know, originally, SeaWorld in Orlando several years ago many years ago now tried to bridge the parking lot experience to the park experience. They completely redid their entrance so that you have an experience before you buy your ticket. You see splashing waves, you see a lighthouse, you know you get a sense of, “oh this is fun,” before you’ve actually clicked through the turnstile. I think that is something that for-profit organizations can learn from because it does lower the wall and it actually helps bridge a normally negative experience in the guest’s day.

Kudos to Shedd, way to go! Because again, being in Chicago and I’ve grown up in the Shedd Aquarium and I’ve seen it change, I’ve seen it evolve, and this is a great next step. So, I’m very, very proud to have been a supporter for so many years.

Buying and selling
Episodes

The Buying and Selling of Attention

By 239

Discussion on the buying and selling of attention, SeaWorld offering to buy Cedar Fair, and an interview that Bob Iger gave with the New York Times.

Subscribe to the Haunted Attraction Newsletter to stay up to date with everything going on!

Stories Included In the Show

Meta’s Market value plummets by $200 billion as Facebook user base declines

Disney’s Former C.E.O. Gave Me the Exit Interview I Asked for

Spotify removes Neil Young’s music after he objects to Joe Rogan’s podcast

Stats

  • Apple Inc has nearly about $206 Billion in cash.
  • Blizzard was $70 Billion.
  • Marvel sold for 4 Billion.
  • The growth of the U.S. economy for 2021 was 7 percent in 2021. Despite the ongoing pandemic, this is the fastest full-year growth since 1984.
  • The U.S. added 6 million jobs in 2021, pegging the unemployment rate below 4%.
  • Economists predict that in 2022 the economy will continue to grow at a much higher rate than the 1.8% policymakers generally expect, expanding at 3.9%.
  • Inflation has been uneven; 3.1% in recreation.

Additional Uncovered Stories

Efteling to reduce emissions or limit annual attendance

Studio Ghibli theme park launches official website

Silver Dollar City’s ‘Biggest Entertainment Year Ever’

Mobile security robots will soon be patrolling theme parks

Attack On Titan arrives at ArtScience Museum from February

Hit manga series Attack On Titan will arrive on Singapore’s shores as part of a major exhibition at the ArtScience Museum, opening on Feb 19.

This will be the South-east Asian debut of Attack On Titan: The Exhibition, which will showcase the immersive world of the manga series written and illustrated by Japanese creator Hajime Isayama.

Disneyland Paris in France to celebrate 30th anniversary

Disneyland Paris in France has announced the lineup for its upcoming 30th anniversary celebration, which will begin March 6. The event will feature the new “Dream … and Shine Brighter!” daytime show, a new pre-show called “Disney D-Light” and 30 new art pieces around Sleeping Beauty Castle. This year, the park will also see the debut of the Avengers Campus at Walt Disney Studios Park, featuring attractions such as an “Iron Man”-themed roller coaster and

"WEB SLINGERS -- A Spider-Man Adventure."

Drones as an entertainment medium is an area where Disney has dabbled in the past, but this will be the first time that drones will be used as part of a daily outdoor show in a Disney Park. In the past, drones have been used for limited-time engagements at Disney Springs at Walt Disney World and for a press opening of Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. “Disney D-Light” will utilize 200 synchronized drones for the show.

Universal Studios Japan unveils "Universal Cool Japan" event lineup

Universal Studios Japan in Osaka will launch its “Universal Cool Japan” event on March 4. This year’s event will run until Aug. 28 and include an upgraded “Sailor Moon — The Miracle 4D Moon Palace Deluxe” show, the “Attack on Titan XR Ride,” the “Hunter x Hunter — The Real 4D” theater show, the “Monster Hunter — Iceborne XR Walk” and “Detective Conan”-themed attractions

Netflix partners with the Design Museum to create immersive exhibit

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures launches new digital platforms

The new app, available on iOS and Android, expands on the museum’s Stories of Cinema collection, featuring audio tours narrated by actor Whoopi Goldberg and casting director Kim Coleman. The core curatorial tour, voiced by chief artistic and programming officer, Jacqueline Stewart, is available in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean.

Visitors can also experience AR technology, using the app on their own devices to bring to life items in the collection. Currently, they can use this to explore the temporary exhibition The Path to Cinema in more depth. Soon, the app will allow them to dissect famous scenes from films like Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon. In addition, the app features interactive maps to streamline the guest journey.

Skycoaster thrills even more with Kool Replay video system

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Is Seaworld Buying Cedar Fair Or Just Posturing?

Philp: From our studios in Los Angeles in Tampa, FL this is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30. I’m Phillip and I’m joined by my co-host Scott Swenson of Scott Swenson Creative Development.

Scott: Hello, hello, another great week in the world of theme park. Or at least an interesting week in the world of theme park, let’s put it that way.

Philp: Interesting indeed, and of course the biggest news and shout out, thank you to those who sent it over, multiple listeners who sent this over, we always love hearing from listeners and getting feedback on it. Of course, we need to talk about this. SeaWorld offered to acquire Cedar Fair.

So I will read a little excerpt here from InPark magazine, this is by Joe Kleiman.

“Today, Cedar Fair Entertainment Company announced that it has received an unsolicited non-binding proposal from SeaWorld Entertainment to acquire the theme park operator. Although Cedar Fair did not disclose details of the offer, Ed Hammond, citing unnamed sources in a report for Bloomberg, listed it at $60 per unit in cash, or $3.4 billion.”

Philp: Then it goes into talking about which parts they currently own and etc etc.

“This marks the second attempt made by Scott Ross, SeaWorld’s largest shareholder and current Chairman, to acquire Cedar Fair. Prior to his current investment in SeaWorld, while Ross was at asset management firm Apollo Global Management, he was part of a team that solicited a $635 million takeover bid for the Ohio-based theme park operator in 2009.”

Philp: But, that of course did not happen. So, you know, Scott what do you think about this?

Scott: So, anybody who has been in the theme park industry for any length of time knows that there’s always going to be somebody who claims that they want to buy somebody else. This has just gone on forever and forever and forever, and there are so many different reasons why it happens, there are so many different reasons why people think that it’s going to be important. Let’s kind of put things into perspective right off the bat here. Let’s start by saying unsolicited non-binding. This is like me saying I’m going to buy the Willis Tower in Chicago for $286 trillion. Unsolicited, nonbinding. I said it because I wanted to get attention. I said it because I wanted to look like a big fish. I said it because I wanted to make the people that I’m working with think, “well wow, he’s going to buy the tallest building in the world!” Or in the United States.

So, again, perhaps there is some interest there, I don’t know, I wasn’t sitting in the Sea World offices the morning that it was made. But, this kind of thing happens all the time. There are offers made for theme parks and theme park chains constantly. Back when I was actually working for a specific park, when I was working for Busch Gardens, part of the SEA parks as a matter of fact–again completely different companies, so I have no insider information whatsoever–we were purchased and sold. I mean every year there was a new, “who’s going to buy the park?” Back in the day it was, “who’s going to buy the parks and separate them, so that Orlando is different from Tampa,” or you know whatever.

So those kinds of things happened all the time. There didn’t even have to be an offer made. Somebody from Dubai would fly in and look at a park and everybody would think, “Oh my gosh, we’re up for sale.” Again, this is very commonplace. This is very commonplace, and so commonplace as a matter of fact, that in this particular scenario, of somebody offering to purchase Cedar Fair, happened just a few years ago, 2019. Some of you may remember, Six Flags made an offer to purchase the Cedar Fair Parks and that one was for $4 billion, or $70.00 per share, and that was turned away. There was no interest there.

So again, I don’t think anybody needs to be sweating right now. I don’t think anybody needs to be going, “oh my gosh, how is this happening?” Because to be honest, it’s not yet. It’s quite possible that if, say magically, Cedar Fair says, “sure. Yeah, we’ll sell it to you.” So that goes through. Well, then SeaWorld, because it is non-binding, SeaWorld has to then find the funds to make it happen. I don’t know where they have them or not, again I have no insider information. I guess my point is not that SeaWorld is doing anything shady or Cedar Fair is doing anything, my point being this happens all the time, so it’s not that uncommon. It is not new news, you know? I mean this particular one is new, but this stuff, if you’ve been in the industry long enough, you’ve seen this happen over and over and over again, and the majority of the time nothing comes of it.

What Is An Attention Economy And How To Survive It

Scott: So, we’ll keep an eye on it, obviously, and we’ll see if this does indeed break that mold. I mean, maybe I’m completely wrong, but it just kind of looks like either, “I want to be in the news.” Or, “I want to put on a good face for stockholders.” One of the things that we talked about just before the show, and I think we’ll get into it a little bit later is, in order to be successful, you have to be noticed. You have to be in the news, and I think this is a great opportunity to put SeaWorld Parks Entertainment back in the news.

This is quite in line with so much of what they’ve been doing recently. They’ve been, first off, opening things that have been installed pre-pandemic and they’re just they’re continuing to move forward, so it’s like, “oh, something new, something new, something new.” And continuing to announce new expansions, which is great. I’m so glad. I think that’s actually really smart to do right now because the audiences are coming back and they’re coming back in large numbers. So, this is the perfect time to say, “yes, and we’re there for you, and we’ve got all this great new stuff.”

This might be a really smart business move to say, “and we’re doing so well that we’re even going to offer to buy our competitors out.” Again, I don’t know, I just think that this is one of those things where it sounds very newsworthy, but I’m not really sure that it is, and it is something that happens all the time.

Philp: Yeah, you make some excellent points there, and I think the takeaway from this is more of what it signals about the larger trends happening, and the why behind it. You know, obviously, as you said, it’s not really news. So, why are they doing it?  I agree with you with it’s kind of flexing for perception, because so much of the value of these public companies is tied into the stock, and a lot of that ultimately comes down to perception. It’s very similar to like the inflation argument where it’s like, “all you have to do to create inflation is to think about it.” Like you manifest it just because you think about it. It’s very similar with how the markets work is very similar, with stock, the concept of perception dictates a lot of the value of these companies. That directly relates to how much they can raise in debt for new renovations, to expand, or to capture other companies or whatever.

So, I kind of think that you’re right in terms of if we look at the dominos, it’s like they had all these announcements, all these new openings. The earnings for Disney and Universal have been astronomical, the earnings have not been as much for SeaWorld. So, in lieu of that, they’re like, “well, look at all these new openings, and also we’re going to flex and show we can buy somebody, which means we must have money.”

Scott: In fairness, you know from what I’ve seen, SEA is coming back and they’re coming back strong, not to the level of Universal and Disney, I agree. I still think it’s important to, as you say, create that perception, and we’ve always lived in a world where perception is reality, it’s just never been this obvious before. I think that you know we are continuing to work in that environment. Again, no insider information, I am not a business expert, I will say that right upfront. But, from my perspective, this doesn’t ring to me as though this is something we really think is going to happen and go through. I don’t know.

Philp: If we play in like the world’s of like what if and acquisition whatnot, I would say it doesn’t even matter. They’re too small for it to even make a difference. I guess the bigger trend here that I want to point towards is more like the attention economy, just the trend overall of where people are positioning themselves for the next phase of the attention war, which apparently a lot of people thought was going to be the metaverse. But will it?

Speaking of that kind of attention, a related story here was that meta market value dropped by $200 billion as the Facebook user base declines.

“Investors wiped more than $200 billion of the market value of Facebook owner Meta after the company warned of weaker advertising growth and reported its first-ever decline in daily users.”

Philp: Just as a reminder as well, they acquired Reality Labs last year for 10 billion, and acknowledge that the future of that is uncertain. So basically, they’re like. We lost 10 billion just last year for this Reality Labs, which was like an investment into this. We just talked about, last week, the acquisition of Blizzard for $70 billion, and then now this week we’re looking at Facebook trying to pivot. Basically, Facebook is like, they know that they’ve kind of reached saturation and that’s why the growth is slowing down, and they’re in all this bad press, which means, again, user perception, right? Bad Press, user perception, less users, so the perception of the company is making the stockholders anxious on this Mac Holder level. Zuckerberg is like, “well, the meta 3.0 is where it is.” But now Microsoft is like, “we’re also going to Meta.” So they’re putting in $70 billion of investment and it’s making the stockholders cagey, and at a company that size, caginess equates to $200 billion, and this [Cedar Fair] is like $4 billion.

The attention is real, you know, and it perceptually company is real for stock public companies like this, but also I don’t think it even matters. Say they did all combined and everything, it wouldn’t matter. They’re not large enough to really be able to compete in the attention economy, where it’s going.

Why Isn’t Big Tech Getting Into Themed Entertainment?

Philip: A few other things to drop out is Apple. Meanwhile, speaking of giant companies and shifting worlds over here, Apple has $206 billion in cash, just kind of hanging out, you know, 206, of which almost 6 of it is a recent phenomenon almost over just one year. So, like they could take a year’s worth of pocket change and purchase SeaWorld with extra to spare.

Scott: So, let me ask this question then because I agree that Apple could buy and sell SeaWorld and Cedar Fair if they just wanted to on a whim. When you say it doesn’t matter, you have to also recognize that this is an economy of scale. I mean the amount that you can earn off of the theme parks, even in both SEA and Cedar Fair is significantly less than Apple can earn. So, you know, the theme parks are significantly smaller in the grand scheme of things. So, I think that it’s important for that microcosm in the world of you know gazillionaires, but I think it’s important to recognize that the $3.4 billion, when it comes to Apple, is chump change. But when it comes to SeaWorld parks and entertainment or it comes to Cedar Fair, it’s a reasonable number.

Philp: I think you’re right in that it’s a reasonable number in the context of, I guess our world, themed entertainment world. But I guess I would argue that this is more about the future, which is the attention of people, that is going to be the commodity that we can’t really create more of. Right now, humans are not infinite. We are born, we die, we have a limited time which means we have a limited amount of attention, you can’t replicate attention. So, the attention is the real thing that’s going to become the next economic lever, people’s attention in the attention economy. That’s why I would argue that these two things are going to intersect, because what are all of us great at in themed entertainment? We’re great at capturing attention by using engaging stories, that’s what we do. Attention is going to become so much more valuable. That’s essentially what the whole problem is with Facebook, is they’re losing attention. They’re losing users. The public doesn’t want to give their attention to Facebook. They’re losing all that kind of stuff.

So, I think it’s less about those numbers and more about where we’re going, we’re going to the attention economy, and that’s the bet on the metaverse. The bet is that will be a new way to engage people for so much more of the time. You mentioned it so many times previously about Disney’s concept that, when you’re with us we want the entire thing to be Disney. That’s essentially, like we talked about in the previous episode about the metaverse, exactly what they’re looking at is saying, this could be a whole new way of getting people’s attention for an entire day. Now they have those pesky things called lives where they have to like walk around, they’re not using our phones for 24 hours a day. But if they were in the metaverse, they could be, you know?

Scott: But the difference is what Disney does, “eat, sleep, drink Disney,” what they do is they engage people in different ways. Again, multi-level, they don’t tie them all back to their phones. They don’t tie them all back to the digital world. They utilize realistic restaurant scenarios, they tie people to movies, they tie people to products, they tie people to in-person experiences, they tie people to two days in galactic prison for a gazillion dollars.

Philp: Yes, that’s exactly the point. That is why you know you’re seeing these large companies kind of peter out, reach a ceiling, because there’s a ceiling in terms of how many people you can get engaged on the Facebook app or on your phone every day. So, you need a different way and who’s great at making other ways? Themed entertainment, we are. You just said it, that’s why these are intersecting.

Why Aren’t Companies Just Buying Theme Parks To Generate Attention?

Scott: That’s great, then because it’s chump change, we’ve established that this is chump change to some of these big companies. You’re claiming that it is so essential, why aren’t they buying parks?

Philp:  So, interesting. I think this is a perfect segue. It’s almost like we planned it, or Scott might have. It’s a perfect segue into the next kind of story, which is that Bob Eiger gave an exit interview to the New York Times. I put the link in the show notes and I think that everyone should listen to it. It is a phenomenal interview. There’s so much information in there, it’s like 45 minutes. There were three main areas that I kind of notated that I thought were important and the first is, I think, exactly to Scott’s question. The first is basically size matters. Bob talked about their investment in IP is their hedge against Big Tech and against the concept of the Metaverse. He said, “Entertainment companies— to survive in an internet 3.0 world, you need to have some really compelling intellectual property.” He also said, “I think scale is an issue for a lot of the traditional companies that were in the television and movie business.”

So, kind of scale means that same thing. Basically, he talks about some of his conversations with other people in the past and about his acquisition strategy, and kind of lined up the dominoes for the first time, at least that I’ve seen, where he’s painted the direct line between the reason that there were all of these acquisitions and putting these properties together in a way that regulators would allow, in a way that all this could actually happen, is to create a big enough company that we could stand against those big tech basically coming into the same stream. That his take on it right?

Scott: I am excited to hear somebody of this level, of this magnitude, to say in in very complex or sexy language that story is more important than technical prowess. Because that’s really what he’s saying. I mean, he’s saying that the IP or the stories that are to be told are the way that they are hedging against tech. So again, it sounds very familiar to me. It’s something that I believed from the get-go.

I know that I oversimplify things. I know that I take things back to the simplest possible route, but again, core truths are always going to be core truths. They may swing, you know, left and right, depending on what the popular opinion is. But he’s saying kind of what we’ve been saying all along, and that is that the one constant for the entertainment industry is going to be good stories to tell and a medium through which to tell them. Perhaps that medium is not just film, perhaps it’s film and streaming and theme park and podcast, and you know a gazillion others,  it’s the platforms. But none of those mean anything without the good story to tell without the IP.

When I say IP, that does not mean you have to buy Marvel. What that means is you have to have good stories to tell. Marvel has great stories to tell and people know them, so they want to hear them, they want to hear what’s next in them, they’re already invested, so that’s why that’s a good deal.

I still go back and I still ask the question, if big tech is really so concerned about finding new ways, like in person, ways to tell their stories or to make some money–because they don’t care about telling stories they want to make money, as do most businesses, and I’m not sure they’ve made the leap yet–then why aren’t they spending chump change in their pockets to buy theme parks?

Curating Versus Creating Content

Scott: I think that you’re seeing the first vestiges of that. I think a piece of the problem…

Well, first of all, I’m going to put like a Scott-esque disclaimer, we’re not trillionaires, we’re not like investment capitalists or whatever fancy titles, we just talk about stuff. But, I think that our story last week was the first kind of trickle into that, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. As I mentioned, way, way back a few episodes, remember when we talked about the Arcane experience and how great that was? Well, that can be traced directly up to TenCent. TenCent is Facebook’s, it is a Facebook equivalent company. So we’re starting to see trickles of this kind of exploring the other ways.

The reason I think that we’re seeing it as trickles, is because it is hard to create content that you are responsible for. I think that that is the key right? When you are just a platform, and I don’t want to get political, but this kind of bleeds into this whole larger discussion that we’ve been having as a society, which is how much responsibility do you have when you are creating content? And what does it mean to be a curator versus a creator versus an editor? What’s onus?

So, we see that this week with Spotify. Of course, Spotify, Neil Young started it off, but he’s wanted to remove his music due to Joe Rogan’s podcast being on Spotify and spreading misinformation, right? That is, I think, why there’s hesitation to just jump right into it, right? Because Spotify pays Joe Rogan to produce his content, so in a way they are creating this content that then people are having problems with. I think that’s it. You just don’t flip a switch and say we’re now going to create stories on this level where…

Facebook used to just be a curator, right? Facebook curates user-generated content, they don’t create anything. That’s been their argument this whole time, and now suddenly if they were to jump right into it, head first, like with the Arcane experience, you could argue that Arcane is TenCent creating something? So then that opens them up to the same argument of how much responsibility do they have for that content that’s being created.

Scott: To your point, Joe Rogan, let’s kind of make it really, really crystal clear. Joe Rogan is an employee of Spotify. Whether that is a direct employee or as an outside contractor.

Philp: Correct, yes, he’s being employed by them. It’s a $100 million contract.

Scott: Yeah, he has a $100 million contract to create content for them.

Philp: Exclusively for them. That’s the other thing too, it can’t be used on like other platforms. That’s why.

Scott: So, when you get people like Neil Young, and it’s not just Neil Young anymore, Neil Young was the tip of the arrow. I now hear that Yoko Ono has threatened that she will put her music on Spotify if Joe Rogan doesn’t leave. No, I’m kidding, completely kidding. 50% of our audience have no idea who Yoko Ono is, and I would say maybe never heard her music, and music is a loose term. Anyway, I think you have to recognize that if Spotify wanted to, they could say, “OK, we’re done. By Joe.” But instead, they’re letting it happen. They’re saying, “we’re tempering him, and we’re putting up this, and we’re doing this and we’re doing that,” because we’re talking about it. They’ve captured our attention like we were talking about earlier. In an attention world, it’s prodding the bear that makes attention.

The news media does it all the time. News media, they don’t make any money when they go on and they say everything is good. Nobody cares. You know, we’ve even had comments on our show that there are certain listeners who love it when we argue when we create controversy. The point is, our show and it’s not that Phillip and I are necessarily going to argue, but I’ve always felt that the point of our show was to start other people talking. Whether they agree with us, don’t agree with us, agree with one of us, don’t agree with either of us, that’s fine. I tie completely into that, and I utilize it not to generate revenue because this show doesn’t, what it does is, it generates thought, it generates provoking thought. That has always been my goal and that’s the whole reason I do it, because quite honestly, and I know that the same is true with Philip, we both have very full lives outside of this show. We carve out the time to do this because this is important to us. This kind of thought-provoking discussion is important to us. So, we’re not being hired by a platform to produce content for them, so we can say pretty much whatever we want, and we can share views, usually based on a great deal of research that Philip does the majority of, to be able to get people to start thinking.

Investment Capitalist Versus Entertainment Professional

Scott: I think that this is important, because you used a couple of phrases, Philip, that I think are important to clarify, you use the phrase “investment capitalist”. I want to make sure that people understand, investment capitalists don’t give a rat’s behind whether they’re investing in theme park communication, butter, buttons, armadillos, their job is to buy and sell so that they continue to make money, and they make money for themselves and for the people that they are basically controlling their money.

“Entertainment professionals” have a completely different mindset, and what we’re talking about here is the difference between Spotify and us. You know, we ain’t gonna make money, we’re doing this because this is the right thing to do. We are not investment capitalists, neither Philip nor I, but we are entertainment professionals, and we know how to create good entertainment.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t make money. I make money all the time because I’m an entertainment professional. That is what I do. But my focus is on creating a product, my focus is not on buying and selling the products of others, and that’s a big difference. That’s the thing that we have to recognize. I think the answer is simple. I think the reason that Apple doesn’t take its chump change, and by both Cedar Fair and SeaWorld is because it’s not in their best financial interest to do so. But, it is in the theme park’s best interest to continue to bring attention to themselves and perhaps even expand the number of parks they have.

So, I think the answer is pretty simple as to why, you know, Apple doesn’t drop the money they made last year, they don’t their one year’s salary to buy a major theme park chain. Because it’s not in their best interest from a capital investment standpoint. Could it help some of their products? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. I truly believe that it would, but I just think we have to recognize that there are people out there who don’t care what they’re investing in, they just want to make money. Those are very different players than people who are trying to make good entertainment for theme park goers. I think that’s what the majority of our listenership is.

Philp: Yeah, well, agree to disagree, but also, you know, we’re just two chuckleheads, right? So I don’t know, we cannot perceive of the motivations of trillionaires. But interesting that you said some of those few things. It’s interesting you mentioned about the purpose to make money, because Bob talked about that in the interview. He said explicitly, “If you’re in the business of creating what we call filmed entertainment or television and movies, you’re not doing that for just pro bono— or charity. You’d be in the business of making money doing it, and you’re going to follow the money, which in this case is following the consumer. And so you don’t really have a choice if you want to stay in the business or grow the business, except to go in the streaming direction. And I made the decision for Disney to do that in 2015.”

Just kind of interesting because was like, just like Scott said, I actually think that most people that we know that work at these places would not tell you that, they would not say, “our whole goal is making money.” They would say exactly what Scott said, which is, “our goal is to create good stories and a good experience for people.” Which then would lead to money just in the nature of value leading to value, right? But it was interesting that he was like, well, actually we do this for money. I’m like, well that explains why you’re purchasing a bunch of people.

Scott:  The thing is, the kind of people that we are, the kind of people who do want to make money creating good quality product, then become the product of the capital investment people. We create the organizations that are bought and sold by the capital investment people. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making money, don’t misunderstand me, and any of my clients who’ve seen me put out a bid and done the whole invoice situation, I obviously want to be paid for what I do. The difference is, I get paid for what I do, not for what other people have done that I’ve purchased, and I’m reselling.

That’s the difference between an entertainment professional and a capital investor. There’s nothing wrong with either one of them, I’m not saying there is. I just think we have to make that identification before we can really understand why offers like the SeaWorld Cedar Fair offer are important, before we can really understand why somebody would pay $70 billion for Blizzard when Marvel only sold for $4 billion. They’re buying and selling, they’re not paying for a product that is being created. I think we have to recognize the difference, and sometimes it works and sometimes times not so much, not looking at you Facebook, but kind of.

Openings
Episodes

An Avalanche of Openings

By 243

Theme parks are announcing new openings, everything from coasters to a brand new theme park, Season of fun isn’t just for the big guys anymore, and museums are pivoting to find their way around COVID restrictions.

Openings

Universal Orlando announces Epic Universe opening by summer 2025

Iron Gwazi, the world’s fastest and steepest hybrid coaster, will open exclusively for Pass Members on select dates starting Feb. 11, with the ride opening to all visitors on March 11, 2022.

SeaWorld San Diego announced Emperor dive coaster opens March 12, 2022.

A new roller coaster called “Pantheon” is scheduled to open March 25 at Busch Gardens Williamsburg in Virginia. 

The new Peppa Pig Theme Park is set to open Feb. 24 next to Legoland Florida in Winter Haven. 

The new Seattle NFT Museum opened Thursday in Belltown, Washington.

The Studio Ghibli theme park is scheduled to debut Nov. 1 in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture

Disneyland Paris has confirmed that its Avengers Campus expansion will launch in summer 2022 at Walt Disney Studios Park as part of the resort’s 30th anniversary celebrations.
Here’s a roundup of 17 new museums opening in 2022.
Cityneon pens agreement for Animax R&D facility in Wuxi, China

Season of Fun

Universal Studios Beijing to host first Universal’s Chinese New Year celebration from Jan. 22 to Feb. 20, 2022. 

The 2022 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival runs from March 2 to July 4 this year – a total of 125 days! 

Legoland New York Resort will reopen April 8 and feature a Fourth of July celebration called the “Red, White & BOOM,” plus the “First-Ever Christmas Bricktacular” event.

Museum Pivots

Denver children’s museum closes temporarily after anger at its mask policy

Van Gogh Museum opens as salon in protest over COVID lockdown rules

Listen Here

Listen to "An Avalanche of Openings" on Spreaker.

Watch Here

Transcript

Philip: So from our studios in Los Angeles and Tampa, this is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30 I’m Phillip and I’m joined by my co-host, who just got back from a client visit, Scott Swenson.

Scott: Yeah! Back in Tampa! Although it’s funny, I was in Indianapolis all week and I got back and it’s the same temperature here as it was there. No, that’s not true, but it’s cold here in Florida, in case you haven’t been watching all of the national news stories about frozen iguanas falling out of trees and that sort of thing. It’s chilly here, but I will say it there’s not a wind chill of 18 below like it was up in Indy, so I’m glad to be home.

Philip: So, it’s an improvement, and you made it home. I was a little bit worried. I was like Oh no, it’s Green Tagged going to get out on time? Oh no! The suspense.

Scott: Well, neither rain nor sleet, you know?

AVALANCHE OF OPENINGS

Philip: OK, coming up today we have an avalanche of opening announcements that have been appearing these past several weeks. Of course, we had to start off with Universal’s announcement of Epic Universe, kind of confirming the opening.

“During the Comcast earnings call, executives responded to a question about any opening for the park by revealing that it is “full steam ahead” for its grand reveal in “summer 2025.” NBC Universal CEO Jeff Shell made the announcement, insisting: “Construction is going really well. We expect that park to open in ’25, and certainly by the summer of ’25.” “

Of course, the only confirmed areas we know so far are the Super Nintendo world, and we also know that there will be stuff from Illumination and DreamWorks which could include Secret life of Pet, and probably will because they just did that ride, so they already have it can just pull it over, and How To Train Your Dragon.

The other big thing that was kind of couched into these announcements from Theme Park World was that Comcast also talked about its earnings, and while they had a little bit slow of adoption on their Internet packages, their theme parks did really well. Obviously. The fourth quarter reported a $1.2 billion increase in revenue, and its yearly revenue rose to $5 billion from $2 billion in 2020. I know that it’s like, oh, that’s 2020. But actually, that is almost one of the most profitable quarters ever that they have had during the Halloween quarter, you know, holiday holding quarter. You know, clearly, it is working for them.

The only other kind of tidbit that I think got lost in some of these stories is when asked about if there were things he could have done differently or whatever the CEO said if he would have known the demand would say so strong he would have gone back and not paused the work on Epic Universe, because it was supposed to open in 2023,  and then now it’s 25 because of the delay. I guess I was like, well, if you had to listen to Green Tagged you would have known to keep building, so you could open on time in 2023, but you know whatever, that’s fine.

Scott: Well and to be fair, I was just going to say, I think that’s kind of why we’re in the avalanche of openings right now. I think that whether they listen to us or not, the smart ones did and they just kept building, but whether they listen to us or not what has happened is they didn’t necessarily pause everything. I mean they took hiatuses, based on what was, you know, safe and healthy and keeping an eye on the prognosis. But, once you’ve committed to spend you’re going to end up building it anyway, so you might as well have it ready when things open.

That’s part of the reason that as a consultant I didn’t lose much business at all. I had things postponed, I had things extend, but I really didn’t lose a whole lot of anything because, you know, most organizations in the industry recognized that there was going to be a return. I don’t think anybody anticipated it was going to be this quick. I don’t think anybody anticipated it was going to be this strong. I mean, we’ve reported record attendance, record earnings, everything from local zoos to international theme parks. I think that we’re starting to see things now that were either in the works pre-pandemic, or were things that were even ready pre-pandemic but were held and then finally polished and put out there.

So, I think that’s why we’re seeing such a deluge right now. Obviously, being in Florida I’m I’m thrilled to see that Epic Universe is back on the rails. It’s really interesting, if you were paying attention to the local freelancers here in Florida, you already knew this information long before it was officially announced because they brought back just mountains of creatives to bring this back online. So, I’m glad it’s official, I’m glad we can really talk about it without me feeling guilty because I know some people who are working on it, and that’s great. So, you know, it’s another mega theme park.

What I’m curious to see, quite honestly, looking forward and we don’t really have any information on this, but let’s just kind of keep this in the back of our heads, I’m curious to see how it is going to impact the way Disney does business. We’ve talked about it on this show, and there’s been so much on social media about Disney and price gouging, and charging too much, and making it so that you know not everyone can enjoy Disney like it used to be. So, I’m curious to see what some rather significant added competition in Orlando is going to do to their business model. Again, I don’t know, I have no data, but I just think that’s something that we should all kind of keep an eye on and see if it makes any difference. They may not, but just curious.

Philip: Yeah, I think that that’s an excellent point about the reaction of Disney, because they are aware of each other. You could look at it and say, well, on the one hand, I do think Universal really missed an opportunity to open in 2023 like they had originally planned. I think that they can waive pandemic and blah blah uncertainty as much as they want to, but ultimately there was nothing uncertain about it. If you believe at all that the theme park business will continue, then the best time to expand was when interest rates were nothing so that you could just take money, and you know what, it’s not like they’re taking money to do something that won’t have a return investment. If you take money to build infrastructure that will continue to pay off decades down the line, that is just silly. So, I do kind of not really cut them slack for it, but, you know, that’s fine.

Scott: Again, I don’t know whether…

Philip: I think they were more worried about it not being able to open in 2023 because of closures, rather than the money part.

Scott: Well, there’s one other element here that you’re not mentioning, and that is the fact that supply chain issues were just screwed for the past year. When you’re building a theme park of this magnitude, you’ve got supplies coming in from all over the world that are used to make this stuff. When they’re sitting in crates just outside of Los Angele, you’re not sure whether you’re going to be able to open. I think they were looking at the situation holistically and financially. I don’t think it was a horrible choice, but again anybody can say, “if I knew that the world was going to be this way, I would have done things differently.” Well, we’re not fortune-tellers. I don’t think they’ve really made a major faux pas here, I think it’s exciting that they are back online, and I think it’s exciting that they have brought back the creatives in the industry to make it all happen.

Philip: And it’s exciting that they gave a firm date, because that is surprising. I would say to your original point too, about the interaction between them and Disney, I kind of feel like the reason he even said a date was to just kind of like give a swing at Disney, because it’s their 50th right now. I mean, why announced so early, like three years ahead, you know?

He knew people were going to jump all over it, and this is kind of why. I think they wanted to say, “hey, remember us, we’re still relevant. You know everyone else is announcing stuff we are too. And we’re going to be here,” and to kind of just reinforce against Disney where they’re like, we’re building a whole new theme park and meanwhile, Disney is still considering whether or not to bring back parades.

Then, the other element too, is that it’s not that long actually, this is a whole theme park and it’s going to open in 2025, which is like three years away, which is kind of bananas. I mean, Universal has always been so much faster than Disney at their world creation. Like I said, it used to be that the quality would kind of be not as great. Obviously, since Harry Potter and onward, I think everyone has kind of come to the graduation that they can create things of equal quality. Now you’re having them say, a whole theme park is coming in 2025, and it’s just kind of big, and it’s kind of mountain shifting.

Scott: Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.

Philip: We’ll see. Well, meanwhile, of course, there are so many other announcements. Let’s run through a few here.

Iron Gwazi, the world’s fastest and steepest hybrid coaster, will open exclusively for Pass Members on select dates starting Feb. 11, with the ride opening to all visitors on March 11, 2022.

SeaWorld San Diego announced Emperor dive coaster opens March 12, 2022.

A new roller coaster called “Pantheon” is scheduled to open March 25 at Busch Gardens Williamsburg in Virginia. 

The new Peppa Pig Theme Park is set to open Feb. 24 next to Legoland Florida in Winter Haven. 
The new Seattle NFT Museum opened Thursday in Belltown, Washington.

Philip: So, coasters, Busch Gardens, of course, didn’t want to be left out of all the opening moments as well. It’s interesting to me that everything is shooting at this time, I kind of thought it would be later in the summer, but all these big we mentioned that last time, but you know all these big things coming up now. Then, of course, Universal is like, “oh, by the way, three years from now we’ll be…” It’s like, “OK, why did everyone choose March?”

Scott: Well and it’s interesting, because you know there’s always two different mindsets on announcing early. Announcing early, it used to be that people felt that that would deplete attendance in their existing parks because people would wait. They’d wait and go, “well we won’t really travel to Orlando to experience Universal until the new park opens and then we’ll just do them all at once.” But, I think what’s happened is, as we’ve seen, the desire to get back out, the desire to experience things in person is so strong right now that it’s kind of shooting where the ducks are flying. It’s striking while the iron’s hot, so to speak.

I mean, I know that Iron Gwazi and Emperor and Pantheon were all projects that were well underway, if not nearing completion, prior to pandemic. My guess is they’ve been just sort of holding onto that opening until they felt that it would make the most difference. You know what I’m saying? I mean they don’t need to drive attendance, right now. What they need to do is pull people off the sidewalks right now. By opening these things, it will do just that.

We’re reinventing you know? You’ve heard me for the last two and a half years, you’ve heard the phrase Wild Wild West, and we’re still deciding, what is the best approach? I think what we’re learning is there is no one marketing approach that works. It’s what is going to work for us, based on the current situation or the current perception of our parks?

Philip: Yep, and that one is working for them too as well right now, clearly, based on all of what we reported on in the earnings calls. All of these parks everyone mentioned in this had fantastic holiday celebrations. I think that this is one of those things where if we open it early, again, it gives people, like you said, a reason to come in now, and also hopefully then it that will lead into an even stronger holiday season. Because, you know, people can come now just for this, and then they can come back and/or come later for holiday plus this.

Scott: Well, and I think the whole Peppa Pig announcement is just so exciting. It’s such a nice sort of, I don’t even call it a sidestep, but it’s a lateral expansion of the Legoland brand. I’m excited about this simply because I have some great friends who are working on it. It’s something that we never would have done 15 years ago, to say we’re going to create a theme park that’s calm and soothing, and appropriate for children who are affected negatively by loud and splashy. I think the Peppa, Peppa Pig brand is perfect for it. So, I’m very curious to see how that pans out.

Philip: Yeah well, turning to announcements that were made already, but for items that are a little bit later in the year, the Studio Ghibli theme park finally gave an opening date of November 1st. “The new park will feature three areas — Dondoko Forest, Ghibli Large Warehouse Area and Youth Hill — when it opens. The remaining two areas, Mononoke’s Village and Witch Valley, are set to open in 2023.” Everyone is bananas over this, I’m excited over this, I am like losing my mind over this, because of course Studio Ghibli is like my happy place. Again, the same thing that we talked about, the same themes, they’ve been working on it on and off, and they’ve been kind of holding it, and then there were permit issues, and they couldn’t get open with the government. So I’m so happy for them with this opening date.

Scott:  I, unfortunately, I’m not as familiar with the brand as you are, so I know what it is, I know it exists, but I’m not that fanboy who’s going, “come on, open up!” But, I’m glad. Again, I’m glad to see… First of all, I’m glad to see anything is continuing to open, and I’m glad that they are actually now announcing dates.

Philip: Disneyland Paris also confirmed that its Avengers Campus expansion will launch in summer 2022, so just in a few months, at the Walt Disney Studios Park is part of the 30th anniversary there. Blooloop released a roundup of 17 new museums that are opening throughout 2022, from now to the end. So that’s quite a bit.

Aside from those openings, there’s also some expansion with entertainment industry companies. Cityneon pens agreement for Animax R&D facility in Wuxi, China.

Located in Nashville, Tennessee, with over 30 years of industry experience, Animax is the creative robotic entertainment company that has been supporting the Group’s Intellectual Properties (“IP”) experiences in cities around the world. Phase 1 of Animax’s R&D facility development in Wuxi is set to be completed by the end of 2022.

Philip: What this kind of also underlines here is not just that we’ve been talking about this year and people holding things and reopening all that, but it also is reminding us again, like hey, you know if Animax, who’s been in Tennessee this whole time, is putting a whole facility in China to create animatronics, that just underlines how strong the demand is for their products there in that region. I could tell you it makes a lot of sense. You know they can create it there locally in China, they can get around the tariffs, which is you know what we would like to do but can’t at Gantom, but they get around the tariffs and they can just do it locally, and there’s a lot of appeal in the Chinese market for quality products that are made locally. I think that’s a big key, it coming locally from the region is a big pull for the investors there.

Scott: Well, and I think it also shows that this growth that we’re going through, or regrowth or catching up if you want to call it that, is not just happening in the United States, it is happening worldwide. I think that by creating these kinds of alliances and new properties, I think it makes total sense. It’s showing that the industry is very, very healthy, despite the fact that so many people said the pandemic was going to close all theme parks.

Seasons Of Fun

Philip: Yeah, and I think the industry is so healthy, in fact, that we continue to see the kind of seasons of fun and of announcements for that awkward post-holiday season. As we talked about last time, it’s like everyone is usually scrambling trying to figure out what do we do with the Q1 and early Q2 before summer gets here, right? Universal Studios Beijing announced that they’re going to host their first Chinese New Year celebration. It’s the first-ever Chinese New Year celebration from January 22nd to February 20th, which is actually very long for a Lunar Year celebration, that’s a whole month and it starts even early because it doesn’t start until February. So, it’s just an interesting date range they chose there. “The destination-wide celebration will feature Spring Festival-themed decorations and entertainment, including a new holiday-themed show, limited-time food and beverage offerings, and new year merchandise.” And they’re also going to be doing some activations at the resorts for Valentine’s Day and Lantern Festival. Which I thought was also interesting, because Valentine’s Day is not a Chinese thing, but you know, seasons of fun, right? They’re just going to do it.

Scott: Well, what I found most interesting is the idea of doing seasonal entertainment has been something that, of course, has been very near and dear to my heart, because it really has been my bread and butter as a consultant. What I’m finding interesting now is I am getting approached, and I can’t mention any names or make any commitments here, but I am being approached by smaller and smaller organizations that are looking to do more and more seasonal activations that are just like this. It focuses around a central show, some decor, some merchandise, some culinary, and say, “here’s what we’re going to do at this time. Then we’ll replicate that at this time, and we’ll replicate that at this time.” So, I’m really excited that we’re seeing this, not only on the big players, like Universal Studios, but also what I’m seeing personally is on the smaller and smaller organizations and companies; who have also, by the way, had phenomenal seasons. So, they’re now looking at it going, “how can we keep this momentum going?” And the idea of seasonal activations, they’re all of a sudden recognizing, “oh, it’s worked for theme parks for years, why don’t we do it?” I think it’s very exciting.

Philip: Yeah, now that you mentioned. I’m working on a story for Lunar New Year and some of the different celebrations, I think that’s why I’m so attuned to the announcements that are coming out for it. Here locally, not only that we mentioned that Disneyland is doing the festival, which I’ve went to, and it’s quite cute actually. It’s very cute. I threw some shade at them last time we talked about it for just kind of copying the same Mulan processional, but I will kind of correct that in that they did throw Tigger in there. So, Tigger is in there and they did bring in local dance troupes that were non-cast members. They brought in local people to participate in the professional in their traditional cultural outfits, which I give them also extra credit for, and the last thing, they did change the little cartoon it used to just be they would just use Mickey, and it’s like Mickey in his Oriental outfit. But now they have a little cartoon of a tiger, like a traditional oriental tiger that they use in the merch this year. Which, they did use the same one over in China for the Shanghai celebration, but you know, it’s a little change.

Also, the Huntington up by me, the Huntington Gardens, they’re doing a lunar festival and just to your point, the Huntington is a small facility. They don’t usually do a Christmas or Halloween event, it’s really just the museum and the gardens, but they have this Lunar New Year festival. It’s only two days, but the member reservations for it have already sold out, and now they are selling members regular admissions. So, membership is like $60.00 for a year, and just attending the festival is $30, and they’ve already filled all their member spots. So now you’re going to get members that are paying an extra like 50% on top of their membership just to come on the festival days. They’ve done a great job partnering with local cultural institutions to bring in the programming. They’re really just using their Chinese pavilion, which is a gorgeous pavilion, but they’re just kind of providing the backdrop and they’re letting other people come in, and it seems very popular right now.

Scott: Well, and they’re doing what I always recommend to my clients, and that is to utilize your assets to help guide and develop what your seasonal offering is going to be. If you have a gorgeous China Pavillion, it’s foolish to ignore the fact that Lunar New Year is very appealing to a very strong demographic. Should everybody across the United States do a Lunar New Year festival? Probably not, but I think you need to investigate what your local demographic and what your public would embrace and enjoy. My guess is you’re going to find people who don’t normally celebrate Lunar New Year who would be fascinated by it if you create something that is unique and fun.

Philip: I don’t know if this is speaking of unique necessarily, but Epcot is, of course, bringing back their flower and garden festival. This year it’s running from March 2nd to July 4th, which is 125 days. So I mean, I’m like, at this point, is it even a seasonal event or might as well just make it a year-round thing.

Scott: 125 days? So, I think what’s happened here, to be completely honest, I think what they’ve done is they’ve discovered, “you know what? Once we install this stuff, people who are coming to Florida to experience Epcot will just eat it up.” They can keep calling it a festival…

Philip: Literally eat it up.

Scott: Yes, literally eat it up, because it’s very food-based. But the idea is that it’ll be fine because it doesn’t seem out of place, that’s what I’m trying to say. When you focus on topiary, which of course Walt Disney World was known for from its inception. When you focus on topiary and great horticulture, that’s a no-brainer and it’s something that they can really call it a seasonal festival, even though it’s just once it’s set up it’s business as usual to make sure everything is maintained and trimmed.

Philip: Yeah, because it’ll go from Glower and Garden with all the food stalls into Food and Wine. It’s like, just leave the food stalls there.

Scott: Again, not a bad idea. Not stupid from an operational standpoint, and especially for Epcot, because Epcot has fewer of the local fan base that comes every week. You know there’s still some, but it has fewer.

Philip: Yeah, and of course not to be left out, our last kind of seasons of fun announcement is from Legoland New York. They announced that they’re going to reopen on April 8th and this year they’re going to have a 4th of July celebration called Red, White, and Boom. Plus their first-ever Christmas Bricktacular event. So they’re jumping on the bandwagon.

Scott: Yep, well and again it makes total sense. Legoland has the seasonal event shops in their pipelines, so why not expand them to the other locations? Go for it.

Museum Pivots Around COVID

Philip: Well, let’s talk a little bit now about museum news. The Denver Children Museum closed this week temporarily after anger at its mask policy.

“A Denver children’s museum has temporarily closed after patrons directed anger at staff over its mask policy. Museum President and CEO Michael Yankovich told The Washington Post that the museum couldn’t disclose details about the incidents that prompted the closure, but he called them “demoralizing” and said they have become intense and frequent.”

Philip: Yikes. I know right? The thing is, not many people covered the story in the industry, but to me, I was like, “well, this is, we’ve been talking about this, but I think it’s pretty big in in in the context of things.”

Scott: I think that what’s happened is, and you and I have talked about this too, we are in a very divisive environment right now, and I think people are going to try to be as divisive as possible on both sides at this point, instead of trying to find a way we can get through it. So I think this is exactly what we’re seeing, we’re seeing a lot of people blow up over it. I don’t know whether you saw, there was a blurb about T-Mobile and now threatening that they’re going to get rid of their employees who are not vaccinated, so there’s a big blow up.

I’m not saying either of these are right, you know me I’m strongly of the opinion you should be vaccinated, you should continue to wear masks if you can’t socially distance. At the same time, we kind of have to figure out what do we do to continue to keep things open? I am saddened by this Denver Children Museum story quite honestly. I’m saddened that people are being so intense about the mask-wearing, but I’m also saddened that the museum caved and didn’t continue to say, “I’m sorry, don’t come. I’m sorry, if this upsets you don’t come.” I think we have to continue to find ways to move forward, not to just placate the people who shout the loudest.

Philip: Yeah, and of course, I think as we talked about ad nauseam previously, this just underscores the need to really have, like you said, a clear vision, understand what stance you’re taking, communicate, and also training too. I mean, I’m sure a lot of museums have volunteer staff and it’s a different composition of staff that works at museums in general, they’re much more purpose-driven. That’s what, I think to me, makes this even worse is because if the staff is really being demoralized and attacked by the patrons, that is tough. But, you know, just because they’re museum team members doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be training them for these types of situations.

Scott: And you should also be training your audience, you should also be getting the word out before they even show up. Again, having just flown today, they actually make the statement, “you agreed several times,” they said this on the plane, “you’ve agreed several times to wear a mask covering your nose and mouth when you purchase the ticket, when you picked up your boarding pass.” They basically keep reminding you, you’ve already agreed to this, this isn’t anything new that we’re going, “surprise, you have to wear a mask now!” No, these are things that you have signed or checked off, or acknowledged multiple times in the process of getting a ticket. So, you cannot get too far out in front of it because people are still shocked that they have to wear a mask.

Philip: Well, our last story here. So, while this is happening in Denver, of course, there are new lockdown protocols happening in other places in the world. There is one museum that has pivoted to open as a salon to be able to continue to open. The Van Gogh Museum opens as salon in protest over COVID lockdown rules.

“The Dutch cultural sector has been conducting some unique acts of civil disobedience this week in protest against the country’s COVID-19 lockdown measures. This saw customers getting their nails done at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, getting a haircut accompanied by the city’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, or taking part in gym classes at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.

This follows the reopening of businesses such as salons and gyms in an easing of restrictions, while the cultural sector, including museums, cinemas, bars and restaurants remain subject to the Netherland’s strict lockdown, which has been ongoing since mid-December.

In protest, several Dutch bars and restaurants opened their doors last week, and this week venues such as museums and theatres added their voice to the dissent, temporarily transforming themselves into hairdressers and nail salons to make their point.”

Philip: Good for them.

Scott: I hope it worked, I hope it makes the government go back and reassess what should we do what should we not do? And again, this is going to be an ongoing discussion. My favorite phrase that I heard today was, “on this ever-evolving pandemic.” I think that is so incredibly accurate because we keep getting new variants, we keep having new issues, we keep having new openings, closings, rules, regulations, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think we need to continue to embrace that and hope that we can continue to find a way to keep us safe while keeping things open. That’s what it really boils down to. So, if it takes having a nail salon open up at the Van Gogh museum, great, go for it. Because it’s not violent, it’s simply following the rules as they’re put out there, and hopefully, it starts some discussion about the situation.

Microsoft
Episodes

Microsoft, Meta, and More

By 255

Discussion about Microsoft ’s acquisition of Blizzard and what that means for the Themed Entertainment Industry, and how 2 large attractions are combating staffing issues.

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Stories Covered In Today’s Show

“Microsoft will buy Activision Blizzard, betting $70 billion on the future of games”
“Meow Wolf founder discusses the evolution of immersive entertainment”

Related:
Disney patents ‘virtual-world simulator’ tech without headsets
“Staffing Lessons Learned for 2022” – A Discussion with Palace Entertainment
“Dollywood announces ‘Care More Initiative’ to celebrate Dolly Parton’s birthday”

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Listen to "Microsoft, Meta, & More" on Spreaker.

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Transcript

Philip: This is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30. I’m Philip and I’m joined by my co-host, Scott Swenson of Scott Swenson Creative Development. Howdy Scott.

Scott: Hey Philip, it’s another week we got a whole bunch of new stuff to talk about.

Philip: We do, well, you know, we couldn’t really do the show without talking about, I think, what has been sucking up all the news in the whole space, mainstream media included.

Scott: COVID?

Philip: Yeah, well, not that one. We talked about that one already last week, that was last week. I mean the other big thing, you know, Microsoft’s acquisition of Blizzard for $70 billion.

Scott: That’s not chump change there. Making a pretty hefty investment here.

Philip: Well, so that is a part of it. It’s a big investment. There are stories all about it, so I don’t think we really need to cover the details of that, because I’m sure people are already aware of it. It’s not actually that much money for Microsoft. They didn’t really take that much of a dilution for that. It basically was just change for Microsoft, which should in and of itself be like be news and be terrifying that it didn’t cost them anything to acquire all of Blizzard. Anyway, it kind of fits in nicely with the portfolio they already have, and it’s a big investment in gaming. I would also say it’s more of an investment in IP honestly, more to get IPS that already have established games.

I think. The biggest thing is, in my opinion, this is one of the first like shots off the bow of like, we are really going to try and compete for this concept that everyone is labeling the metaverse. Which of course I think will bleed into theme entertainment as it has already been doing. Because, we see that Disney, previously this year they talked about releasing a patent for trying to get into the Metaverse as well. Of course, we’ve had people that have mentioned that this cross-section between the virtual and the real like Meow Wolf and that whole thing, the whole concept of immersion has kind of been bleeding into that space. what do you think, Scott?

Scott: Well, again, I think this is same old theory, new technology. We used to call it multi-level, and now we’re calling it Metaverse. We have new technology, we have new abilities to share entertainment and tell good stories, but ultimately it is the same thing over and over and over again. It’s being able to tell stories in different ways, using different technology, that has different levels of immersion and inclusion. I would love to say, “Oh yes, this is so groundbreaking!” But what terrified me is, and we’ll talk about this in a little more detail later, but I think more and more companies are leading with the technology not leading with the good stories. Leading with technology is fleeting, because the new technology becomes old technology very, very quickly. It has to be compelling.

Now, that said, I am 100% for the idea of, can I experience different parts of the story in different ways? You’ve heard me mention this for years, but you’d read the book, you’d see the movie, you’d experience it in the theme park. Now you add, play the game, and experience it with VR goggles, or not with VR goggles, in a virtual environment. We’re just adding new technology to an existing approach to entertainment that is becoming more complex because of that technology, granted. But when you pair it all down, it’s telling different parts of the same story using different technology and in different ways. I mean, what am I missing here, Philip?

Philip: Well, I want to kind of break this up. I think overall what you’re saying about leading with technology and about it getting outdated, I think that’s overall the inflection point. Where are games going to evolve to? You know, gaming is a huge industry, I think it’s kind of overtaking definitely the areas that we work in for sure, it’s massive, especially when you look at it globally. Where is that going to go? You know at some point you can only make the graphics so good, like you say, the technology maxes out. So, I think in terms of leading with technology it’s the logical next step, as in where is this possibly going to go? How can it go any further? How can you make your console and your stuff any better with graphics? You really can’t? You have to go in this direction, it’s the only path forward.

Scott: From a theme park standpoint though, isn’t that exactly what Disney and Universal and all the big IP boys and girls have done with movies? How much more extravagant can movies get? Well, let’s make it so you can live the movies. Sound familiar? Universal 1980. It’s the exact same thing, it’s just a different technology.

Philip: Well, and I think that’s why I think that we’re kind of seeing these two things get together. I think that on all sides of this, the entertainment space, people are looking at it and saying, “where could we possibly go next?” Then they’re kind of logically all getting into the same realm. I think to separate all that, I think the bigger thing that I would push back on is, looking at this just in terms of entertainment, because I don’t think that is Microsoft’s plan, and neither is it Facebook plan. I think it might be Disney’s business plan because Disney is basically solely an entertainment company.

When it comes to Facebook and Microsoft, and even Google, when it comes to the big companies that kind of have more capital than countries, what they’re trying to do is they are trying to take everything you do in your life and put it in a digital format. The reason they want to do that is because they want more time to control your day. Look at how much time you already spend with your cell phone, and you know, Facebook wants a piece of that. Facebook wants to own the rails of something that you use as much as you use your iPhone.

That’s also what Microsoft wants. Microsoft wants you to use the same technology, they have their whole teams, their whole business suite. They want business people, and everyone, to use this the same technology, the same software if you will, to do everything from meeting with your colleagues, meeting with clients, and working. So, they want you to spend all your workday, plus all your entertainment day, with them. Facebook wants you to spend that entire time holding or plugged into or utilizing, somehow interface, with whatever hardware they decide. I think that’s the bigger trend, like that’s ultimately, I think, what they want.

I think the entertainment side of it is, I don’t know, like a fun way of kind of like, “oh, look, it’ll be so fun because games!” I’m like, that’s not really what you’re trying to do here. I mean, that’s what Disney is trying to do, but you guys are trying to like touch someone’s life all day.

Scott: Well, that’s exactly what Disney was trying to do, only when they were on vacation. I mean being Florida-based, when you hear Disney executive after Disney executive after Disney executive used the phrase, “eat, sleep, drink Disney.” Their whole concept is while you are on Disney property, everything you do puts money in their pocket. That’s exactly what this is. I mean, theoretically, it’s no different, it’s just on a much grander scale.

So, I think that you’re right, it’s not just entertainment, but I think that the concept of, “I want to touch your life and I want to control the format of your life in every single element,” is spot on. But, since our focus, as a theme park and attractions podcast, it’s something that has been done in theme parks, and I used Disney over and over again because they were the first ones to adapt it most successfully, but I think Universal has done it as well, and I think there are other parks who have done it to a lesser degree. Yes, the idea is control, and honestly, it’s what Apple tried to do, because they made all of their stuff so easily compatible with one another. So, it’s coming down to another battle that I’ve seen before, it’s nothing new, this battle for ultimate domination of the platform.

It started in a much stupider way, don’t mean stupid as in not important, I mean stupid as in less technological. When Betamax tapes went out of style, when eight-track tapes went out of style, there was always that battle for, “let’s make sure our platform or our way of producing this information is the industry standard.” Granted, technology has moved forward vastly, and by Microsoft purchasing Blizzard, it’s clear that they’re trying to control the content, which they then ultimately will control the way it’s presented to them.

Being a Mac user, part of my frustration with Microsoft is it’s crap on a Mac. Microsoft Teams gives me nothing but grief on my Mac, and it’s designed to do that. So what it does for me, is it actually drives me away from them. I think you’re going to see more and more of that, I think you’re going to see more and more… Because Apple was the same way, what actually got them more popular is when they made it easier for some of the other produced stuff, when all of a sudden I can open a Word document on my laptop, that made it very viable for me to shift everything over to an Apple product.

I keep dumbing it down, I realize this is far more high level than I’m making it, but the theory is the same. It is domination over control of the platform where you are receiving information, and whether that is control of that IP information, or how you receive it, or the kind of tape that it sits on. I mean I’m old enough I still have Laserdiscs, so you know, it’s not new, it’s just the tech.

Philip: I kind of agree with the majority of that. I think that the way I would reframe it is that, basically, collectively if these companies come together, or whoever figures this thing out first, they’ll get the first-mover advantage, and they’ll kind of get to define what the reality of that will become. Just like, right now, we mentioned Apple and Microsoft and Android, there are not that many operating systems that computers work off of and everyone kind of has to play by those operating system rules. That’s the game here, the game is to come up with an operating system that will run the Metaverse right, and whoever the two or three companies that put that together, to your point, at some point, they’re going to have to make stuff that’s interoperable. You’re going to have to be able to go from the different whatever things, but someone is going to write that base operating system for the Metaverse.

Whoever does that is going to write the rules of the game, essentially. Because there are no laws around this right now, they’re going to come up with their own laws. It’s just going to be interesting, because entertainment in a way will be dictated by the rules of the platform that they create, if you lead with technology, which I think was your original point.

Scott: Correct, correct.

Philip: Because people with technology and not leading with story in this way, they’re going to be at the whims of whatever Microsoft decides for their operating system.

Scott: And to end to a certain extent, I think that’s why Microsoft is buying up the IP content, because technology is going to fade, but the IP is potentially eternal. The IP is something that is not going to wane as the technology becomes more commonplace. I think what’s going to happen is, if you own the IP, then say a competitor comes up with a new platform that will run whatever it is that you are putting out there, you still make money off the IP, you still make money off of the content, not the platform. So I think they’re hedging their bets, that’s what it sounds like to me.

As far as how does that apply to theme parks? Once again, do not just present your stuff in one way. Find more and more ways to get whatever you are… Because entertainment is entertainment is entertainment. Whether you are a gamer, a theme parker, somebody who reads, somebody who goes to movies, people want to be entertained. Whatever that is, you know, the content, the story, is in essence, completely separate from the medium. What it sounds like here is Microsoft is recognizing that, and initially I think you’re right, Philip, I think they’re going to try to control the medium based on the popularity of the IP. But they’re also looking at it going, because they know to, you know, we’re not geniuses, they know that somebody else is going to crack the code. They’re then saying, “well, yes, but we own the core.” To me, that’s what’s most important, own the core, or create your own core, like our friends at Meow Wolf.

Philip: Yes, I was going to say, we have an interview here, so I think kind of corresponding to this announcement. Of course, Attractions Magazine did an interview with the Meow Wolf founder, and it’s not that long interview and it’s all written out. It’s like one of those questions and answers blog post formats, it’s not very long, but there were three sections that really jumped out to me as kind of, I think, directly relating to what we’re talking about. I’ll read what they wrote here.

  • The trajectory of a human’s (or humanity’s) relationship to story has clearly been towards an increase in immersion… We believe that fully immersive environments, created through art and capable of allowing for personal choice, are much more aligned with modern interests.
  • Spatial computing will transform all of our lives and in every aspect of our life. Digital storytelling that is anchored to physical space is a natural progression of the trajectory storytelling has always been on.
  • We have very little interest in producing work based on popular IPs; it is actually one of the most disheartening aspects of the Themed Entertainment world. We generate our own IP, characters, and worlds that are discovered anew. This is not only way more attractive for the artist, but I believe the consumer as well.

Philip: Interesting, do you believe the consumer as well? I guess Microsoft just wasted 70 billion if the consumer doesn’t care about IP’s. A little snarky.

Scott: Well, but as coming from the creative side, because it is Scott Swenson Creative Development, I’m all about creating new content, and I think they are 100% correct in that it is far more attractive for the artist. However, short term, I think it is a shortcut. If you’ve got something people already know and you can buy it, great, there’s IP. It’s a shortcut. But, I think that even though when they say it’s much more appealing for the consumer.

Let’s face it, Meow Wolf is known within the industry, but is still not a Microsoft.

Philip: Correct. So there’s a great thing to illustrate the power of what Microsoft just bought. I read somewhere, this kind of thing about how Call of Duty alone, which is just one of the things they bought for 70 billion, Call of Duty makes as much revenue a day as like the Last Avengers movie. So imagine releasing The Avengers movie, having an opening weekend for The Avengers movie, everyday, forever, and that’s one of the things that they just bought. I’m like, how many people know of like Meow Wolf versus like… I mean it’s just incomparable.

Scott: But I will say that by creating their own IPs for other people to discover they then own these IP’s. Somewhere down the road they can sell them to other people. Somewhere down the road they can market and franchise their concept. I’ll be honest, as a creative, I think Meow Wolf is just fascinating. I think it is sort of a combination of the 1960s free-thinking, artist mentality, and then lay that on top of the current approach to completely immersive and higher and higher tech. I think it is the artist and the tech infusion. You notice what’s missing there is business, but I think they’ve got some of that going too.

Philip: I think what’s missing there is story.

Scott: I think Meow Wolf has a great story.

Philip: No, I disagree entirely, which is good, I mean, it’s good we disagree. I also think that their description of the situation is woefully inaccurate. It’s like in one sentence he’s like, “oh, we think it’s obvious that the trajectory of humanity has been going to an increase towards immersion,” which is kind of counter to what you said because it’s more like humans have always loved stories. It’s not like humans have always been trying to make their stories more immersive, that’s no true, why are we still writing books then? You know what I mean, it’s like then why do we have books though?

Scott: Well, OK, so let’s take that. Books which then became movies, which then became games, which then became theme park experiences, I mean they’re right. What’s happening is, it’s a pendulum. It’s a pendulum that’s going to constantly swing back and forth, and I think that the reason we still write books, the reason books are still written, is when you’re reading a book and you’re by yourself, it is immersive, you transform yourself to somewhere else. If you don’t have the ability to do that, then you need goggles to make that happen for you.

See, I think they’re 100% right, and I don’t think it’s in contradiction to what I was saying, I think it’s exactly what I was saying. We are continuing to want to live stories. So, let’s take the now passing phenomenon, and sorry, escape room owners, but of escape rooms went from a digital medium, to a real life medium back, to a virtual and digital medium. Why? I don’t know, but it is still an immersive experience where you have to interact. I think people love to interact. Why do you think movies back in the 70s started to add Sensurround which would make your seat shake, or in the 1950s they would add special effects? Because people wanted to feel like they were there. So I don’t disagree and I don’t think this is contradictory to anything that we’ve said. To quote you from earlier in the show when you said, “what’s next? The graphics can only get so good.” Well, what’s next is to make it immersive and so that you can just look somewhere and it changes the story.Philip: Yeah, I think what’s next is like, you know what we’ve been doing forever, which is write good stories and write better stories. That’s not even mentioned in what they do. They create environments that allow for personal choice, nowhere in there is he talking about the importance of story in their environments, or choice being related to the story.

Scott: But if you have personal choice, you’ve got to be able to have a storyline, and granted it’s a multi-tentacled storyline because I write these kinds of things. You have to create a story sphere, not a storyline, and you have to create the ability for the guests to navigate their way through the story, I think it’s just a more complex story. I agree with the fact that you have to continue to write stories, but I think that’s what Meow Wolf does. I think they write very complex stories that people unravel on their own, just like Sleep No More has done. Sleep No More is a great story, it’s just not everybody tells the same one.

Philip: Ah well anyway. I don’t want to get too stuck on this. Let’s agree to disagree. I don’t agree with any of that or the quality of any of that stuff, but that’s good, it’s important. That’s why we have this show right, Scott? So that we can get two different perspectives.

Scott: Yes, so that Philip can be wrong. That’s exactly why we have this.

Philip: Anyway. I think next section here we have a few stories to go back to that kind of recap on some staffing lessons learned. We talked last time a little extensively about the staffing puzzle. Recently Fun World put out a staffing lessons learned for 2022 where they interviewed Palace Entertainment. It was, again, an interesting interview. There were three things that I took away from it that I kind of laid out in the show notes I think are quite interesting. The first is basically that they agreed to pay more and offer career paths, Palace Entertainment did. The second was that they did kind of like rolling blackouts and they cross-trained. So what they did was they made sure that their staff could work multiple positions and then they close down some attractions, kinda like on a rolling blackout way so that way people could still get to experience everything, just not throughout the day. I kind of thought that was an interesting little tip.

I thought the most interesting part was where they’re talking about building partnerships in order to reduce some of the staffing strain. I’ll quote here, they said, “In some instances, we partnered with local businesses to provide food trucks to meet guest demand and cleaning services to allow us to focus on the guest experience. We worked with industry partners to supplement maintenance staff. We are currently offering a volunteer program for our fall events that benefits local nonprofit organizations.” So that, to me, is them saying they’re basically trying to substitute staff for volunteers by partnering with local places, so everyone kind of shares the pie.

I that those were really interesting tips overall to combating the staff situation. The one thing I will add is, just because I guess I’m on a rant today, I don’t know, but before I get Scott to take on it, but my little like ranty thing is, I don’t think this is going to be enough by a long shot. I think they’re missing the point. It’s like, it took this for them to just barely realize they should be paying. They’re like, “we looked at what other people were paying, we tried to make sure we also paid that,” and I’m like, you hadn’t been doing that before? You hadn’t been thinking about the long term careers of people? To me, I’m like, “well, welcome to the 1940s,” which is when we first started going into HR and staffing policy and all that. I just think that attractions can’t continue to pretend like we’re not like regular businesses. We have to look at the best practices of hiring and retaining employees, and start there and then go forward. So, I do think they had some interesting tips, I just kind of was a little bit like, well, Yikes. Anyway, Scott, what do you think?

Scott: So, after our last disagreement, this one I agree with you 100%. Any company will lead with, “well we’ve increased wages,” because that is the easiest thing for upper management to do, is to increase wages; they don’t have to look at work conditions, they don’t have to look at treating their people well, they don’t have to look at benefits, because all those things are sticky and expensive. So, they will automatically say, “well, we’ve increased wages,” which means the individual will go up less than a buck, usually, in most cases.

Philip: Yeah, exactly.

Scott: Well, this may be a bit more drastic because of the situation. What I am pleased with is that they announced that they will be offering crew advancement options to existing staff. What that does is, that’s what’s going to cause retention. So what I’m looking at is, you get the sexy impact of short term, “we’re offering more money,” and the really more impactful long term of, “we’re offering career advancement options.” The rolling blackouts, I think that is an emergency stopgap measure, and I think hopefully that will go away. Again, if it’s sustainable, it’s got to be sustainable because guests accept it. I used to say that guests would never accept time ticketing, which of course now they do quite comfortably in many locations. If that is the case, you know, maybe they find a way to only have 2/3 of the park open at any given time, so they just rotate through, who knows.

hen partnership, um duh. Theme parks have been doing this for as long as I’ve been in the theme park industry They’ve been utilizing outside services. The food trucks for culinary I think is interesting. I guess now it’s a very viable option, but as far as using outside teams to do cleanliness and to do maintenance, yeah, that, makes complete sense. The interesting thing is it actually costs more than to hire internally, it costs more to use outside people. However, I do appreciate the fact that they’re recognizing it’s more important to get it done and pay more for it than to just leave it so that it all goes to crap, because that’s the guest experience that starts to go down.

We’ve seen this in theme parks, some major theme park chains have ebbed and flowed over the years as far as their park cleanliness, as far as their guest experience, and you can almost track that too, “we’ve taken all of this internally,” or, “we’ve had great expansion,” one or the other, but it’s staffing, whatever the staffing issues. When there are staffing issues, the park quality goes down and then they re-change, they either get an outside company or they readjust their spend so that the park continues to stay on par for the guest experience.

As far as volunteers, I love this idea. We actually did this at Busch Gardens in the, let’s see, the early to mid 2000s is when we started it. We would use it as a way to connect to the community and provide additional help while making money for even things like a fraternity or sorority or whatever, just to add additional bodies when we needed them. It was also a connection to the community so that those organizations, and supporters of those organizations, actually came out to a for-profit experience. So, I don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. I agree with you Philip, it’s a little bit too late to kind of go, “yeah, we’re going to pay people more and give more.” No, that’s been, “duh,” since the 1940s. It’s, improve work conditions, number one, make people want to work there and not just for a paycheck.

Philip: Yeah, and that’s a perfect segue, not just for a paycheck, into someone who I think is doing something pretty unique, which is Dollywood, of course. Dollywood announced a ‘Care More Initiative’ this past week on the 19th to celebrate Dolly Parton birthday. I’ll read here from the press release, “To celebrate Dolly Parton’s birthday Dollywood announced the creation of the “Care More Initiative” in honor of her lifelong legacy of philanthropy.

Employees are encouraged to serve at the nonprofit of their choice to recognize Parton for the ways she contributes to others each day. The day of service, which can take place at any nonprofit, will become an annual tradition for Dollywood employees.

Employees who take part in the Care More Initiative will receive a day off with pay in order to participate and fulfill their nonprofit service.”

Scott: Investing in the people. This is something that Dollywood has done for a very long time. They’ve really led the way, from my experience, they’ve really led the way in this kind of thing.

Philip: Literally putting your money where your mouth is, like that is probably the most impressive press release I have read from a park this year. Well, that’s not saying much, but you know like maybe last year too.

Scott: In the last 12 months, let’s put it that way. That’s how I feel. No, I love it, and Dollywood has always done this. They also have a fund which people can contribute to that helps their employees in need. They invest in the people. They recognize that the people are a phenomenally important aspect to what they do, and they invest in them not just in money, but also in giving them opportunities to grow and enrich their lives.

Guests
Episodes

Keep the Guests Flowing

By 245

Discussing the resilience of attractions Philip and Scott cover how do attractions keep the guests flowing? From combating low staffing to setting attendance records, half a billion-dollar renovations and new seasons of fun.

Take the Haunted Attraction Benchmark Survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HAAHANSurvey

Stories Mentioned

Renovations

Seasons of Fun

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Listen to "Keep the Guests Flowing" on Spreaker.

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Transcript

From our studios in Los Angeles and Tampa, this is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30. I am Phillip and I’m joined by my illustrious co-host Scott Swenson. Hello Scott.

Scott:  Hey everybody, how you doing? How are you Phillip?

Philip:  Well, I am here and I am surviving. I can’t believe it’s already halfway through January. It seems like everything has just been going far too quickly.

Scott:  Tell me about it. Yeah, everything has been just zipping along. As you know, but I don’t know whether everybody else does, I had originally had a little vacation planned that was supposed to start today but postponed it due to, you know, health concerns and that sort of thing. So, the nice thing is for this coming week I don’t have a ton of deadlines that I have to hit, so I’m hoping that I can play catch up this week. That’s my goal.

Philip:  Well, I guess speaking of deadlines? Is that a good transition? I don’t know.

Scott:  It’s as good as it’s going to get.

Haunted Attraction Benchmark Survey Discussion

Philip:  So, there is a Haunted Attraction Benchmark survey that was released. This is a collaboration between myself and the Haunted Attraction Association. It is the first benchmark survey that there has really ever been done on this level in the haunted attraction industry and it’s very crucial because benchmark surveys are critical, not just for lobbying and for understanding the size of the industry, but also for helping operators make operational decisions. So I just I’m making the announcement that if you do anything with Halloween, we need you to please fill the survey out. It’s open to members and nonmembers and for the next roughly 3 weeks we’re collecting the data. Once we compile it all but altogether, then we’ll publish it out for everyone to be able to use. So, but we do need a lot of people, so if anyone listening is involved in Halloween and if you’re interested, please click here to fill it out.

Scott:  That’s great, yeah, and let me just clarify this for everybody. This is not just for people who own haunted houses that run independently. If you have an attraction and you do a haunt overlay, or you do a haunt, even a family-friendly Halloween season, I think it is important to include all of that information in this benchmark survey. Because, in order for a benchmark survey to be detailed, accurate, multi-leveled, multi-faceted, it has to have respondents from various different subgenres of the Halloween industry.

I’m sure you can take as much or as little time with it as you like. If I know, Phillip, because I haven’t taken the survey, but if I know Phillip, it’s pretty in-depth. But the idea is this information can then be utilized by people throughout the industry and what is good for the industry is good for each and every one of us in it. Even if you don’t think of yourself as well, “I’m not really a haunted attraction,” but you are an FEC that does a Halloween event, check it out. Check it out and share that information. Because you know any information you share is not going to be taken and used against you. It’s not going to help your competition. What it’s going to do is to contribute to a document that will help you in the long run.

Philip:  And that’s a good point, Scott. It is anonymous. It’s an anonymous survey and we did adjust some of the questions so that you’re not entering any proprietary numbers. We’re trying to keep things percentages, like what percentage of your budget is on staffing and et cetera, et cetera. So we’re trying to keep it so that you won’t have to disclose any proprietary information and we’re keeping it anonymous. And the data is limited to three people who are under NDA’s and the raw data is will be destroyed. So any sort of IP records or any of that, don’t worry about any of that, it’ll all be destroyed. We’re only going to use the data publicly in the aggregate, so you’re only going to see the full trend published publicly and all the other data will be destroyed and handled by only a select amount of people that are under NDA’s so we do take the confidentiality piece of this very seriously. Also the Haunted Attraction Association gathered funds to do a giveaway, so there’s a $250 Amazon gift card giveaway that you can opt in to be entered into, but you don’t have to opt into that so you could keep your identity completely removed.

Staffing Related News

Philip:  All righty, well, let’s dig in here. I think the biggest news from this week all kind of concerns, staffing and inflation, which is really no surprise in ’21. Of course, this is big news, but the quote I’m going to read is actually from the IAAPA public relations statement, and of course concerning the temporary standard enforcement.

“The Supreme Court voted 6-3 that it will not allow the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to be enforced. The ETS requires workers at companies with 100 or more employees to either be fully vaccinated or tested for COVID weekly. “

I’m sure you all heard, of course, that came through that was big news this week where that’s not going to be enforced. In other words, the organization is no longer obligated to comply with the OSHA mandate by their published compliance dates, and additionally to that, of course, IAPPA is also pushing Congress to release additional H2B visas. They stated “We recognize that finding and retaining workers will continue to be a fundamental challenge for IAAPA members well into 2022 and beyond.” That is definitely understatement. “We also recognize that executive and legislative leaders need to address the workforce situation in a holistic manner to address the severity of the workforce problem. For these reasons, supporting the advancement of beneficial workforce development policies remains IAAPA’s top legislative and regulatory priority.”

Scott:  Yeah, I was gonna say there’s a whole bunch of words there. Basically, it’s hard to find people to work and IAPPA, and obviously the Supreme Court, want to do whatever they can to make it easier. I think the interesting thing for me is, because I’ve always been such a  pro vax person that on the surface this is a bit of a sting. However, we all learn and we’ve said from the get-go the facts are constantly in a state of discovery, we are learning new things at all times. Just on a personal level I’ve had so very many people who are fully vaxxed, who continue to be fully masked, people like myself who are breaking through and testing positive. So, I think what it does really is kind of plays into something that I’ve kind of believed since the get-go, and that is we’re going to have to continue to figure out how to live with, as opposed to eradicate, this situation and these health issues. Shutting down, in extreme cases, may still be necessary, but I think at this point we need to figure out how can we live with this disease, because it doesn’t seem to be, you know, really going anywhere it’s ebbed and flowed. There are even some studies that have said, and of course, Philip is going to have a coronary because I don’t have the exact data in front of me. But there are some studies that have suggested that everyone is going to get it. It’s just going to happen. I’ve seen that reported in the television news media. So, again, is that true? I don’t know. I’m going to give full disclosure, I don’t know if that’s actually going to be the case. What we need to do then is continue to, if we’re going to not require everyone to be vaccinated, is to continue to take responsibility for our own health. It kind of puts it back in our laps.

I’ve now started, because very early on I decided which organizations I was going to follow their recommendations, so I have now shifted to N-95 masks when I’m out and I’m actually double-masked most of the time. I realize that this probably protects others more than it protects me, but it also reduces the spread. I also continue to physically distance whenever possible and I just continue to take responsibility for myself. Obviously, I just changed my vacation plans because I wanted to make certain that I wasn’t contributing to the problem and I was continuing to contribute to the solution. What I want to make sure people understand in this little rant is, just because OSHA can’t enforce this policy, that does not mean that it’s not real, that does not mean that the problem is over, that does not mean that it wouldn’t be beneficial. It means that, in order to find balance within the world of the pandemic, this is something that is necessary.

Staffing Shortages And Hiring Bonanzas

Philip:  Well, that’s a great segue, balance and, of course, attractions figuring out how to deal with this. Of course, a lot of attractions are now dealing with a lot of their employees getting sick. Of course, if they’re unvaccinated especially, and that is making the staff issues even worse right now. It’s like, thank goodness we got through Christmas, and now there’s a little bit less demand on attractions. But still, attractions are having difficulty staffing, and our next story is the Smithsonian reduces hours at zoo and most museums because of covid-related staff shortages. “Smithsonian museums, zoo in Washington, D.C., struggling with staffing shortage. The Smithsonian Institution has decided to cut operating hours at the National Zoo and several of its museums in Washington, D.C., due to ongoing staffing shortage. The zoo, along with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of Natural History, will open five days a week, while the National Portrait Gallery and five other museums will operate four days. The National Museum of African Art will only operate every Saturday and Sunday.”

That’s quite, you know, a reduction for some of those places, especially important cultural institutions. Not only that, of course, but everyone has already started so kind of like amid this surge obviously, which is causing that for there to be overall less staff available. Amid all of this we now have a slew of attractions that have announced that they are hiring right now to get a jump on their seasons. That includes Kings Island who has 5000 jobs opening for the 50th anniversary, all of them starting $15 by the way, plus announcements from Six Flags and a slew of other attractions.

Scott:  The whole idea of being able to enforce vaccinations when there is such a huge demand. I mean 5000 jobs, yikes, I mean, that’s gigantic. But, one of the things that I think employers have to recognize is, even though they are not required to meet with this standard. One thing that is important to recognize is, in a study from news.arizona.edu, they said, “additionally, the risk of COVID-19 with an accompanying fever was 58% lower for vaccinated participants who reported 2 fewer days sick in bed on average, an overall length of illness that was six days shorter than the unvaccinated people.” So, if you are concerned that you’re not going to be able to fill those 5,000 jobs, or you don’t want to reduce your hours, by encouraging your staff to be vaccinated, you are actually helping your own staffing issues. Because, if people do get sick, it means that if they are vaccinated, they’ll be back quicker, and they’ll be feeling better sooner. So, I think that is another factor that has to play in here.

I think it’s important, and part of the reason I think that this is so important is the staffing, especially in this industry, is crucial because numbers continue to grow. Guests, there are more and more guests who are coming out and trying to experience these things. That’s being reflected not only in pricing, for example, Cedar Point has raised their ticket price to $85 at the gate for the 2022 season, which is, I believe, what? A 13% increase something like that? The new gate part price marks a $10 increase compared to last year.

“The new gate price is listed at $85, which is a $10 increase from last year. Five years ago, ticket prices at the gate were $67.” So, just like we’ve reported with Disney, Cedar Point has also recognized the demand is higher, so they can raise prices.

We’ve seen in 2021, and this is one that’s very near and dear to my heart because not only are they a client, but they’re also about five blocks from my house. Zoo Tampa shattered attendance records in 2021. “With more than 1.2 million visitors, it claims to be Florida’s most popular cultural institution. The zoo’s previous attendance record was 991,351 in 2016.” So well before the pandemic. This comes from tampabay.com. This number has been published everywhere, so it’s not like I’m sharing any proprietary information here. What I’ve discovered in actually walking through the zoo, both as a guest and as an outside contractor is, it is a primarily outdoor experience that guests feel very comfortable bringing their children to, and Philip I know you’ve been to a lot of the seasonal events there, and I think that they have really, speaking of seasonal events, they’ve really embraced this opportunity to encourage guests to come more than just once a year.

That’s the thing that happens with these nonprofits and is continuing to happen with these nonprofits. You get these members who are in their heart of hearts truly committed to the conservation message that they’re putting out there. But, they will only come maybe once or twice per year. When you do seasonal events, it gives them another reason to come out, be reminded of the importance of the conservation message, and then, also put additional money into the coffers which helps pay or the conservation message. So, I think it’s important to recognize that Tampa Bay is a great example of a non-profit organization that their primary mission is not necessarily entertainment, like a theme park or a water park might be, they’re truly committed to conservation. But, they also recognize that in order to get that conservation message out, there not only in front of people’s eyes, but also to pay for it, utilizing seasonal events is a great way to elevate their attendance and get you know clicks on the turnstile, so people can come in and see the incredible work that they actually do.

Philip: Yes.

Scott:  I’m glad you agree.

Philip:  I totally agree, and I think we’ve been talking about this for so long about the value that seasonal events really bring to everybody. I think we started to see it, of course, with Knotts and with how successful it was in the theme park setting. Of course, them being like the first, you know, really large Halloween event and then, of course, it ran over. But I definitely agree seasonal events can exist at places where their mission is conservation, and I think sometimes you get some resistance, or I’ve seen resistance with that, but they can definitely coexist. From my reporting, and from my personal experience at these events, I thought, as of course I’ve mentioned, they were fantastic, but not just that they were fantastic, but that they also their reservations have sold out. You know there were a few times where I was looking to get tickets to particular nights for Halloween and the reservations were completely sold out. I’m just saying I never really have a problem getting a day ticket to any cultural institution, but I did have a problem getting the tickets to Christmas and Halloween on certain dates that they were completely sold out. So, that just tells me that the popularity really should be underscored.

Scott:  Well, and I think it’s important to recognize. I mean going to another client of mine, which is the Florida Aquarium, which put me on pause for a couple of years because of the pandemic, and now they’re looking to keep working and they have brought me back into the fold again. Their mission statement was actually changed several years ago, long before the pandemic, to include the phrase “to entertain and educate.” They actually put entertain first, and they clearly are embracing the fact that fun is not the enemy of fact. With a family audience, the more fun you can have, the more facts the guests or the participants will remember. So, by making that meld you don’t have to fight between you know education and entertainment, you can utilize them together. I think Zoo Tampa is a perfect example of how they’ve done that and utilized that to actually have a great year when they’ve been in such a slump because of things completely beyond their control.

Renovation: The Shedd Aquarium

Philip:  Yeah, well, that’s another great segue into our next big story here which is the Shedd Aquarium and it’s ramping up for Centennial celebrations with a half a billion-dollar investment. So this is a very large story, and it hits on the points that Scott just mentioned about melding of all of that. Basically it’s an 8-year plan ramping up to their 100th anniversary in 2030, and it’s half a billion-dollar investment. The whole plan has not been released, but there’s a great article in InPark magazine that kind of outlines the strategy. I’m not going to read too much from it because it’s very large and you should go look at it. There were a few lines in particular that I wrote down I thought we’re pretty interesting and I want to just share some of my thoughts. The first is their focus on community space and they state here: “The technologically advanced, flexible space will serve as a launchpad, increasing the amount of existing classroom space to increase the total number of students engaged at Shedd from 170,000 to 230,000 annually, and provide multiple areas and more opportunities for Chicago communities to gather, engage and connect with animals, scientists and each other.”

What I think is so interesting about that is just that they’re really focusing on not just the students, but also on community space for discussion and talking about how they to reach in the communities to gather, engage, and connect with the animals, and to have discussions. I think that’s just really interesting that there’s that a big focus on I guess what you would call like grassroots kind of conservation, activism, and discussions in the community.

Scott:  One thing I want to make sure, I want to just reinforce that, because in the phrase that you were reading there’s three words at the tail end of this phrase that I think are super important, “providing more opportunities, Chicago communities to gather, engage and connect with animals scientists,” and here’s the big one, “each other.” Because they’re recognizing that we are lacking that, and there is a whole generation of young people who have missed out on those really formative years in school to be able to engage with each other. I also want to point out that from a financial standpoint, creating those spaces where you can engage with each other can drive revenue. It can drive revenue through rental of these spaces, you can create an opportunity to… First of all, I have to be totally transparent. Shedd Aquarium is not a client of mine. I’ve never worked for them, but I’ve grown up in that aquarium. I’m from Chicago. The Shedd Aquarium was always my absolute favorite stop as a kid, and they have grown by leaps and bounds since I was young. I am so excited to see not only the fact that they are creating for their 100th anniversary, this great expansion, but it looks like they’re doing it in the right way, and now we’ll find out over the next eight years, but it looks like they’re doing it exactly the tight way. I just love the fact that they keep the in the intent of the public space issue in the forefront.

Because if you think about it, going back through their history, the Shedd Aquarium was actually created for one of the world fairs. So it was a public space. It was designed to be a place for people to gather. Oh, by the way, there’s a bunch of cool fish. I mean that’s kind of the way it was, so they’re keeping that focused while continuing to reinforce their ongoing and growing conservation messages. So, I think that’s great.

Philip:  I think, to your point, that is something that is very needed right now and it’s just good to be reminded that really is a large purpose of so many of our attractions, is to create a gathering space to build empathy, to have people be alongside each other. It doesn’t have to be like a public aquarium like this, or like the Smithsonian places, it can be the zoo, it can be any of the theme parks or other attractions we have, these are all places to gather people together and to learn about cultures.

I was going to say that the next piece that was interesting is that they kind of shared their attendance goals here, they intend to grow attendance up to 2.3 million guests annually, which is a big leap, you know we just talked about the zoo Tampa and then being maxed out even on a lot of their seasonal events and only reaching 1.2 and this is like 2.3, which is a very large, very large expansion. They also mentioned a big amount of digital investment in kind of digital experiences, but they didn’t say what they were, but it was just interesting to see that. Then the last part here that I thought was very interesting as well, when they’re talking about their subcontracting to award the bid packages, they’re making sure to target diverse groups of people. “..at least 26% and 6% MBE/WBE vendors, 50% of total onsite labor work hours to Chicago residents, and 25% of all onsite labor work hours to minority and female workers. Additionally, Shedd has also committed to ensuring hundreds of thousands of dollars go directly into the pockets of nearby Chicagoans, creating greater economic mobility and benefit for communities closest to Museum Campus.”

I think that is brilliant, and also admirable, and then also just reinforces the concept of their wanting to bring diverse groups of people kind of like to the table even for just putting the attraction together.

Scott:  For those of you who don’t know where the Shedd Aquarium is in Chicago, if you’ve never been there or you haven’t had the opportunity to look at a map and go, “oh there it is.” It is on the lake, and it is right off of Lake Shore Dr, which is the main road that drives up and down along the lake. I mean it’s in the city, it is an urban environment, and I love the fact that they want to benefit the communities closest to the museum campus, because those areas have been in a state of flux over the years and it is great to see that that they want to reinvest in their own front yard really, because you know the museum campus is the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Field Museum. They’re all there, and they have made these great connections over the years, both as organizations and physically, and now they’re spreading out from that to put more and more investment back into the communities that support their core location, which I think is great.

Seasons Of Fun At Attractions

Philip: Well, the one thing they did not mention in here at all, which is not a surprise, but they didn’t mention any sort of seasonal activations or seasons of fun or whatnot, which as we talked about, that’s definitely not the mission that conservation minded attractions usually lead with, so no surprise. But, there are other seasonal events that, of course, other attractions have been highlighting as we kind of get into January season. Shanghai Disney has announced a month-long Lunar New Year celebration. Some of the highlights I thought were interesting from that one is that this year they’re featuring Tigger for Year of the Tiger, and there’s a whole tiger dance. I just like that because they’ve actually developed a costume in their character, it’s like original programming they have developed for this year being year the tiger. Which is not something that Disney always does, sometimes they just kind of will recycle assets, like Mickey in Lunar New Year Red, you know, and that’s kind of the thing.

Then, of course, we have other announcements. We have Busch Gardens that’s already started their Mardi Gras celebration. You have Universal, which hasn’t started their Mardi Gras yet in Orlando, but they released their concert schedule, and SeaWorld San Antonio has already started. Of course, let’s not forget Pirate Fest weekends at Legoland Resort, which starts next week.

Scott:  Yeah, again, I think it’s cool to see that there are more and more theme parks, which I think are leading the way, more and more theme parks who are reaching out to fill that void in the beginning part of the first quarter. Whenever we talk about, especially when it’s Philip and I, just because of our backgrounds, whenever we talk about seasonal events, we lead with Halloween. I think that’s because that is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to generating revenue. That is the gateway drug of seasonal events. Shortly after that is Christmas, and then usually the next one to come up is some sort of summer event, especially in environments that have multiple weather changes throughout the course of the year. The trickier one, and I will fully admit it is been difficult for me as well, the trickier one is to find those first-quarter events, because people are still reeling from the Christmas, winter holidays, and there isn’t really a strong holiday reason to really dive in, in January and February, with the exception of Valentine’s Day. I know that more and more people are trying to do Valentine’s Day, so I think that’s something that can definitely be explored.

Philip:  What I thought was most interesting about kind of looking at these announcements is, just like you mentioned, it’s wholly different from the Christmas and the Halloween seasons. It is newer, but these are not even the same date runs. You know the dates are all over the place, and also you know some people are doing Chinese New Year, some people are doing pirates, some people are doing, like you mentioned, the comedy stuff at Zoo Tampa in our pre-show, then we have this Mardi Gras celebration that’s at the Universal properties and some of the Sea World properties. It’s just all over the place, and really none of the theme parks are doing Valentine’s Day, of course, because Valentine’s Day, you can’t really stretch into like a month-long celebration. That’s the more the problem, it’s more like it’s a weekend thing, it’s not a thing. But then since it’s a weekend thing, you get the smaller attractions that can capitalize on it more because it’s a weekend thing, so they can do their weekend event. So that’s what I found fascinating about it, is to just see the approach that everyone is taking, and really just how different it is and even the time ranges are so different.

Scott:  Well, and I think they’re also looking at what is their core brand and what are their core assets and which celebration can we tie into? You know, I think Tigger for Year of the Tiger, perfect. That’s perfect. They’re taking one of their core assets and tying it to a seasonal event. Mardi Gras for both Busch Gardens and Universal makes total sense because again, it’s something that is celebrated in this quarter of the country. Florida isn’t exactly in Mardi Gras territory, but it is something that is recognizable to us. The idea of doing pirates at Legoland, Legoland has a huge pirate faction in their model citizens, so there’s a whole pirate faction within the Lego brand and within the Lego IP.

Omicron
Episodes

Omicron Update

By 257

While omicron is shattering case records, it appears to be less severe. Patients are less likely to need ventilators and have shorter hospital stays.

Stories Mentioned In Today’s Show

A Japanese professor has developed a prototype lickable TV screen that can imitate food flavors, another step toward creating a multisensory viewing experience.

On Monday, Apple became the first company ever to reach a $3 trillion valuation.

Six Flags drops ‘affectionate behavior’ rule after incident in Mexico

SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment will open 10 new attractions in 2022

Southern California will see a slew of new rides at different parks

Listen Here

Listen to "The Show Must Go On" on Spreaker.

Watch Here

Transcript

Philip: From our studios in Los Angeles and Tampa, FL. This is Green Tagged Theme Park and 30. I’m Phillip and I’m joined by my wonderful co-host Scott Swenson, recently nominated to the IAPPA Education Entertainment Subcommittee. Congratulations!

Scott: something like that, yes, thank you, thank you. I’ve been working with IAPPA for quite some time as a subject matter expert for both their certification process as well as some of their training classes and I was nominated, approved, and have accepted a position on the Entertainment Subcommittee for the upcoming year and I’m very excited about it. It’s cool because it’s a bunch of people that I know, it’s a bunch of people I don’t know, and it gives me an opportunity to continue to support an organization that I feel very strongly about and I feel that it doesn’t awful lot for the industry as a whole. So, it gives me a way to give back a little bit while continuing to make connections within my own industry. So, thank you Philip and I’m very excited to be part of that team.

Philip: Yes, and I’m sure they are excited to have you.

Scott: Well, we’ll see. It may be, “Oh God, now we have to listen to Scott.”

Philip: Like, “we already listened to him every week, so now it’s just a little bit more.” Let’s jump in here.

Omicron Update

Philip: Turning to Omicron here, our regular update. While omicron is shattering case records, it appears to be less severe. The NY Times reports that “Researchers at the Houston Methodist health care system compared 1,313 symptomatic patients infected with Omicron to patients who had been infected with the Delta or Alpha variants.

Fewer than 15 percent of the Omicron patients were hospitalized, compared with 43 percent of the Delta patients and 55 percent of the Alpha patients, the study found. Among those who were admitted, Omicron patients were also less likely to need ventilators and had shorter hospital stays.”

Of course, it’s still impacting travel across the world, here’s a quick rundown:

  • Hong Kong suspended flights from eight countries, including the U.S.
  • Hong Kong Disneyland Closes for the 4th time (Jan 7-20)
  • Rio de Janeiro canceled its Carnival street parties.
  • A virus-fueled labor dispute shut classrooms in Chicago.
  • The Grammy Awards were postponed.
  • The Sundance Film Festival canceled in-person events.

On the other hand, “Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday scaled back restrictions on people traveling to England as the Omicron variant appears to be so widespread that measures tightened in November can no longer stem the spread.”

“Starting Friday, vaccinated travelers will no longer need to take a test before their journey,” they can just test once they get there. Now that does not apply to unvaccinated travelers only vaccinated travelers.

And of course, to bring it back home here. Meanwhile, the show must go on. Of course, here in the US, in an opinion piece in The Las Vegas Review Journal, the head of the Consumer Technology Association that runs CES [Gary Shapiro] “argued that canceling CES would “hurt thousands of smaller companies, entrepreneurs and innovators” who depend on the show to launch their products. Of course, last year in 2019, Las Vegas reaped an estimated 291 million from the show, so it’s no small thing for the Las Vegas city either. He noted that the conference had embraced Covid-19 protections like requiring attendees to be fully vaccinated and masked while on the show floor, and that testing was readily available. They also cut the show a little bit short, but despite all of that, many large companies have chosen to attend remotely and didn’t attend in person.

So Scott, I guess it’s the Wild West again, isn’t it?

Reflections on the Omicron Update

Scott: Exactly, you know it’s exactly what happened when this all started and it kind of proves what we’ve said over and over again, that everything is cyclical, everything comes back around. We’re in a position with the new variant where we don’t know. Again, there are no absolutes, people still have to educate themselves, companies have to educate themselves, and make their own choices based on their research material and who they choose to listen to.

You know it’s interesting because there are these things that are canceling these things that aren’t canceling these things that are changing, these things that aren’t changing. I think the Consumer Electronics Show is a perfect example, in the fact that the show itself is going on, but many of the large companies made their own decisions not to attend in person. So I think that is what we’re going to see more and more of, I think we’re going to have to continue offering multiple platforms or multiple ways to attend so that consumers and independent companies can make choices based on what their information has told them.

I can say on a personal level I had a cruise scheduled for next week, which I have now postponed until June. That’s not because the cruise line has canceled the cruise, they haven’t. What they have done, and the rules are changing every single day, but what they did do for the one day that I was able to change it is to offer a future cruise credit. The reason I did it is not because the cruise line was concerned, it was because the CDC-who I’ve tried to listen to from the get-go just so I have some sort of consistency in my information-has recommended strongly against it. Upon digging a little deeper I found out the cruise lines are requiring everyone to be vaccinated, they have to have a negative test done two days prior to, but what they’re finding the challenges is, is not in their guests but in their staff. What they’ve discovered is, that when the staff becomes ill then their staffing gets smaller and smaller and they have trouble actually implementing the safety precautions that they already have in place. So, that was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back, or tipped things to me saying, “you know what? It’s probably best if we don’t go right now and let’s wait until summer and see if we can figure it out.” But again, that’s my choice based on the information that I have.

I wish there were a solid silver bullet answer, there isn’t, and I don’t think there’s going to be for at least another year. Even then I think it might just be because we realize, Omicron is less fatal, I think is a fair way of saying it, than some of the other variants. I think we’re going to kind of discover that it will become something we live with, as opposed to die from. I think it’s important to recognize that we all have to make those choices. Do we want to avoid getting sick? Do we want to avoid the risk, the potential risk, that it may happen. We’ve seen people, since SARS for example, and Phillip I’m sure you’ve seen this even more than I have. We’ve seen people in Asia who continue to wear masks even after they didn’t have to. I’ve seen tourists who come over from Asian countries who will continue to wear masks here, because they just feel more comfortable doing it. I think we’re going to see that’s more and more the case here, we have to find that balance, and we have to figure out what is best for ourselves. But, we cannot rely on someone to make the decision for us, either as individuals or as companies, we just have to educate ourselves so that we can find our way through the Wild West without getting into shootouts around every corner.

Philip: I totally agree. I also think that extends a little bit for us as leaders, that extends also to having those conversations with our team, as again we have talked about. I think we talked at the very beginning of this show about how it’s educating yourself and understanding, and then having the discussion, a transparent discussion, with your attraction and your entertainment team and your leadership team, and then being able to disseminate that out, not just to the public, but also to your team members. It’s back in the same position of the team members are going to be the ones interacting with the guests, and the guests are going to have, as they always do, questions or just blah blah blah, and they need to understand the reasoning and be able to follow the logic chain and be prepared for the choices that you make. But, I do definitely agree we’re back and in the same stance where we were, where it’s going to be the personal decisions and personal choice of the individuals, it’s looking like the states are definitely not going to impose restrictions that will hurt the economy anymore, especially now that we have ways to prevent the bulk of people contracting severe illness or death.

Scott:  I think that’s a very important factor there, Phillip. A lot of the focus now has shifted to testing and even more focus on getting vaccines and boosters into more and more people. I think that the approach, based on what we have learned, has been more and more, “let’s not let’s not stick our heads in the sand,” but it’s become more and more, “let’s get that vaccine out there. Let’s get those tests out there so that people can make choices and take responsibilities for themselves.” Being here in Florida right now, we are experiencing a gigantic spike, and I know there’s a spike across the country, but Florida especially has just been through the roof. I personally have known several people who have actually contracted COVID over the last week and a half to two weeks. They have made the responsible choice by communicating the fact that they were positive or were sick, have self quarantined, and taking care of it, but not a single one of them has been hospitalized because all of them have been vaccinated.

Scott: So I think that’s important to recognize is that this is no longer the death sentence that we thought it was early on, and I think part of the reason that the shift has gone to, “let’s not necessarily shut everything down.” Is not because now we’re being less responsible to the masses, is because we have greater tools to fight the disease itself.

Is TV Dead? Almost

Philip: Well said, well said. Well the show must go on but the way that you are watching the show might have changed. So, while we’ve talked a lot about pandemic trends, there’s one that we haven’t really talked too much about recently, and that is TV. So, the share of American homes that pay for conventional TV service is closing in on 50 percent, according to recent assessments from the investment analyst Craig Moffett and S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Kagan research group.

Even with those 50% people that still have cable packages, where do they spend their time? Nielsen has come in, they have a new way of kind of measuring streaming on those cable-enabled devices, and they’re saying, “The streaming share is increasing rapidly. It stood at about 20 percent last year, Nielsen said; in 2019, it was about 14 percent. A Nielsen spokesman said that the firm anticipates the streaming share could go up to about 33 percent by the end of the year.”

Of course, because we want to make everything a 4D experience, A Japanese professor has developed a prototype lickable TV screen that can imitate food flavors, another step toward creating a multisensory viewing experience. So, Scott, what do you think?

Scott Discusses His Thoughts On Streaming Versus Television

Scott: Well, First off with the lickable television, this is so Willy Wonka it’s not even funny. But, my first thought is, BLEGH. But, my second thought is, if it works, I mean, heh.

I totally get the streaming. I mean, you know I’m out of the demographic that you would think of as abandoning cable and shifting only to streaming, but I have. I get it, I understand why it’s there. I think what we should recognize, and I’ll get to how this impacts us in just a second, but if I were a television producer I would only produce things that could be binge-watched. I find, myself, I don’t watch a single episode of anything anymore. I will sit there and binge because the really good producers and directors and writers have figured out how to add that little thing where it’s like, “oh I’ll watch one more. I’ll watch one more.” 4 hours later I’m still there.

So, that’s the thing we need to think about when actually producing the television content. For those of us in the live entertainment and attractions industry, I think that this gives us greater and greater opportunities for intellectual property which we’ve talked about ad nauseam. It used to be that you had, you know, going back a thousand years, it used to be that you had three channels worth of intellectual property to choose from, now you have thousands of channels of intellectual property to choose from because of streaming.

Figuring out who is your market is, what are they watching, what are they hot about, what are they excited about? Is it Arcane? And there’s stuff coming in, like Netflix, for example, has tons of programming from other countries that is getting repurposed, re-dubbed, reintroduced as a brand new product. So, look into those things that you can benefit from. I would imagine that they would be significantly more affordable if you’re looking into some IP opportunities, and as far as advertising I can’t see why advertising on either cable or standard television would be your best investment, maybe locally, but certainly not if you are looking to bring in a national or international audience.

But TV Is Not Really Dead Yet

Philip: Yeah, I totally agree. The counterargument to that, of course, is that I do agree to all of that and that’s definitely we see that where the trend is going. But at the same time, that still means the inverse. It means that 50% of people are still watching TV or have access to a TV, so you could take that angle. But, I do think, especially for how we advertise, especially getting targeted and making sure we want to target the right people, I do think it’s kind of edging out as viable.

At the same time, though I think we need to be thinking how our IP is extending to streaming capability. Because streaming, as you said Scott, the barrier to entry to streaming is very, very low. So that means that there’s really no excuse for your attraction to not be having a plan for how to engage people in that streaming audience. Also on the advertising market, thinking about how to how to advertise for that, even Spotify just this past week announced that they are opening up a new like pop-up click ads for their platform. So now we even have beyond streaming, even on the audio streaming, we’re starting to see better ads playing there that you can much more heavily target. All that’s important, but I think the overall thing is to understand how important streaming is and be thinking about where you’re going to show up in streaming and bringing the IP and extending your experience into that. We talked about that in our last show, of course, heavily about IP extensions, but it’s now we have some of the numbers to kind of prove that even among TV viewers, it’s increasing.

Scott: Well, and to your point, Philip, you say that 50% of people are still paying for conventional TV service, but then in the next paragraph that you talked about you said that Nielsen said that even amongst those people, the streaming share is increasing. So, even though they have conventional pay television, there’s still 20% that is streaming even with conventional television. So, I think the trend is very clear. I think the idea of, “we’re just going to advertise the way we’ve always advertised,” is going to be counterproductive. That’s the important thing to notice, keep an eye on this, recognize that streaming is not something that only 12-year-olds do.

Philip: Yeah correct, oh I love that point. That’s exactly right.

Apple Valuation Is Due To Velvet Rope Concept

Philip: All right, well, Speaking of streaming and content, you know a big player in content is Apple with their own content service. On Monday, Apple became the first company ever to reach a $3 trillion valuation.

Which is just bananas, this is absolutely bananas. I remember previously we were talking about 1 trillion and now it’s at 3 trillion, I feel like I’m losing my mind here.

There’s a lot of stuff going around as to why and how they kind of got there, and the New York Times Tech columnist had an interesting argument, and I will quote her as saying, “Apple has figured out ways to sell far more types of iPhones than it did before, including ultra-expensive ones. It has mastered underappreciated details like self-designed computer chips and nudges iPhone buyers to pay more for add-ons like extra space to stow photos. And the company keeps coming up with new ways to make money from stuff that makes iPhones more useful, including subscriptions for dating apps, AirPods headphones and computerized watches.”

So, to me, when I heard this reasoning, what jumped out to me was that this is kind of what Scott talks about a lot with his velvet rope concept. Scott, what do you think?

Scott Discusses The Velvet Rope Concept

Scott: I think you’re right. I think there’s two things that it almost sounds like they are juxtaposed to one another, but they’re really not. Yes, I agree that it is creating a velvet rope environment, which means that there’s always another way to upgrade. So, instead of having to go out and find new clients, you take the clients that you have and offer them a cooler way to experience your product, a different way. This same mentality, as I’ve said many many times, not only on this show, but on other shows as well, this is something that should always be a part of your development. There should always be a VIP experience, or an upgraded experience, or a virtual reality experience that you can just keep adding on and adding on so that you can repurpose the live content or the experiential content of your parks or your attractions on multiple levels, and each one has a perceived value that will generate additional revenue.

The other thing that I think Apple has done, and has kind of been their mindset from the beginning, they got a little bit off track there for a couple of years, but and that is something that you’ve talked about in great, great detail. That is to eliminate any sort of friction in operation. The fact that you do something on your iPhone and it shows up on your iPad and your Watch and your laptop, it just is easy.

They create these iPhones that are, you know, super expensive, and then magically are able to give them away if you subscribe to X number of services. We saw this a lot over the holiday season, certainly here in Tampa we were seeing places that were giving away iPhone 13’s and ear pods if you signed up for X, Y, and Z. So it’s that perceived value, it’s bouncing back and forth between the subscribing to content…

I mean, I like to think of a phone as kind of a gateway drug. The phone provides you with the opportunity to buy the ongoing content that they’re there to sell. They’re making agreements and deals with other content providers, as well as expanding their own intellectual property content. So, it makes total sense. I will be honest, I don’t think that it’s really anything particularly new. I mean, you go back to the landline phone companies, they didn’t make money off of selling new phones, they wanted to get phones in your house so that you would use more long-distance, you know, going back 100 years, it’s just taken to a whole new level. The fact that they have a bunch more opportunities and a bunch more ways of tracking your use, so they can target exactly what your usage suggests you need, it’s a basic idea that is being taken to the Nth degree thanks to technology.

Philip: Yeah, and I think the way we see this basic idea manifesting the most clearly is obviously with Disney. You know when I was reading this, especially about their including subscriptions or dating apps and air pods and all this kind of stuff, it just made me think of course of Disney Genie and it made me think of the Magic Bands and all of these extra things. I think Disney is kind of the closest model to this, but the underlining here thing is that all of these things have to be value additive, it can’t be a random thing that doesn’t actually add value, it needs to be value additive. But, it’s also something that every attraction can do, which we’ve talked ad nauseum about. I think the through-line here is that this is clearly successful, we see people doing this type of theory in attractions, especially Disney and the larger guys, but that doesn’t mean that it’s inaccessible. Everyone has the opportunity of doing something like this, of thinking about ways to generate additional value and to kind of reduce that friction at their attraction.

Scott: It almost makes you ask the question, how much longer before we see the MouseKaPhone that is the Disney cell phone service that provides you with access to everything, both Disney plus related, as well as the live theme park experience.

Philip: Oh gosh, or, you know, like a Disney NFT thing or some sort of subscription service that gives you all of Disney, it gives you the D’23, it gives you access to your local theme park, it gives you Disney Plus, it gives you merch arriving.

Scott: And on top of that, they actually sell you the hardware, the phone itself that makes it all happen; or the device, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a phone, but the device itself that makes it all happen. Mark this in our archives, because when this happens we can say, “yes, we predicted this.”

The Show Must Go On

Philip: Oh my gosh. Oh Lord. Well, coming again to our “The Show Must Go On” theme, attractions have big plans for 2022. Unfortunately, Six Flags is stumbling at the starting line. This past week, Six Flags dropped their affectionate behavior rule after an incident in Mexico. Six Flags announced this week that it would be removing a policy that discouraged guests from being “overly affectionate” while visiting the parks, due to the fallout after an incident involving a gay couple at the brand’s Mexico theme park.

Basically, what happened was there was a gay couple that were kissing and a team member pulled them out of line and told them they weren’t allowed to do that, but left them in the park, and of course that created a firestorm on Twitter, which then kind of evolved into them removing that as a policy, which I actually wasn’t even aware that there was actually a policy about being overly affectionate at Six Flags. This seems like a kind of a microcosm, to me, of what we’ve been talking about, where it’s down to the individual staff to kind of communicate some of these policies and to be able to explain them, and of course, that can go very wrong as we saw here today and it’s one of those things where it’s even very questionable because what is deemed overly affectionate? I don’t know about that, but gosh, what a mess. What do you think, Scott?

Scott: Unfortunately, I think this is less and less about the actual policy and more and more about the fact that it was a same-sex couple. Because, if you dig into the story a little further, they do actually say there were other heterosexual couples that were also displaying affection in the queue, but the only ones that were pulled out with a same-sex couple. But that said, I think the reason this affection rule is in there is because, again, Six Flags needs to have something in place just in case people start doing things that would be considered inappropriate no matter where you were. I mean, once you get into, you know, public nudity and that sort of thing, they need to be able to get rid of people. But to call it the affectionate behavior policy, or overly affectionate policy, is a little weird, probably outdated, and they could just rely on local laws as opposed to park policy. I agree with you, Philip, where this really waves its red flag is making certain that your frontline people are trained to facilitate any policy that the park believes is important, whether it is an overly affectionate policy or a mask wearing policy, and figuring out how to do it and apply it fairly and equitably across the broad swath of guests in the park.

Philip: Well, I totally agree, and the other parks have also made announcement here and they’re not yet stumbling so, so thank goodness. SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment will open 10 new attractions in 2022 — the company’s largest number of new attractions introduced in a single year.

Meanwhile, also in Southern California will see a slew of new stuff “including an augmented reality experience at the upcoming Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood, based on the “Mario Kart: Koopa’s Challenge” ride at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. Also coming are the “Wonder Woman Flight of Courage” single-rail roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia and the “Emperor” dive coaster at SeaWorld San Diego.

Then, Knotts has also released their full lineup of fun for 2022, and they’re bringing back all of their regular seasonal events. The only thing that stuck out to me on this was Knott’s Halloween seemed very short, starting at September 22nd, and it just occurred to me just because we just talked about how seasonal stuff was expanding and then we see them starting very late in the season, and I don’t know what’s going on about that. But what did you notice in all these slew of announcements?

It’s Still The Wild Wild West

Scott: Yeah, well there’s a couple things, let’s start with Knotts and Halloween. I think them choosing to go shorter versus longer proves what we said at the beginning of the show, we are in the Wild Wild West, there is no 100% this is the right way to do things anymore, and that companies and large corporations have to make decisions based on what their information and their knowledge is. If shorter is going to be better for them and more controllable for them, my guess is it probably has something to do with staffing. Just having worked on these kinds of events for many many years, I would guess that staffing is a big concern for them this year, and maintaining staffing is going to be simpler in a shorter event versus a longer event. I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s kind of what my gut tells me.

As far as all of these attractions that are now opening up, to me it looks like these are the things that have been flying and been circling the airport in the holding pattern, and 2022 is when we’re going to come to land. I think it’s great because, again, they’ve already invested the money in these and over the past two years they have either not been able to open them because they weren’t open as a park, or they didn’t need to open them because just being open was enough to drive a bunch of attendance, and in some cases overwhelmingly large numbers of attendance. So I think what we’re seeing here is not a bunch of new investment per say, but a bunch of, “Here’s the stuff we’ve been holding onto.” Instead of just throwing it away, because it’s not like a roller coaster has a shelf life, it’s not going to go bad before it opens. So now, for example, the one that hits me closest to home, both literally and figuratively, is Iron Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa. You know it’s been ready to go for quite some time and now it’s finally the right time to bring it online, and I think that’s true with a lot of these places. It makes total sense, and again, I think it makes total sense because they’re having the attendance now they got to get things for people to do so they can capture that attendance and transform it into loyal customers again.

Philip: Well, I think that’s all there is to say about that.

Scott: Well that’s good, because we’re out of time. So on behalf of Phillip and myself, Scott Swenson, thank thanks for listening. We are so excited that you know you’re still listening into the New Year.

Travel Trends
Episodes

The Top 5 Travel Trends for 2022

By 269

The top five travel trends, from staffing and supply chains to travel, that will impact you and your attraction the most in 2022 according to Philip and Scott

Listen Here

Listen to "The Top 5 Travel Trends for 2022" on Spreaker.

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Transcript

Philip: From our studios in Los Angeles and Tampa, FL this is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30. I’m Philip and I’m joined by my wonderful co-host Scott Swenson from Scott Swenson Creative Development. Scott, Happy New Year!!

Scott: Happy New year. It’s 2022! And that doesn’t mean it’s 2020 also, it means it’s 2022, so that’s a good thing. Moving forward, and actually, that’s what this particular show is all about today. We are going to talk about what we feel are some of the trends and recommendations looking forward into 2022 for those of you in the theme park and attractions industry. Now, again, we’re both pretty connected, we’ve both done a lot of research, I’m sure there are trends that we will not discuss in this show, I just want to make sure that’s clear. Since we only have 30 minutes we’ve tried to narrow it down to what we feel are the top five, and these are things that we’ve noticed have become very important over the past year, and we feel will continue to be important and be prepped to act upon in the coming year.

So the idea here is to kind of give you a theoretical overlook of what was going to benefit you as an industry professional in 2022  by Scott and Philip. That’s kind of our vibe for this particular show. Again, part of the reason that we’re not diving into specific news is, on the one hand, everybody has been kind of either up to their eyeballs in the holidays or taking time off for the holidays, so the news is kind of the same way and we figured it would probably be more beneficial for us to sort of do an End of Year/Beginning of Year compilation kind of show that’s not focused on the details of the stories, but more focused on the trends that those stories have shown us. Let’s face it, that’s really why we’re here as a show. We’re not a news show, per say, although we take a lot of that stuff to show, “here’s what’s happening, and here’s why it’s important to you in your industry.” So we’re going to kind of take that and run with it as we dive head first into 2022.  Did I cover that the way you think our guests will understand?

Philip: Yes, that’s perfect. Well, let’s scoot along. So the first item here we kind of have on the list is reducing friction for the guest, and I think under this category it’s relatively broad, but we’re sticking everything in there that creates friction for the guest experience and trying to make the guest experience smoother. That will include making sure that you have staff, that you can staff things properly, ticketing, and anything like expansion into mobile ordering or any sort of those things. So, if you have any bottlenecks anywhere in the experience, your churro line is too long and you’re trying to switch that over into a mobile ordering system or make it available to kind of disperse some of that, or ticketing or staffing, any of that kind of stuff falls under reducing friction. I think that’s something that the pandemic has, as with everything, of course, has accelerated. Guests are a tiny bit less, I don’t know how to put it, but they’re not as lenient when it comes to those like operational hiccups; even though those kinds of operational hiccups they’ve been fine up until now. I think people are not as open for that.

It’s also, as we now know, through various studies that we have done in the industry we know that it is ultimately better, it’s more profitable when you don’t have people kind of waiting in line like. We talked about this, it’s more profitable when you can spread out your ticket and arrival time so that you can sell it your entire day. It’s more profitable when you can optimize your staffing and when you can keep staffing and when you can have extra staff to do fun things with people or you’ll make/offer extra experiences you can upcharge for. Also, it is more revenue when you can spread out demand and when you can not have people standing in line so they can go buy and do other things. So, it does make business sense, but it’s also it’s, I think, something the audience is expecting and it’s a trend we have seen people develop.

Scott: Now the tricky part of this particular trend, in my opinion, is the tolerance, and what creates the friction, is different regionally. The reason I say this is, I’ve got clients all over the United States right now. For a Christmas event that I worked on up in the Midwest, they don’t mind long queues, guests do not care, they don’t mind standing in line waiting for hot chocolate, they don’t mind standing in line waiting for Santa Claus. What they don’t like is being forced to go in and create a reservation through the app, they don’t like that. So, that creates friction as opposed to reducing this friction. I don’t know which is right, it doesn’t matter to me, but what is important to recognize is when we say reduce friction, that means reduces friction from the guest’s point of view, not from the operator’s point of view. Yes, you’re absolutely right, it is more profitable to have people doing things, creating a virtual queue so that people can actually do stuff and not have to stand in line, not taking money out of their wallets. But, at the same time, if that’s going to push people away from coming to your attraction… For example, in California and Florida, the large theme parks, Disney especially, is pretty much exclusively that. You can’t just go to the park, you have to plan out your whole flippin day. I’ll be honest, it’s one of the reasons I haven’t gone back in quite some time.

Philip: Go back to my griping episode about that, but I agree with you on that, yeah.

Scott: That creates friction, so I think it’s important to recognize that when we talk about reduction of friction, you have to take into consideration not just what you is the operator feel, but also what your guests in your area or your region feel. I mean I will give you an example from one of my clients here in in Tampa. We just did a New Year’s Eve Party, it was called the Crystal Ball at the Vault, which is the same place I do The Vault of Souls for Halloween and The Vault of Love for Valentine’s Day, and we kept our marketing down to a minimum. We targeted people who have been to our events in the past and we did marketing through the restaurant which is also owned by the Vault, in the restaurant itself, to their regular clients, and we decided we want to be the exclusive party that people can’t get into. Lo and behold, we sold out with minimal marketing. So, what that did when it comes to reducing friction, it made it very simple for us because we didn’t have to do a ton of legwork, we basically just shot where the ducks were flying so to speak. It made it very simple for our guests because they were already familiar with our product. We did online ticketing, but we also had phone number ticketing as well. Our guests, who had already been trained in what we felt was the most frictionless way for previous events, they had already been trained so it made their night just easy for them to do, something that already experienced, something they were totally comfortable with, and the only negative friction we got from it were new people who wanted to come to the event who couldn’t because it was sold out. We’ll talk about that in just a second, we have another topic to come up here, but what we tried to do is we tried to make it as comfortable and as “ordinary” for our target guests as we possibly could so that it was easy for them. Then they just showed up, had a great time, drank a lot, got covered in confetti, and went home. That was what it was all about.

Staffing, I know we’ve harped on that on this show ad nauseam, but again, it is such a huge issue. We’re at the point now where we’ve talked a lot about supply chains and having multiple supply chains, you also need to have multiple staffing chains. Again, another perfect example, on New Year’s Eve five of the servers for this event were in the same car that had a flat tire. Not COVID related, I know we’re talking about something that’s not COVID related. Five of the servers were in the same car that had a flat tire on their way here, and because the Vault has multiple staffing opportunities they were able to get people who weren’t necessarily their top hospitality servers, but followed directions and did things really well, and they could shift their other folks around so that before the event opened, those five people had been replaced. So, it took them 45 minutes, and they got a completely new staff of five. So, have that in the back of your mind, because the thing that will throw you the most under the bus with guests is not enough people to take care of their needs or to take their money. So, make sure that whatever you need to do with staffing, it is not going to get any easier, it is not going to get any easier this year. Make sure that you have multiple sources, make sure that you have multiple ideas, and perhaps, as Philip mentioned, over staff so that when, not if, the staff reduction happens, you’re prepared for it and your guests don’t see it.

Philip: Well jumping right along here, at number. two is inflation, of course. You know this is a thing, it’s very difficult to talk too much about it because it’s still very much in flux and I believe it’s not transitory to an extent. I don’t think it’s going to be like a runaway train. I think there’s going to be about a minimum of about 6% that you’re going to be facing, 6% across anything that you’re going to be purchasing for your attraction. That’s kind of where I’m sitting is at 6%, but I do think it could be between 6% and 20%. I will just say from my perspective at Gantom, we have to raise our prices, and we’re going to have to kind of raise them across the board due to just component increases in prices, and there’s just no way to not do it. I’ve been calling around talking to other manufacturers to kind of get their take on it, and I can’t name names or anything like that, but I can tell you is that what we are doing is very typical for what everyone else is doing. So I think in terms of suppliers and that kind of stuff that you’re going to be ordering for your attraction, between 6% and 20% is what I would expect is going to increase on your stuff. Of course, it’s so difficult to talk about these things because they’re so complicated, because it depends on what manufacturer using, where they’re getting it, depends on how much you’re building on-site, you know there are so many pieces, right? If you’re going to be just buying everything, plug and play, that probably would be higher-end, a little bit more inflation heavy, than it will be if you are just worried about your local lumber and then just your local lumber costs, and if you can find a time where local lumber is cheap then you just store it up and then you have your carpenters work on it and great. It’s so in flux, you know, and there’s a lot of variables in this. We’ve heard some news about Halloween merchandise and merchandise just arriving now, and so you might be able to pick up stuff for cheap to work on to put stuff in, because people will have excesses at the wrong times or they’re going to hold it, you know, but then they had to pay for storage. I don’t know, it’s all up in the ai, that’s my point. I do think that’s it’s worth planning about that when you were looking now, which you should be. I’m sure Scott is even now looking now at budgets for Christmas and looking for purchasing. Just think about that as it’s going to be more expensive than you think it’s going to be, I promise you that.

Scott: Not only is it going to be more expensive, but we are not out of the woods yet when it comes to supply challenges.  I think it’s going to get better, but we don’t know when it’s going to get worse again, so once again the only way to plan for a supply shortage or inflationary issues is to have multiple options, to have multiple supply chains, multiple parallel supply chains, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. You can end up purchasing all from one supplier, but don’t make them your only supplier that you are ready to work with.

If you are a larger company, for example, having worked with SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment for many, many years, just the possibility of getting a new vendor into the system can take a significant amount of time, more time than you want to spend. So my suggestion is, have multiple vendors for pretty much everything you need, and have them in your system and ready to go. If that means you need to buy a small amount of their product to get them into the system, because that’s something that happens in a lot of these larger theme parks, they don’t want to keep all these vendors in the system that they’re not using, so you have to actually make a purchase. So, go ahead, test the waters, see how quickly they can deliver, because I promise you the way to overcome the inflation is by making certain that you’re not just looking to your one vendor and saying, “OK, that’s what you’re charging? Great, we’ll have to pay it.” There may be another vendor who is all of a sudden getting that shipment of, as Philip just said, that shipment of Halloween supplies that are now going to have to sit in their warehouse and storage is a huge expense.

I’ve got one client now that they’re like, “we don’t really want to own much of anything. We just want to rent it all, because rental for the short period of time we need it for our seasonal events is actually cheaper than having a warehouse to store it in year-round. That way we don’t have to worry about maintaining it,” and there’s a lot of other costs there. I guess what I’m really saying is, don’t get locked into, this is the only way we’re going to buy things, this is the only way we’re going to ship things, be open to multiple levels. That way, no matter which way this goes from an inflationary standpoint, or a pandemic standpoint, you’ll have multiple options and it will make it so, from the guest standpoint, they won’t see any shortages or blockages.

Philip: Yep, correct and we’ve seen a lot of people, also to Scott’s point, basically, think also about substitutions. So not just different suppliers, but also think about substitutions entirely, or just changing up the entire offerings, which you can go back and listen to our show when we talk about the Disney earnings call because they kind of talked about that and got a little bit of trouble. They kind of talked about changing portion size, or substituting items entirely altogether, or just changing your approach. Like Scott and I, we’ve also talked about leaning more into entertainment if you need to rather than you know with actors or things like that. If you had an easy time staffing, if you’re in an area where staffing is easier than infrastructure, then you can lean more into that, it just depends.

Our third item is the seasons, all the seasons are starting earlier, and this is kind of a continuation of the previous one due to, of course, supply chain backups and all that kind of stuff. We do see the retail stores are putting stuff out on shelves earlier and we see that customers tend, at least in last year, they were shopping earlier, and the big question is going to be is that trend going to continue? Are people already buying Valentine’s Day stuff? That is the question that we kind of will hopefully know the answer to soon when we get out some of the reports. The foot traffic reports for this holiday season were much higher in retail locations earlier than they were compared to 2019. What that does is, that triggers the guest to be ready for that holiday, which then if you have your event open earlier for any of the holidays, then it’s better for you, and especially if you combine that with the advanced tickets, you will know ahead of time what the demand is like and you will be able to staff appropriately so that you’re not overbalanced or whatnot.

We see this with Halloween, we see this Christmas, and now what I’m even noticing for January is the extension to January. Now we’re getting Christmas events where maybe they turn off the tree, or they kind of like scoot some of the presents to the side, and they bring out like a giant snowflake and now it’s like three weeks of Winter Fest, which is really the same as Christmas, but instead of a tree, it’s a giant snowflake. I’m seeing the extension, kind of by popular demand of events.

On the flip side of that, one small other example here is the Knott’s show, their big stage show this year, which was a wonderful stage show that they had with full of dancing and music and all that, they had to cancel that a week early for staffing shortages. It’s the same thing we’re talking about, they couldn’t get the staff to work into January enough to run that stage show. So, even though stuff is starting earlier, what that does is go back to what we said previously and just puts more crunch on your staff. If you’re going to have your events open longer then staffing is going to be a bigger challenge as well.

Scott: With the events starting earlier or running longer, what this means is planning needs to start earlier. Part of the reason that you run into staffing challenges, at least that I’ve found, is because there is a last minute choice made to, “let’s extend the show.” Well, once you do that, you’re having to basically start from scratch. Performers, especially in this market right now, are booking themselves if they go from one gig to the next gig to the next gig. Sometimes those gigs take them out of the market for you, so they’re no longer there. I have one performer that her last local performance was my event on New Year’s, and as of today when we are recording this, she’s moving to Vegas. If we had extended and said all of a sudden, “Oh, let’s do this three more nights!” I wouldn’t have had her. So, make your decisions early, that way you know when you’re offering positions upfront, you’re actually offering them for what they really, because those last minute decisions cost money.

On the other side of it that Philip said that I think is interesting is changing a Christmas event into a winter event so that it can run until the middle of January. There are even places that are not doing Christmas events at all, they’re just doing winter events. You put a bunch of sparkly lights up on a tree and it’s Christmas time and you celebrate Christmas, people think it’s a Christmas event. Which is fine, but you don’t have to change anything as it goes into a winter event. There is a local client here in Tampa, the Florida Aquarium, which doesn’t really do a specific Christmas event, they do an event the week that starts the week between Christmas and New Years, and then the week between New Years and the 5th or 7th or whatever it is, and it’s called Snow Days. It’s all about bringing in “real snow”, they have a big snow machine blower that here in Florida, that’s huge, because it’s 80 degrees during the day, and the kids get to go and play in the snow. So they don’t even think of it as a Christmas event. Yes, they put up a tree, but what they really focus on is that week between Christmas and New Year’s where they’re competing with everybody else and they are a local aquarium, so they need to have something unique. So that’s part of that expansion as well.

With that expansion comes earlier planning, and committing to that expansion early on. I have seen some clients who have had challenges with that because the audiences were not what they anticipated after Christmas. I’ve also seen audiences that have been having phenomenal attendance after Christmas for their Christmas events. Again, it goes back to what we said earlier, know your audience. Make the decision based on your audience, not based on any report you’ve read, not based on what you as the C-Suite want. Go to your guests and see what they’re doing, not what they’re saying they’re doing, but what they’re actually doing. Track that, pay attention to that, because that will help you make these decisions, and once you’ve made them, stick to them so that you won’t lose your staff.

Philip: OK, so our 4th item here is IP extension. So, we have had a lot of stories about this, and maybe we didn’t label it as such, but we’re doing so now. I think not only is it a trend that we’re seeing, but I think we’re going to see it into the future. I also think it’s a great idea and it also takes many forms, so that why we’re calling it IP extension. This is not really coming up with a really interesting piece of merchandise, although that is a great idea and you should be doing that which we’ve talked about ad nauseam. But it could also be stuff like we’ve talked about last year even, and this year, where attractions are putting together playlists of music and putting them on Spotify so you can recreate the sounds of the event. It’s the podcast stuff, we even talked about the people making podcasts of history of their attractions. It’s anything that takes the stuff from your attraction and allows people to take that out of the attraction with them. Even with Chuck E Cheese doing a release of their music and taking the characters out on a music tour to do like a Chuck E Cheese music tour around the community. We’ve talked about these all year, and there’s great examples all over, and it really comes down to as a running theme is now, which is understanding your community, the local community, and where that you can be a part of that local community, and showing up there and what makes sense for you. But IP extension overall is the big thing.

The last point on this is this isn’t just a thing that is attractions only. We’re seeing IP extensions from brands. We talked about Arcane, that is IP extension. So at the very top it’s TenCent, then it’s Riot Games, then it’s League of Legends, and then it’s Arcane, like 4 levels down, and then they take that and they create it. But essentially that is TenCent, which is the Facebook equivalent in China. It’s Chinese Facebook, essentially, doing a themed experience, which is IP extension.

Scott: IP extension is nothing new, that’s the thing you have to recognize. IP extension is something that Disney started doing in the 40s and 50s. You would see the movies get the comic book or get the coloring book, get the toys, get to this, get to that. A Wonderful World of Disney now appears every Sunday night in your home on the television, and then they have the theme parks. So, IP extension is nothing new at all. The reason it’s so important now is it’s easier than ever before. So many of the examples that Philip just gave are things like the podcasts, Spotify lists, downloadable stuff, it’s all stuff that doesn’t require a full warehouse of goods in order for it to happen. So, no matter what your level is, whether you are a monolithic theme park or you’re an independent FEC, you have the ability to keep that expansion going and to make certain that guests can interact with you on a regular basis.

For some of you have been around for a while this may seem counter intuitive, because for many many years, certainly when I first started in theme parks it was, “well, let’s not give away too much of the experience because if we do guests won’t come.” What we found is in the world of TikTok, in the world of social media, that is not true. If they can see it, then they want to experience it in person. I will give you probably the best example of that I can think of right now, and that is Galaxy’s Edge at Disney in Florida right now. I had seen videos of the entire experience backwards, forwards, I’d seen hundreds of them, I couldn’t wait to get there. Experiencing it in person is so completely unlike any of the video experiences because it is so rich. But what that means is, when you are producing content for the in-person experience, it has to be rich, it has to be multi-leveled, and it has to be top quality, because it is going to be out there, and it is going to be seen. Instead of trying to hide it, make it easier for people to do that because it will help spread that IP extension outside of your parks and into people’s homes.

Philip: Rounding up our last one is what we’re calling expansion of the market, and we talked about this a tiny bit with Halloween, but we want to kind of make it a little bit more general. For Halloween, we talked about the concept of sophisticated fear versus family fun, but if we think about it a little bit more general, what we’re really saying here is, we’re saying you understand that when guests are coming to the attraction who they’re bringing and what they want for the different seasons. We talked already about the difference between Christmas and Halloween for example, you know Christmas they’re bringing their family Halloween they’re bringing their friends. But it’s a little bit more than that. We’ve talked about tailoring, like we talked about the Lunar New Year festival that I talked about at Disneyland coming up. That is great because of the amount of people that celebrate the Lunar New Year in that demographic. It’s a local play, and it’s understanding, even when it comes down to the type of entertainment, when guests are coming for Lunar New Year, are they bringing their family or they’re bringing their friends? And what kind of family is it? Multi-generational? Are family members coming in from all over or is it just your local people? It’s knowing those things and then crafting programming to help with that. That’s something I think is also relatively new, that almost micro-targeting for entertainment. It’s something we can do more of.

I’ll kind of finish out my little segment of this with Airbnb. Their CEO did a little strategy call With Decoder about 2022 and h mentioned a lot of very interesting things, but he mentioned something that I just was like oh my gosh. He says, “Airbnb allows you to work from any home.” I was like, Oh my God. He talked about how their focus is not only that it allows you to take your Zoom call from any home and to kind of move around more, but they also are focusing on expanding the travel time, so encouraging people to travel longer and then just work from any home. Also, they’re working on connecting you to the local community, and how different summer is going to be just because the dynamic of who you’re traveling with and when has changed, because of the pandemic. I think that combined with this idea of expansion of the market, you will be able to see a lot of different, and do a lot of different things for the different seasons just because when people are traveling has changed and who they’re traveling with has changed.

Scott: Well and it’s funny because when I was a kid and we went on vacation, my dad had to make sure that he was off for those two weeks so that he could be with the family.

But now, building off of what Airbnb has said, family vacations can now pretty much take place anywhere, anytime, because Mom and Dad can still work from the Airbnb location now. With virtual classrooms, kids can even go to school while they’re in a different location. Everybody thinks that technology is making things so much bigger, but it’s really not, it’s making things significantly smaller. The world is going to be a place where we can do what we need to do no matter where we are. So, I think that’s an important thing to remember when we’re talking about expansion of market. We’re not just looking at, “well at summer, that’s when families come out.” I think it gives us the opportunity to think outside the box.

I will say that quite often expansion of market is one of those double-edged swords, especially for the marketers themselves, because they will say, “well, we have, a mailing list of X number of thousands of people, X number of hundreds of thousands of people in some cases, and we know what they want. So that’s who we’re going to market to.”

What that does is, it builds loyalty, which is great and very important. But when you start to expand that market and you’re not just asking the question of who is coming to our events or who’s coming to our park, you start to ask the question who isn’t coming and then follow it up with why? My suggestion is, use both of those pieces of information so that you don’t alienate your core base, you never want to do that. You want to give them enough so that they can continue to expand and market for you. I think that some great examples over the years have been like certain shoe brands, people build loyalty to Nike, Adidas, that sort of thing. I think that Apple has done it, they’ve had a couple of missteps here and there, but generally speaking Apple creates an environment that their core audience loves, and then their core audience kind of brings in new people with just quirky little expansions. Take that same mentality with your theme park and utilize seasonal events, especially, as a way to expand that brand, put your toe in the water someplace where you know who’s not coming, for example, we’re not serving the Hispanic market. OK, do a Latin music festival and see if that works for you, and recognize it may not work the first time because there’s nobody on your mailing list to speak Spanish, so you’re going to have to work a little harder than first time. But, by continuing to expand your market it is going to make it so that more and more people can enjoy your product.

Christmas
Episodes

Making Christmas

By 271

What makes a good Christmas Attraction? What are the elements that Philip and Scott think are important to making a traditional and relevant Christmas Event?

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Listen to "Making Christmas" on Spreaker.

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Transcript

Philip: From our studios in Sunny San Diego, and also probably Sunny Tampa, this is Green Tagged Theme Park in 30. I’m Philip and I’m joined by my wonderful co-host, Scott Swenson. Scott Merry Christmas.

Scott: Merry Christmas, Philip, I guess today I’m the Co Ho-Ho-Ho-host, and it’s actually it’s Boxing Day. We’re actually recording this the day after Christmas.

Philip: Don’t give away our secrets, though. We were just holding it to, you know, to make it an extra special Christmas.

Scott: OK so it’s Christmas Day. I’m hallucinating.

Philip: Wink, wink, right?

Scott: Ah, it’s Christmas Day! But it’s pretty darn close, you know, and let’s be honest, when we’re in this industry this Christmas starts in what February, March? That’s when you start the planning process. So this year because I was working on, I don’t know about you, because I was working on so many different holiday projects or Christmas projects Christmas both snuck up on me and seemed almost inconsequential, and when it’s over–wink, wink, wink–it’s almost like, “wow where did that go? Did I have the time to actually experience the holiday or enjoy it?” So it’s kind of like this wonderful double-edged sword where all year long I’ve been working on Christmas and opened four different ones and I’ve got a New Year’s Event coming up as well. I certainly don’t get to go out and enjoy Halloween very often, because I’m usually working it.

I am a self-admitted Christmas-aholic. Hi, my name is Scott and I’m a Christmas-aholic. It’s one of those situations where, by the time it’s over, you kind of go, “Oh wait, I didn’t get to do this and I’ll have to wait till next year to do that,” and that sort of thing. So, it’s been a really interesting season for me, and it’s not that it’s the first time this has happened. This happens pretty much every year, but this year it was especially true because I just had so many events coming up and I’ve been working on them in all different parts of the country. So it was like, “Oh! Oh, today! Today’s Christmas!” Or, “today’s Christmas Eve!” And you know, you think back and you go through all of the traditional things that you’ve done as kids and you think back to all the memories of the family Christmas has gone by.

So, it’s been this sort of whirlwind of two days without me really doing anything, which seemed odd, because I spent so much time getting light displays ready and you know, things built up and all that. That’s kind of been my recent vibes on the last couple of days. How about you Philip? You know, you’re normally done, your main beat is Halloween and by the time Christmas hits you still do a lot of Christmas events but you’re doing them more as a participant, an outside view versus an inside view. Have you felt any of these same things? Or has it been completely different for you?

Philip: Different in that I’m not producing them, correct, but also similar in that it’s it seems like I feel like it used to be we got a little bit more time or a little bit of a break, but attractions are pulling out Christmas as soon as they can. Maybe it’s just this year because people were trying to make up for ticket sales, but in many cases, it was literally one week and the team was working on the Christmas in the back like behind the Halloween stuff, right? Then you just unveil it and move it out and then the next week it’s already into Christmas.

This year I did a lot of Christmas haunts as well, that was a big thing, and I think it was sort of trending-ish this year, and this year there was the Seasons Screaming Halloween Christmas convention in Pasadena and there was plenty of Christmas haunts to go see. So I was out at Christmas haunts events. So yes, it definitely was one of those cases just like you were it’s like, “I thought we were supposed to get a break from all this coverage, and then it ends up being oh every weekend there is a thing that’s supposed to be a Christmas Halloween, or a regular Christmas to go see.” Then at the end you look at your list of events and it’s like, “oh, I didn’t get the half of these.”

Scott: Right, right? Well no, you’re absolutely right. The Halloween into Christmas is something that theme parks I think kind of led the way a while back, but now it’s trending with just about everybody. My guess is that next year it’s going to be even more. In fact, this is the first time I’ve actually announced this publicly, but I have been confirmed that I will be doing a seminar called Turning the Page from Halloween into Christmas at the Transworld Halloween Christmas show; I guess I’m doing both because I’m doing that transitional thing. There was such an interest in making that sort of transition that when I talked to Jen Braverman, she was like, “We gotta do this. We gotta do a seminar on it, there’s more and more interest in it,” and she felt that I had enough experience in both and how to go one from the next.

But what I think is happening now is, I’m not even booking just one or the other, when I’m going to most of my clients we’re booking both of them. Again, because the turnaround time is so short, and getting shorter and shorter each year, I think you actually have to plan them as a single event that that flips. So you use the same infrastructure, or much of the same infrastructure, and then change the content.  It’s interesting because I’ve always said Halloween events are easy, Christmas events are hard. In my own personal opinion with Halloween, you can scare people a lot of different ways, and one way to scare people isn’t necessarily going to offend someone who’s not necessarily scared by that. But Christmas is so personal that it’s really tricky.

Then, of course, for people who don’t celebrate Christmas we have to tread lightly, and some of my clients have been very good about that; in fact, two of the events that I did were not Christmas events at all, they were winter events which was Franklin Frost at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and then Snowed In at Sparkman Wharf here in Tampa. So you know it’s interesting because I think the nuts and bolts of Christmas are at least predictable, but the content is tricky. At least, in my opinion, I want to always try to capture something that’s going to be heartfelt at Christmastime, but heartfelt memories are all over the place because everybody has their own personal view of what was heartfelt, what made it heartfelt, who am I missing this holiday season, who is the new little one in my family? If you’ve just had a child or you’ve just moved out on your own, your Christmas experience is vastly different, and so it’s tricky from a content standpoint.

I think that, for example, Disney has always done so well with Christmas because Disney is all about they’re going to do the history and the generational content that they’ve had with people. But I think even they had challenges this year because it’s been such a wacky year. I went back and looked at my history of Christmas over the last few years, and in ’19 we had probably the last big family Christmas, and I come from a small family. But, you know, we had cousins and parents and aunts and we got us all in the same building, and then all of a sudden ’20 was a rug pull and we celebrated it in masks around my mom’s pool staying 6 feet away.

So, I think that Christmas content is really challenging this year, but I think the nuts and bolts of it are still pretty much the same. I think we need to be kind of true to our intent here, because I know that we said this is going to be kind of a let’s just share what we think is important in Christmas events, and my fear is I’m going to ramble on for way too long. So I’m going to require you to keep me in my little box, you keep me in a spreadsheet format, Philip.

Philip: Well, I think coming to the theme of it, I think that is the bi crux of it, right? It’s the big differentiator between Halloween and Christmas, obviously, but the content challenges like you mentioned. Let me back up a few steps, so I’ve interviewed some haunters, I’ve interviewed some attendees, and I’ve interviewed people all around and just asking them, getting the feel for what do you look for in a Christmas event? What makes Halloween different from Christmas? Why do you like spooky Halloween? Kind of what comes up over and over is that a Halloween is for friends and Christmas is for family, you know, so it’s a different target market, it’s different people you go with. Halloween is creative and Christmas is traditional. So, I think the challenge with the content is, Christmas is traditional. I guess you know in Northern America, traditional Christmas is pretty well established out there, we kind of know what traditional Christmas is like. I think the problem that there is the challenge, traditional Christmas has its stockings, it has its trappings, it’s wrappings, and making yourself stand out and kind of utilizing the unique aspects of your venue in light of the traditional wrappings, I think that makes it almost more of a creative challenge than with a haunt where it’s kind of like, the sky is the limit in many ways.

Scott: Right, I agree 100%. I agree that Christmas needs to tie into tradition, but then you have to ask the question of which tradition? It used to be that when guests, going back in the 60s and 70s, people would think of traditional Christmas as shortbread Christmas tree cookies. They would think of traditional Christmas as like Dickens, you know that was the tradition back then. Then it became traditional Christmas is A Christmas Story. It’s that that golden era, 40s and 50s, spilling over in early 60s, that vibe, that’s traditional Christmas. Now there’s the Elf generation so that that Elf and Christmas Vacation are the traditional Christmas. So it’s really tricky, and especially when you’re trying to, as you say, bring families together, which demographic, which age level of the family do you go after?

I think the simplest way to do that is to make sure that Christmas is visually impactful, auditorily it needs to sound like Christmas, and it needs to smell like Christmas. I know that sounds really stupid and basic, but in all of the stuff that we’ve done, we’ve had these exact same conversations. For example, with Franklin Frost, and I can talk about it now because it’s been produced, that whole event is about trains because they didn’t want to deal with a Christmas event, they want it to be a holiday event that everybody, no matter what you celebrated could enjoy. We had that discussion about our trains appropriate for Christmas? Pretty much everybody across the board said, “Well, I always think of toy trains when I think of Christmastime,” whether they actually had one or they just saw one in a movie somewhere. Now Polar Express, of course, helps that significantly.

So, you have to find those things that are traditional, but traditional more abstractly, I guess. I think that’s the big challenge.

I go back to my friends, I had a friend who was the marketing director at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, and you talk about tradition, every single year Goodman Theater would produce A Christmas Carol. They had to keep finding new ways to make it fresh because it was the same script, and if they didn’t do the same script the audiences went ballistic because it was their Christmas tradition, whether it was that or Nutcracker. In Chicago though it was Goodman’s Christmas Carol. My friend was at marketing like, “I don’t know how to make this fresh and new each year.” So, what he started to do is he started to focus on one tiny element that was perhaps an overlooked element in previous years. He never left the tradition of the show, but he would focus on Tiny Tim’s crutch, or he would focus on the Ghost of Christmas Present and it’s opulence. So, that way he could create a new look each year to bring something new to the old tradition.

When I was a kid they started doing, well back then it was called colorblind casting, but now they basically don’t cast based on race and that was a huge change for the traditionalist to deal with back in the in the late 70, early 80s, but they’ve come to embrace it now and that’s the new tradition. So, I think you’re absolutely correct. I think you have to play into the tradition, but I think you have to find those common denominators. Like I said, I think it’s what you see, it’s what you hear, it’s what you smell, and I would put what you taste in there too I think smell and taste kind of run hand in hand. But I think, from a content standpoint, you need to address all of those.

Philip: Yes, and I was thinking as you were talking, thematically speaking I would say another thing I’ve noticed is choosing your tradition, like you’re mentioning how difficult it is and everyone has a different place they’re coming from when they arrive at your event in a different house and whatnot. But I think that the answer to that is looking to the community for the local tradition there, which in your example is a perfect example. That’s them saying this is a tradition in our local community, how can we still keep it a fresh thing?

But how can we still look at that? I think of to use an example that Scott worked on that I noticed was the zoo, and how each area is a different traditional Christmas area. But you have areas for your Spanish-speaking demographic, because that’s a big piece of the local culture, you’re going to sing Feliz Navidad and you’re not going to do that in other places. I think that kind of thing is how you decide on your traditions.

My family, on Christmas Eve we saw the Ebenezer Scrooge’s Great San Diego Christmas show. It basically is a local retelling of the Christmas Carol where the characters are from history and Ebenezer in the story is the person who built the theater and who kind of founded Balboa Park, and it’s all that story around them. They’re still all the characters, it’s still the similar lines, but they update it every year, it’s a long-standing tradition, but they update the script with new jokes that are relevant for what happened in the past year and kind of just adjust it, but they keep the premise. I like also how far they go. One of the famous iconic scenes is Scrooge comes in in the final scene in his skin-tight bathing suit and he’s like, “because it’s San Diego!” Then he has a surfboard and he has candy canes and flip flops, and he’s like, “because this is how we can celebrate because it’s 72 degrees outside!” They kind of take whatever temperature is right now and they kind of work that into the script. I think it’s those things, it’s understanding the tradition of your local market.

Se talked about this with Halloween too with local lore and all that kind of stuff, but like this is just understanding your local audience, how do they celebrate, and then which one of them are coming to your attraction and making sure that they see their tradition in your event.

Scott: I think another thing that you have to take into consideration too is, if you are going to do something that is new or pushing the boundaries a little bit, how do you tie it back to tradition? Since you mentioned Zoo Tampa I’ll bring up another element that we started last year and continued again this year, and continues to be incredibly successful across all age demographic, and that is a show that we did called Hymn-provise and is an improvisational comedy show where, through audience participation, the two performers, the cast of two, make up Christmas carols to the tunes of well-known traditional Christmas carols. They’re all Christmas carols that tie back to things that everybody would know, I mean, there’s not a single new melody in the entire show, everybody knows them like the back of their hand.

I call it the linchpin, or one of the things that really holds the show together, is one of the songs, The 12 Days of Christmas. I think so many people now when they think of the 12 Days of Christmas they start to eyeroll a little bit going, “Oh gosh, that song goes on forever,” and the way it’s done in hymn-provise is it plays up, or actually counteracts that it goes on forever, in the fact that the two performers have no idea what the audience is going to tell them is the gift for that particular day. Nothing is pre-planned, it is on the fly, it becomes very chaotic, and it just becomes a bunch of silliness. When they finish the performers look at each other and go, “that was more like the 12 days of chaos not the 12 days of Christmas.” But what it does is it takes tradition and kind of turns it on its ear. So it’s traditional enough, but still makes it fresh.

So I actually had the opportunity to fill in one night as one of the performers in that show. With an improv background it was really fun for me, but every single show, obviously other than the first one, we had people returning to see the show again in the same night, because they said, “this is so much fun, we wanted to see what you’d come up with next. We wanted to see if it was really all made up or if it was scripted,” and believe me it was all made up. So I think what we’ve done is by taking the tradition of Christmas caroling and adding a twist to it, I think we may have created a new local tradition, kind of like the show you were talking about with the retelling of the Scrooge story. The message there is, don’t be afraid to push the limits, but you can’t break the limits on tradition. You can add new twists, but you have to make sure that you still remain reverent to the tradition itself.

Philip: I love that show and it makes me wonder Scott, how important do you think play is to a Christmas event? Like playing together? When I sat there and watched hymn-provise that’s what I felt, like the parents were laughing at the kids because the kids were coming up with ridiculous answers and they’d have to raise their hand every time the day came to them, and the parents were going along with it. So it felt like they were playing together and making something together in play. So, I’m wondering how important is that?

Scott: Oh, I think it’s essential. I think it’s absolutely essential. I mean, if you think about it, going back to the concept of what is traditional, what is not, on Christmas Eve I think back to my childhood and we always would open one present on Christmas Eve and it was always something we could do or something we could read or something we could play together as a family. So when we were looking at, and I’m glad you caught that as far as hymn-provise, but throughout that event that was kind of a guiding principle. We wanted young people to be able to do things, and specifically things with the rest of their family. So there was another show that was Mrs. Claus and she was decorating cookies, but you could also buy a cookie decorating kit so that the kids could actually decorate cookies with Mrs. Claus. We had a section called the Reindeer Games which was Randolph the Reindeer, which was a life-size baby reindeer puppet, and then surrounding him were carnival or funfair style games where there was the Tic Tac Snow where it was like a giant tic tac toe board, or put the ornaments away where you toss them into baskets in the tree, or we even had what we called EULA Hoops out for the kids to play with. It was just a wonderful play area, we had Kids DJ with dance facilitators out there so it was all about making sure the kids had something to do or had some sense of play that tied directly to the holiday season. Not only that we think it’s important for the holiday, but also we had parents who were very grateful saying, “you are burning off some of our children holiday energy to get them to do stuff.”

I’m really proud in the fact that this year all the events I worked on I thought looked beautiful. I thought all of them had a lovely visual impact, but I was especially proud of Zoo Tampa because it was very interactive, it gave people something to do.

Snowed in at Sparkman Wharf, which was again not a Christmas event, that was a winter holiday event, but all of the entertainment was atmosphere except for one show a night and all the atmosphere entertainment was completely interactive with kids and their families. So, I think that’s a very good point Philip, is that that play is kind of essential in a Christmas event because it gets the families working together.

Philip: Yes, and I think it’s an interesting little deviation because I think play and immersive, the concept of immersive and play, are very close, but what you just said right there in terms of families playing together, I think that is the Christmas demarcation. So you know if you are targeting a family event, then the play has to be able to be multi-generational versus something that could be immersive, but could be immersive for older people, or for younger. The real trick is getting them in the middle, and that’s very difficult to do without breaking the illusion, or you’re making it too cheesy or too campy. I think play was at the center of the Gaylord experience this year. It used to be a walkthrough display of ice and whatnot, but this year, because of the visa problem, we talked about that, they couldn’t get the ice carvers over, they transitioned over into a full play experience and you go through with your family in your group and you go through all the different scenes from the Elf movie and there’s a little Christmas Spirit meter and you have to achieve little goals in each area where you play together and it raises that spirit meter. It was quite an array, there’s like playing out Christmas tunes on a giant piano, there is throwing snowballs, a snowball fight, there is singing together, this little area where you sing a carol together, baking cookies together, you know you have a little thing where you put ingredients into a bowl and then you put your name and name your cookie and then it pops up on the screen. So, kind of very advanced play, more like a museum kind of play together than Scott’s which is at the very very improv and very very actors driven. This is less actor-driven and more exhibition, but it’s the same through-line of families playing together to get through this experience.

Scott: It’s the same NorthStar, and I think that what is interesting is there was a time, there was a generation where it was like, let’s have something for the kids to go do while the adults stick around, so they’d separate the kids. The kids would go do the kids stuff and the adults would go do the adult stuff. The current generation of parents is getting further and further away from that, and I saw that over and over again both at Zoo Tampa and at Snowed In and even when I was in 1Houston, even Space Center Houston’s Galaxy Lights is something that is very, and I don’t want to say family-friendly,  because family-friendly used to mean, “oh it’s something for the toddlers,” but now family-friendly means it’s something the family can do as a unit. It won’t be too cute or too weird or too sophisticated for anybody in the family, it’s something that they can all do together.

At Snowed In, it was a weird event because they didn’t want to drive any attendance on Fridays and Saturday, so it took place on Thursdays, and it was three Thursdays in a row. We had multiple families bringing their kids back and their neighbors with kids back every night of the event because they were like, “we just had so much fun last time.” It’s nothing specific, but it’s just we created an atmosphere of play and then provided the tools to create play and the families had a great time playing together and taking photos. I think the next generation it’s going to continue that if you want to do Christmas you have to have an element of play. I think you’re absolutely right. Is that is that the 4th? So it’s like it has to look great, sound great, taste and smell great, and then have something where you can actually play together as a family.

Philip: And I have one last ingredient to add in as we’re kind of making our Christmas event cake here and that is, I think that it needs some sort of place where families can take that photo together. I know that’s of seems kind of obvious, you know, but back to what I heard from guests is, they’re going with their families and what the families want are memories and what are memories? They’re pictures. So, there needs to be, I think to your first point about the “it looks good”, but also there are places that are photo-ready and there are just neat exhibits. Even at Sir Henry’s Haunted Christmas, he paid so much attention to photo ops for families in his area, and he made signs that said, Merry Christmas from Florida with a Krampus. That’s fine, you know, and light it up and Scott got into the little elf prison and we poked him with candy canes. I mean, it’s great.

Philip: It’s a great time. It’s great fun. Yes, it’s the way I want to spend a Friday afternoon. No, but I agree with you 100% Philip. One of my other clients this year I did some art direction for the Indianapolis Zoo,1 and one of the things that was new this year is instead of just saying, “let’s make it pretty,” to your point, we have to spell out photo ops. You have to have the photo op tell a story itself in a single image, and it has to have a logo from the event in the photo. Now, whether you’re selling photos or not, you know if you if you want to sell photos and put it in the frame or put it in a green screen background, that’s fine, but you need those moments that people can take out their phones and click the picture send it to grandma.

One of the ones that we did that was incredibly successful at the Indianapolis Zoo, over and above Santa Claus, because Santa Claus is always a huge hit. But we did a photo op of a gingerbread family. Instead of just putting up this wonderful statuary or wonderful sculptures of gingerbread people, we had a gingerbread sofa in the middle. Then we put the family up so Mom and Dad are standing behind and the brother and sister are standing holding hands next to a gingerbread Christmas tree and then looming up over the back it said Christmas at the Zoo at the Indianapolis Zoo. There were people in line to take this photo, and we had several of those throughout the zoo. Again, it was because they all told stories, they all looked like when you got your photo taken with you would just happen to be a guest of the gingerbread family. So that became an attraction in and of itself. So I agree, make it look good, and then tell people specifically, “here’s where you take the picture.

Scott: On behalf of Philip and myself, no matter what you celebrate, whether you are a Christmas celebrator, Kwanzaa,  Solstice, Hanukkah.

Philip: Halloween.

Scott: Yeah, well you celebrate Halloween year-round. Whatever you celebrate, I hope that this season brings you happiness, health, and joy, and when it does, please spread it to other people.