Experience Required

From Theme Parks to Brandlands

The vast majority of the 29,399 attendees at the 81st Annual Convention and Trade Show of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) are, unsurprisingly, people who operate amusement parks, miniature-golf courses, video arcades, haunted houses, and water parks. But in recent years, representatives of zoos, science museums, cultural centers, aquariums, and historical sites have been showing up in greater numbers.

"We've been seeing a quiet evolution of the themed-entertainment industry," says Roberta Perry, vice president of themed entertainment at 20th Century Fox. Perry has been to the IAAPA show every year since 1985. "Since 1990, we've started seeing McDonald's and all of the other restaurant groups coming in, followed by real-estate developers, shopping-mall developers, casino developers, cruise lines, zoos, and so on. Those are the new markets that many of the A-list vendors are already working in."

At the 1999 IAAPA show, Perry says, the buzz among attendees was evenly divided between two new projects: the Universal Studios Islands of Adventure park, in Orlando, and a $125 million science center for the Center of Science and Industry (commonly known as COSI), in Columbus, Ohio -- a project that incorporates animatronics, motion simulators, and 3-D movies into its seven "Learning Worlds."

The trade show, traditionally held the week before Thanksgiving, fills the entire Georgia World Congress Center, in Atlanta, as well as the adjacent Georgia Dome -- a total of 515,321 square feet of exhibit space. The show floor is like a carnival midway, only carpeted and slightly less aromatic. It's bright, loud, and thoroughly overstimulating. In the Georgia Dome, exhibitors set up full-sized "spin and barf" rides. In the World Congress Center, aisle after aisle is filled with things like automatic minidoughnut machines; an animatronic ghoul named Dr. Baktylife singing "I'm Too Sexy"; acrobatics troupes for hire; firms that specialize in making fake rocks and trees; parachute-jump simulators; mascot costumes; roller-coaster cars; scent cannons; player pianos; gigantic pumps for wave pools and water slides; mist and fog machines; and an emaciated, bare-chested rubber man in an electric chair, whose head smokes and whose body convulses when the juice is turned on.

Over-the-top pageantry galore, the show is itself an experience. In the introductory session, IAAPA then-chairman John Roberts appears at the podium in a puff of smoke, wearing what looks like an authentic space suit. With him is Bud, a 2200-pound Clydesdale. To break up the boring, quotidian talk of animatronic dinosaurs, coasters launched by linear-induction motors, and interconnected water rides that cut down on queues, Brazilian dancers in skimpy costumes gyrate down the aisles of the auditorium.

On the trade-show floor, BRC has a large booth in the area devoted to "Amusement and Entertainment Technologies." At IAAPA, the word "technology" is used loosely; BRC is just across the aisle from a company called Kiddie Rides USA and not far from Cutting Edge Creations Inc., a company that makes inflatable products such as interactive games and giant mascots.

"IAAPA reminds us that we're really just in the high end of the carnival business," says a bemused Rogers, who serves on IAAPA's Board of Manufacturer and Supplier Directors. Out of the 30,000 attendees, he estimates that only about 50 are potential BRC clients. Still, the event gives him a chance to renew old contacts and to move new business forward, and he spends the week schmoozing. At the 1999 show, he met a group of developers who were planning to build a mythology-based theme park outside Athens, which resulted in a massive new assignment for BRC called Mythos.

Right now, the only major theme park under construction in the United States is California Adventure, which is being built next to Disneyland, in Anaheim. So vendors at IAAPA were angling for theme-park projects outside the United States, as well as for projects at unconventional domestic venues.

Before the show, I had spoken on the phone with Bob Crean, vice president of operations at Advanced Animations Inc., an animatronics maker in Stockbridge, Vermont. Advanced Animations has a reputation for developing incredibly high-end figures; it built the impressive and intimidating robots for Universal's "Terminator 2, 3-D: Battle Across Time" show. Crean was marketing "Grossology," a show about "gross stuff," to malls and science museums. After the IAAPA show, he informed me that Advanced Animations had sold an animatronic dragon to the developers of a hotel being built in Korea who wanted a Vegas-style show in its front yard.