I’m reporting from Orlando, Fla., where every year in November, tens of thousands of theme park managers and creative consultants head to Orlando for the industry’s largest convention – the IAAPA Attractions Expo, presented by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.
Southern California’s theme parks always play a prominent role at IAAPA – with Disneyland celebrating its 60th anniversary, this year was no exception. The Expo kicked off Tuesday morning with the induction of former Disneyland President Jack Lindquist into IAAPA’s amusement industry hall of fame.
Lindquist, 88, created some of the industry’s most influential promotions during his time at Disney, including the “I’m going to Disneyland!” ad campaign, after-hours, events such as Grad Nights, off-site sales of tickets, and the creation of Disney Dollars.
Lindquist explained during a panel discussion at the Expo how he came up with the idea for Disney Dollars.
“When you’re on a plane flying back from London, you’ve been in Europe about three weeks, you’ve got 11-1/2 hours of doing nothing, so you go through all the change in your jacket – the deutsche marks, the francs, the pounds. Then you start thinking … well, we do 11 million people a year, why the hell can’t we have our own currency?”
Lindquist sat on IAAPA’s annual “Legends” panel with former Disney Imagineering president Marty Sklar, former Knott’s Berry Farm vice president Tom Mehrmann and Matt Ouimet, a former Disneyland president who now serves as CEO of Cedar Fair, the owner of Knott’s Berry Farm. The four talked about the continuing effect that Disneyland has had on the global themed entertainment industry.
“Being 7 miles down the street for 21 years at Knott’s Berry Farm, looking at what you might think was a competitor – we looked at what we called differential values,” said Mehrmann, who now works as CEO of Ocean Park in Hong Kong, a position from which he announced he will be stepping down next summer.
“The idea wasn’t to compete with Disney. It was to complement Disney. No one can out-Disney Disney,” he said.
And complementing Disneyland has paid off well for Knott’s Berry Farm, Lindquist noted.
“You can’t forget that the founder of Knott’s, the day that Disneyland was opened, said that this was the best thing that ever happened to Knott’s Berry Farm. And he was right. I’ll tell you, we couldn’t compete with that fried chicken dinner,” Lindquist said.
“I thank the fact that Disney came to Hong Kong every day,” Mehrmann said. “We wouldn’t be who we are today if it weren’t for Disney. It was the mere presence of Disney that engaged us and took us to a whole different level.”
Under Mehrmann, Ocean Park’s annual attendance has grown from less than 4 million to nearly 8 million since Hong Kong Disneyland opened. Still, it’s not as if being near a Disney theme park guarantees success, Ouimet noted.
“Knott’s Berry Farm is having the best year in its history. About three or four years ago, that was not the case,” Ouimet said. “So we took a step back, went out and talked to the consumers in the marketplace, and we were trying to figure out why (Knott’s) wasn’t doing as well as it had done before.”
Ultimately, Ouimet said, “we came back to the basics,” returning the park’s focus on family-friendly dark rides such as the refurbished Timber Mountain Log Ride and Calico Mine Train, and the new Voyage to the Iron Reef.