![]() ![]() Located outside of Altoona, Boyertown USA is an 82-acre park that until last year was known as Lakemont Park. While marketing studies show that prior to 1976, 60 percent of the park’s patrons came from beyond the Lehigh Valley, today 92 percent come from outside the area.īut as amusement parks likeDorney and Hershey make it seem almost easy to attract big crowds with thoughtful investment and careful management, other parks are inspired to seek a larger share of the business. “We had to overcome the misconceptions of the past that Dorney Park is a small, parochial, local park.”Īs a result of the improvements, Dorney has become the Lehigh Valley’s chief summer tourist draw. “We had to engineer our market so that we didn’t have all our eggs in one basket,” says Michael Crowther, Dorney’s director of marketing. Still to come: a new Castle Garden banquet and concert hall planned for an 8-acre tract north of Hamilton Boulevard, across from Wildwater Kingdom. It purchased the sleek coaster from an amusement park in Brazil and erected it on the site of the former Zoorama on the western edge of the grounds. The latest addition came earlier this year when Dorney installed the $2.5- million double-loop Colossus. With its various water slides and giant wave pool, Wildwater Kingdom stretches to the limit the conceiveable ways to have fun while getting wet. Two years later, Dorney added what amounted to an entirely new park when it opened Wildwater Kingdom just outside the grounds along Hamilton Boulevard. Then, in 1982, Dorney invested $1.5 million to develop Thunder Creek Mountain, a logging flume ride intended to appeal to not just thrill-seeking youngsters but to members of the aging baby boom generation as well. ![]() The first big change came in 1977, when Dorney expanded its physical size, carved a new midway from an adjacent cornfield and anchored several new rides and shops there with the Flying Dutchman, a new 70-foot high roller coaster. And its patronage was drawn almost entirely from Allentown and other close-by areas.īut a decade ago, Dorney Park began to emerge from its slumber – with a burst. In the succeeding years, however, Dorney was known as much for its pretty flowers as for its collection of rides. Then, in the 1920s, the big wooden roller coaster that still dominates the grounds was added, and its reputation as an amusement park was firmly established. The Plarr family became involved in the enterprise around the turn of the century and installed its first ride, a merry-go-round. So for amusement parks to survive, they’ve had to offer more than the few “iron rides” and boating ponds that satisfied an earlier generation.Īt Dorney Park, easily the fastest-growing amusement park in the region, the changes have been as sudden as that first big dip on a roller coaster.Īctually, Dorney has been undergoing a quiet evolution ever since Solomon Dorney established the setting as a fishing spot in 1884. ![]() “The consumer keeps the people in the entertainment business hopping,” says Sudor. And the vast new video industry is offering recreational alternatives that can be enjoyed by traveling no farther than the living room. Commercial rafting and tubing is taking place on rivers that previously had been visited by only occasional fishermen. Practically every town on the map is attempting to sell itself as a tourist destination. Casino gambling is now available without making a complicated trip to Nevada. There are ever more state and federal parks, for example. And rather than experience frustratingly long delays, motorists were avoiding the highway with the same disdain that roller coaster buffs might reserve for pony rides. Long stretches of Interstate 81, south of Wilkes-Barre, were undergoing reconstruction last year. Sudor did a little research and quickly discovered the answer: There was nothing wrong with Hersheypark’s advertising – only the highways that patrons needed to get there. The Wyoming Valley had been saturated with the same advertising campaign that had proved so successful in other areas, so why, she wondered, were so few people showing up from northeastern Pennsylvania? Among the things those surveys tell her is where Hersheypark’s patrons come from.īut last summer she noticed that almost no one was coming to Hersheypark from the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre region, and Sudor thought that didn’t make sense. The figures that came across the desk of Cynthia Sudor around this time last year left her disturbed and perplexed.Īs director of sales and marketing for Hersheypark, she receives daily attendance reports, including the results of patron surveys that are conducted at random at the park’s gate. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |