ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 16, 1996 TAG: 9606140058
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES T. YENCKEL THE WASHINGTON POST
IF you're bound for one of America's many theme or amusement parks this summer, count on screaming louder than ever. Their high-tech, high-speed rides are getting scarier and scarier. And apparently fans couldn't be more delighted.
But one industry powerhouse, the Walt Disney Co., has just opened a quieter, more scholarly theme park within a theme park at its Orlando complex. Called the Disney Institute, it invites you to spend three days or more expanding your artistic creativity or simply learning how to choose the right wine with your meal.
Paramount Parks, which operates Kings Dominion near Richmond, Va., may have hit on a way of curbing long lines. At its popular new skydiving attraction, where participants plunge to earth in a free fall at 60 mph, the park takes reservations on a first-come, first-served basis.
This season has been dubbed the International Year of the Roller Coaster at theme and amusement parks across the country, which are debuting higher, steeper and loopier rides. The big lure nowadays is stand-up roller coasters - riders are strapped in standing upright - and roller coasters that soar and plunge in complete darkness. The ride is even scarier when you can't see the curves ahead.
But the newest adventure ride popping up all over the country puts thrill seekers in bungee-like free falls in a variety of contraptions - including the nearly 150-foot drop to just six feet above the ground on Kings Dominion's Xtreme SkyFlyer. On these rides, you test your courage but without danger to life or limb.
These are among the trends designed to keep the public coming back for more excitement. And they seem to be working. Overall, America's more than 500 amusement and theme parks enjoyed a 5 percent growth in attendance in 1995, according to Susan Mosedale of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions in Alexandria. During the year, an estimated 280 million entrance tickets were sold - a banner year for many parks. A lot of these folks with tickets probably were standing in line in front of you.
There's no questioning the popularity of theme and amusement parks. Last year, Elitch Gardens, Denver's venerable amusement park, moved downtown to substantially expanded quarters not far from the state capitol, and by all accounts the park has greatly brightened the night scene on city center streets. In Las Vegas, some of the big casinos have opened full-fledged theme parks as a way of attracting the family trade. At MGM Grand, you can take a white-water raft ride through a simulated Grand Canyon or walk down the Yellow Brick Road in the Land of Oz while the Wicked Witch hovers overhead.
The nation's theme and amusement parks attract people of all ages, but officials are paying special attention to the country's changing demographics, says Mosedale. As the baby boomers, a big market for the parks, grow older, the parks are adding more sedate attractions along with the scary ones. Look for more live entertainment, more sit-down restaurants and enhanced landscaping, all aimed at more sedentary visitors.
And the parks are concerned about the hassle of long lines, especially during holiday periods, says Mosedale. Many have provided on-site entertainment to help pass the time. At Universal Studios Florida television screens have been placed overhead in the lines, and they show features related to the attraction everybody is waiting to enter. My impression, however, was that few people paid much attention to them, myself included.
Mosedale's organization does not really differentiate between an amusement park and a theme park, because the distinctions have grown blurry. In decades past, an amusement park was a collection of thrill rides - a sort of stationary version of the traveling carnival. But Walt Disney changed the amusement park industry dramatically when he opened an innovation called Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., in 1955.
Disney ``combined color, fantasy and excitement with food, rides and shows, and put that combination into a safe, clean, family environment,'' writes Tim O'Brien, an editor with Amusement Business magazine, ``and the theme park industry as we know it today was born.''
Among the big theme park operators, Universal Studios has opened successful amusement parks in both Hollywood and Orlando featuring TV- and movie-themed rides and entertainment. ``Ride the movies,'' urge the company's ads. At Universal's Orlando park, you can experience a Jaws attack; in Hollywood, you dodge dinosaurs in Jurassic Park - The Ride. And Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando offers much the same thing.
Nowadays themed amusement parks such as Busch Gardens Tampa Bay double as zoos, where gorillas, giraffes and other wild animals live in simulated natural habitats-although the animals must wonder about the roller coaster zipping above their heads. And zoo-like parks, such as Sea World in San Diego, Calif., feature thrill rides as well as dolphin and killer whale shows.
Is Splendid China, an Orlando park re-creating the natural and architectural wonders of China in miniature, a theme park? Mosedale calls it a ``themed attraction,'' and it offers an array of live performances. Even water parks, such as Tampa's Adventure Island, have adopted theming. Its water slides and other water attractions are presented in a tropical Key West setting.
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. At Kings Dominion's popular new skydivingby CNBattraction, participants plunge to earth in a free fall at 60 mph.
Color. 2. The Shockwave, Kings Dominion's stand-up roller coaster,
features a 95-foot drop and a 360-degree loop, which makes riders
feel as if they are standing parallel to the ground. Color. 3.
Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Big Bad Wolf is a suspended roller
coaster that flies through theair at up to 48 mph. Color.