By Glen Korstrom
Reports that the Dinotown amusement park is headed for extinction are greatly exaggerated.
Yes, owner Rob Ell sold the 18-acre cartoon dinosaur theme park east of Chilliwack to developer Tri-R Development Group last year in a multimillion-dollar transaction. Tri-R takes possession of the park at the end of September and plans to build an RV park.
But Ell plans to reopen a Dinotown theme park in either Burnaby or Surrey within the next year. He then wants to franchise his brand worldwide.
“We’re going to take this thing global,” Ell told Business in Vancouver after a weekend when he had three times the number of customers as usual.
“We’re looking for area developers all over the world. We’re looking at China, India and the Philippines. We’re in discussions with people in those countries already.”
Ell sold the business when he had a brain tumour and thought he was going to die. But successful surgery and recuperation have given him the confidence to continue in the competitive amusement park business.
This time, he wants to lease land for his Lower Mainland site and sell licensing rights for foreign developers to operate sister theme parks.
It will be an uphill battle, but theme park consultant and Management Resources principal David Schmitt said Ell is smart to consider expanding to Asia.
That’s where the big growth is taking place, said California-based Schmitt, who has been in the industry for decades and provided consulting advice to the B.C. government during Expo 86.
A major challenge for Ell will be to get Asian site developers and consumers and interested in what has thus far been a B.C.-only phenomenon.
Ell’s parents bought the rights to operate a Flintstones at Bedrock City theme park on the Dinotown site in 1975.
In 1994, a few years after Turner Broadcasting System bought Hanna-Barbera Productions Inc., Turner yanked the Ells family’s right to use the Flintstones’ intellectual property, and Ells was forced to either close or rebrand.
“It was like getting out of a McDonald’s franchise to create Joe’s Burgers,” Ells said. “[Turner] said they owned the modern Stone Age intellectual property, so we couldn’t do anything with a caveman theme.”
Ells created a family of dinosaurs that includes dad Dusty Bones, mom Dina, kids Dee Dee, Dexter and Baby Bones and pet Flapper.
The park continued to operate profitably despite relying largely on summer visitors.
Interest in dinosaurs is clear given that the U.K. production Walking with Dinosaurs, which includes life-sized creatures, attracted thousands of people to Vancouver’s Rogers Arena on August 26.
Dinotown’s success might also partly be because cartoon-oriented theme parks have stood the test of time. According to Themed Entertainment Association statistics, the Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) operates the world’s eight most-visited theme parks, including sites in Tokyo, Japan and Paris suburb Marne-la-Vallée.
Other kinds of theme parks have had their ups and downs.
For example, the number of waterslide parks in B.C. has dropped sharply, even though Bridal Falls Waterpark owner Kevin Demers told BIV that the activity is popular and he has no plans to close his park.
Demers owns eight RV parks, including one that neighbours his waterslide facility.
He bought the waterslide venture three years ago, because “it’s always easier to get along with your neighbour if you are your neighbour.”
He had anticipated that he would tear out the waterslides and expand his RV park, but waterslide profits have thus far kept him from doing that.
Speculation that Tsawwassen’s Splashdown Park, which bills itself as “Greater Vancouver’s only waterslide park,” might close for redevelopment also excites Demers because he believes he will pick up many of that park’s customers.
The biggest trend currently is for adventure playgrounds that include ziplines and obstacle courses (see “Ziplines lead adventure tourism growth” – issue 1085; August 10-16).
Whistler-based ZipTrek Ecotours’ zipline across Robson Street wowed tourists during the 2010 Olympic Games. The company now has permanent operations in Whistler and in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Grouse Mountain also has ziplines, and WildPlay co-owners Tom Benson and Gordon Ross launched outdoor adventure sites with ziplines in Whistler, Nanaimo and Victoria before opening a fourth play park in Maple Ridge in July.
Benson said that, by the end of 2011, his company will launch:
- two more Metro Vancouver locations;
- another two B.C. locations outside Metro Vancouver; and
- one in one of the Prairie provinces.
Meanwhile, the City of Coquitlam announced in August that it’s seeking feedback on the possibility of building a forest adventure playground in the tree canopy at Mundy Park.