Tuesday, Aug. 05, 2008

Hard Rock Park | A look at the park four months after it opened

Good news for people who want to check out the new Hard Rock Park: Chances are you won't have to sit in traffic to get there or wait in line to ride the rides.

Unfortunately, that's not good news for the park's owners, who opened the world's first rock-and-roll theme park in one of the roughest economic periods in more than a decade.

"It is a really tough summer," said Steven Goodwin, CEO of the $400 million Hard Rock Park, which licenses the brand name from the restaurant chain. "We're seeing people cutting their vacations from seven days to five days to three days, spending less money."

The park, off U.S. 501, doesn't release its attendance numbers, but experts say the slumping economy and cautious consumer spending habits are taking a toll on traffic at Hard Rock and other theme parks around the country this summer.

Theme parks nationwide are seeing attendance flat or down this year - off by as much as 3.5 percent - in a year where families are keeping their credit cards in their wallets and driving less, said Mike Jenkins, president and founder of Dallas-based Leisure and Recreational Concepts Inc.

Six Flags and Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., two major amusement park operators, are going to release their quarterly earnings reports this week, and experts aren't expecting to see encouraging numbers.

"This year will be relatively flat across the board because of gas prices and the economy," said Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services, a Cincinnati-based consulting firm. "This was a tough year for the Hard Rock Park to open up, unfortunately. Poor timing."

Even at The Walt Disney Co. theme parks, which are less prone to fluctuations from high fuel prices, the company said attendance would have been flat if Easter fell in April instead of March.

Plus, some experts say Hard Rock Park's original expectations - 3 million visitors a year - were too high.

"We wish them well and we hope they do hit [their projections,] but, boy oh boy," said Speigel, who has served as president of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions."No other park outside Disney has ever hit 3 million in its first operational year."

Attendance

Hard Rock Park is not just any new tourist attraction in Myrtle Beach. It's been heralded as the mega-attraction that will finally entice hordes of new domestic and international visitors to this regional destination.

So, how is it doing?

Well, executives have backed off previous claims that the park will draw more than 30,000 people a day - a number they touted from early 2006 through the park's opening in April.

"What we always said was that the park could hold up to 30,000 people a day," Goodwin said. "We're not allowed to give projections. We didn't say that the park will do 30,000 per day."

A 2006 news release said "once completed during peak season [the park] will entertain more than 30,000 guests per day."

Tax figures that will give some insight into Hard Rock Park ticket sales will not be available until at least October, said Don Schunk, a research economist with Coastal Carolina University.

Visitors, in the meantime, are enjoying the short wait times for rides.

"It's not usually that crowded. The most we've had to wait is about 15 minutes, and I kind of like it that way," said season passholder Debbie Wilfong of Myrtle Beach. "I'm sure they would like it to be more, but we're never bogged down with a bunch of lines."

Changes

To adjust, the park has reduced its operating hours, lowered ticket prices and scaled back employment.

When it opened in April, executives said the park would hire up to 3,000 people, but they say now it employs about 2,000 at its peak.

The park has fiddled with its prices throughout the year, backing off of its initial $50 price for all ages that kept some local residents and tourists away.

Bill Haralson, an economic and planning consultant for water parks who has worked in the Myrtle Beach market, said he was surprised when he first heard the full ticket price.

"I don't know what else you'd find in Myrtle Beach that would cost you $50," said Haralson, whose firm is based in New Mexico. "A lot of those people who come to Myrtle Beach, they come with their families. They're looking for a bargain wherever they can get it."

The high price could actually drive comparison-shopping families to other attractions, Schunk said.

"They still want to be entertained, they still want to do things, and especially now knowing that the options are more expensive options, when they want to do something they're going to go to Family Kingdom, they're going to go to Wild Water & Wheels, where you can have a great time and spend less than half you would at Hard Rock Park," he said. "That's a huge challenge for Hard Rock Park."

For some park-goers, it's worth the price.

Laura Francis of Roanoke, Va., who has vacationed with her family in Myrtle Beach for years, said she's wanted to come to the park since she first heard about it.

"I was going to find a way to make it happen," she said. "People, it's really funny, they can't make their car payments but they'll go to the baseball game. They have to have their entertainment."

Last week, the park announced it would extend its $45 price for adults and $30 for children age 4 to 9 through Labor Day. Also, Carolina residents can come on Saturdays and Sundays for $39.

Instead of staying open until 1 a.m. through the summer as originally planned, the park has been closing at 11 p.m. since at least mid-July. It will close at 10 p.m. in August and at 7 p.m. after Labor Day. And at this point it plans to open four days a week instead of five in the off-season.

Across the industry, parks are discounting tickets and cutting back hours.

Some parks are offering specials, such as buy-one-get-one-free tickets or charging everyone the children's price, said David Mandt, spokesman for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.

Speigel said this is the earliest in the season he's seen parks offer discounts in a long time.

"It's almost akin to, if you will, what retailers do at Thanksgiving to Christmas if the Thanksgiving sale doesn't get off to a booming start," he said. "They start throwing more sales out there."

Up next

The good news, Goodwin said, was that when people do come through the park's big front gates, they're spending money.

The park is still adding attractions. The most recent addition is a performance stage dubbed Phonehenge - phone booths arranged to mimic the British archaeological attraction Stonehenge.

The park hopes to eventually open daily even in the off-season. But that's at least five to 10 years down the road, Goodwin said.

Word-of-mouth business should start coming in next year, said Jon Binkowski, the park's chief creative officer.

Moving forward, Hard Rock Park needs to identify its base audience and ramp up its advertising, Schunk said.

"They need to figure out exactly how to market themselves, where to do that and to what groups of people," Schunk said. "Once they get all of that stuff squared away, I think they can do very well in this area. By and large they've got a nice product out there."

Haralson criticized Hard Rock Park's initial marketing plan, which was to try to attract as much free media publicity as possible in the first year, according to Kerry Graves, the park's former marketing executive.

"Their focus was too narrow," Haralson said. "You can't spend $400 million on a park and not have a very aggressive marketing strategy. You can't do it."

Goodwin said his team was still trying to figure things out.

"We're a new product," he said. "We're learning how to tell [the public] what we are."