Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009
A rollercoaster ride:
An insider's view of Hard Rock Park
Hard Rock Park's guitar statue greeted visitors as they entered the park on April 21, 2008. - Photo by Abby Sink, Art Director.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. No, this is not “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, this story happened right here in our beloved Myrtle Beach.
Right under our noses, Hard Rock Park was opened and filed for bankruptcy in a matter of months and looked to be a black eye on the history of Myrtle Beach, but thanks to FPI MB Entertainment, now looks to be back and ready to roll for 2009. The park, which was one-of-a-kind and was supposed to put Myrtle Beach on the amusement park map, came and went in a little less than two years, although it appears to be back on track.
When it was conceived, it seemed like the Hard Rock Park was greeted with excitement, eagerness and skepticism from the Grand Strand. It seemed like everyone had opinions about what the park should be. It seemed like everyone heard rumors about the rides, attractions and the concerts that would be held at “the world’s first rock ’n’ roll theme park.”
I heard that Elton John was going to play at the park.
I heard that Led Zeppelin would have a reunion tour, playing at the park to embark on a U.S. tour.
I heard that U2 had a rollercoaster being built inside the park.
And I heard that if you live within hearing distance of the shrieking coaster passengers and the ear-piercing heavy metal concerts, you would receive a free annual pass.
It seemed like the Grand Strand was buzzing with what the Hard Rock Park was supposed to be, what the Hard Rock Park would bring to the Grand Strand and how the park was going to transform Myrtle Beach as we once knew it.
That’s why I had to work for the Hard Rock Park, no matter what it would take.
Like many Grand Strand 20-somethings who have left their crappy hometowns, I moved to Myrtle Beach to experience life without snow. Life without a pre-determined fate that I would graduate college, get married, have children and do exactly what every other person that I had gone to high school with would do.
Only one problem; it had been almost seven years since I left that crappy, snowy, close-minded hometown and had begun wasting away in the South Carolina sun, waiting tables and throwing away hard-earned dollars like Pac-Man Jones in a strip club.
Enter Hard Rock Park.
I interviewed for the Marketing Coordinator position in March of 2007. I had a call back to work a special event for the park when the Backstage Tour opened in April and had a great time picking up dirty plates and taking out trash from the V.I.P. tent at one of the greatest parties Myrtle Beach had ever seen.
I kept bugging Kerry Graves, the V.P. of Marketing, and anyone in the Human Resources Department via emails and voicemails for months until finally in late May, I was chosen out of a field of more than 500 applicants.
Bonita Lloyd, V.P. of Human Resources, called me to personally give me the good news. The bad news was that the position started at $28,000. The worse news was that I would only get paid once a month.
But you know what? I was tired of selling my soul to the devil for cash. I was sick and tired of taking verbal abuse from Joe Redneck from West Virginia about how he didn’t like his meal and wanted something for free. I was sick of hearing how in New York, every restaurant is better and “I would never survive in New York” as some lady once bluntly put it to me as I waited on her and her husband on Christmas day.
I will take this job and I’ll run like the wind. I will put every ounce of my being into the Hard Rock Park because at the end of the day, I will be a part of something special that nobody can take away from me. I will open “the world’s first rock ’n’ roll theme park.”
It was like I had died and gone to cool-job heaven. Yes, it was an office job but not like any office you had ever seen before. As soon as you walked in the front doors of the reception area there was a 12-piece Ludwig drum set staring at you, baiting you as if to say “I bet you can’t play me like Gene Simmons did when he dropped by for a visit last year.” Even though Simmons is known for his prowess on bass guitar, he jammed
out on the Ludwig set like KISS drummer Peter Criss circa 1975 in Detroit. Surrounding the drum set were two Fender six-string guitars and one bass guitar, hooked up to Fender amps and ready jam.
Everywhere you looked were pictures of rock ’n’ roll gods and goddesses. If you had a wall behind your desk, you could turn your invisible cubicle into something like a dorm room of utter and complete metal mayhem.
The dress code was the best of all. Nobody dared wearing a tie to work for fear that Steven Goodwin, the park’s CEO, would come up behind you with scissors and cut it off. My daily attire was a T-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. In fact, the only daily dilemma that kept me frozen in my closet was whether to wear my Nike Jordans or my Air Force Ones.
It was great being on the inside of the hottest thing to hit Myrtle Beach since the inception of the golf ball. It was awesome sitting at my desk right next to the table where the Hard Rock Park forefathers would sit to brainstorm and plan what were then the most vital decisions that would lay the groundwork for the park’s opening.
It was cool to be one of the first people to hear about the Eagles’ grand opening concert. It was surreal to have a conversation with Graeme Edge, the drummer of the Moody Blues, about the photography of the band’s 1968 record, “In Search of the Lost Chord” and how he remembers smoking “a good bit of hash” the day of the photo shoot. And it was hilarious to see the faces of Kid Rock and Reverend Run as they veered through the twists and turns of their first whirl of Led Zeppelin-The Ride.
It was hard to keep tight-lipped about everything that was going on and all of the things that I knew, but couldn’t tell. Friends would call to ask about recent rumors they had heard through the Myrtle Beach social grapevine. Kent Kimes, Editor of Weekly Surge, emailed me to get information about the Grand Opening event, but I couldn’t breathe a word.
I was doing spots on the radio and was filmed in television commercials. I used to hit the streets with thousands of concert posters, passing them out to any business that would display them in their windows and because most business owners felt the Hard Rock Park would eventually bring them business, they kindly obliged.
I used to parade the Grand Strand with tens of thousands of dollars worth of admission tickets that hotels and resorts had purchased, even once coming to the realization that I had more than $50,000 worth of tickets on me. That was almost twice my annual salary.
We were invited to participate in parades and make public appearances at different events. We were the newest group of celebrities to hit the beach and once the Bear Metal Family jumped out on the scene, it was official. Kids would flock to take pictures with the bears as if they had grown up watching them on TV all of their lives.
Yes, the year prior to the opening of “the world’s first rock ’n’ roll theme park” was one of the best years of my life. The best of times.
And then the Hard Rock Park opened its doors to the public.
My first assignment once the doors opened was to poll visitors coming out of the park, asking for their opinions and compiling the daily results. The opinions were shockingly profane – almost to the point of being abusive.
Many people said they would never come back, but mostly because it was a money issue. People came in expecting Six Flags and left feeling sodomized by the lack of rides and the countless retail and food outlets throughout the park.
The park itself, as wonderful as it had seemed on paper, was just not worth the $50 + tax that it was going for. A family of four would have to pay more than $230 with taxes and parking just to walk through the gates.
Now I’m not a genius, but one thing I do know is the mind frame of the average Myrtle Beach tourist. They want things at a discount rate, if not for free. I’m sorry Joe Redneck from West Virginia, but that’s how it is and everyone knows it.
Shortly after opening, you could tell that there was a giant elephant in the room that nobody really wanted to talk about. The park’s daily attendance was not even a fraction of the 25,000 that was expected and the vise was tightening on everyone on the inside.
Toward the end of June, the powers that be held a week of late-night meetings to brainstorm what the park could do to get more guests. The observation was made that the ticket prices were too high, so the park dropped the price to $30 for Carolina residents only.
Soon after, the Marketing Department spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on billboard advertising and began giving away annual passes to local residents in the service industry. They even hired a gang of misfits to cover the Grand Strand area to litter the beach with Hard Rock Park materials from 5-foot cardboard cutouts of Winston the Bulldog, to children’s coloring books. But it was too little, too late.
By the start of July and almost two months of being open, the Hard Rock Park was in a downward spiral of proportions that could not be saved. After one year and one month of employment from “the world’s first rock ’n’ roll theme park,” I quit. It just wasn’t fun anymore. The lights went down and I lost the faith.
I didn’t know that the Hard Rock Park would go bankrupt at the time, but what I did know is that it was no longer a fun working environment. The Titanic-sized job that I dropped everything for was sailing straight toward a huge iceberg and I’m glad now that I wasn’t one of the passengers who clung to dear life while the boat sank.
After hearing of the mass firings of my former fellow co-workers, I was very sad. I immediately thought of the people who had uprooted their whole families and moved to Myrtle Beach to open the park. People like Ed Salter, who quit King’s Dominion and moved his family to Myrtle Beach to be the park’s IT manager.
I thought about Phil Liggett, who was the VP of Food and Beverage for Canada’s Wonderland in Toronto and moved his wife and six kids out of the country to Myrtle Beach to take the same position with Hard Rock Park.
But most of all, I felt sorry for the thousands of people who were employed by the park and were promised the world and not given anything in return. Their stories will never be told, but the hardships of losing a job at the drop of a hat will live with them for a long time.
When it all boils down, if you ask me, resources were wasted as if you had just given a stimulus check to a frat boy. Although the park raised $400 million, they didn’t look toward the future, in my opinion. May 8, 2008, was the deadline for the park’s opening and the forefathers used every dollar that they could to make sure it opened on time. The only problem was that they didn’t have enough resources to go at least one more, obviously, or I don’t believe they would have filed for bankruptcy.
Or did they? The questions arise at what the hell happened to $400 million? Some say that it didn’t use all $400 million and had some on reserve for upgrades and renovation, but I truly believe there was no more money available.
So, what happens to the Waccamaw Pottery outlet buildings? An investor bought the property last year for around $23 million in hopes of building a Market Common type of atmosphere located directly across from Hard Rock Park. A purchase that one would think just took a breath of fresh air, now that there is new ownership.
There are so many questions, but so few answers. I have often used the line from “A Field of Dreams” when I try to tell people how the demise of Hard Rock Park happened so quickly. The forefathers created an amusement park and thought “if we build it, they will come.” Well, after a vacation to Orlando last year, I understand how that is the mentality in the town that Walt Disney built. And since that was where the park’s forefathers hailed from, that was their mentality.
I am very sorry to say that Myrtle Beach is not Orlando. With the label of “the Redneck Riviera,” it’s obvious to everyone that you cannot penetrate this market without knowing it. I think that goes with everything, though. If you do not know the lay-of-the-land, how can you explore it, let alone capitalize on it?
I hope that all goes well with FPI MB Entertainment and what was once was known as the Hard Rock Park. I hope that the corner of George Bishop Parkway and Hard Rock Parkway will succeed in time and the Myrtle Beach area will profit because of it.
The town embraced the park and made it a centerpiece for a lot of its out-of-market advertising. It seemed like everywhere you looked last summer, Hard Rock Park was being thrown in your face. I’m glad that at least somebody bought it and is trying to make it succeed. It would be terrible if the Grand Strand would have to say “sorry, but we just couldn’t do it right.”
Click here for previous cover stories