ORLANDO SENTINEL (Florida) 14 November 06 CEO: No scaling back of plans for Gatorland (Christopher Boyd)
Gatorland President and Chief Executive Officer Mark McHugh, 46. McHugh spoke with business reporter Christopher Boyd.
Question: Gatorland suffered a major blow when its entrance hall and gift shop were destroyed by fire last week. How is your staff coping with the loss?
Answer: Our staff is being incredibly strong. We gathered with most of our employees Tuesday morning after the Monday fire and started breaking down this monumental task of opening our park in small, bite-sized pieces, assigning responsibility, and everybody is working extremely hard right now to get our park open Nov. 22.
Q: Were the animals in the park in any way affected?
A: None of our animals in the park were in any way affected. The fire started burning down our walkway, which would have advanced it into the park, but the great skill and effort of Orange County Fire Rescue stopped that fire.
Q: What can you tell us about plans to reopen and rebuild?
A: We're creating a new admission area on the south end of our park, which is where we bring in school groups and corporate events, but that will become our admissions area to the park, and we are right on track to having it opened next week.
Q: Do you expect the park will have a different look when the renovations are complete? What will happen to the trademark alligator jaws entrance?
A: We will definitely have the trademark alligator jaws entrance... The front of the building and the shape of the building may be a little bit different, but we'll start that planning once we get through this huge task of reopening our park. Q: Gatorland, which opened more than 20 years before Walt Disney World, is one of the region's oldest attractions. How does it compete in an age of mega-theme parks?
A: We have to think differently than the mega-theme parks in order to survive as an attraction. We picture ourselves as basically bottom feeders, if you would, picking up on the many, many people that the large theme parks bring into our area, and just try to grab a few hours of their time.
Q: Does Gatorland serve an educational purpose?
A: We serve a lot of educational purposes. We have school groups, thousands of schoolchildren coming in here every year, we have special shows for them. And our Web site has a lot of educational aspects to it.
Q: Do you see a need to align with other small attractions? Should advertising dollars be pooled?
A: We've done a lot of cooperative marketing with some of the smaller attractions in the past. I'm wide open to discussions with these smaller attractions to pooling these marketing dollars. I think that's a very advantageous way of spending our marketing dollars.
Q: How has the park changed over the decades? Are there acts that worked decades ago that are no longer part of the lineup?
A: You must be speaking of our piano-playing chickens in the early days and a number of animal acts like that back in the early days. We've really become more of a natural Florida entertainment-oriented theme park with our crocodile and alligator shows.
Q: Should Gatorland add more interactive equipment?
A: We consider ourselves a low-tech, high-touch attraction. For the one thing, we could never compete with the larger attractions on the quality and the size of some of the technological attractions that they have. We just try to keep things nice and natural and simple.
Q: Before joining Gatorland in 1996, you were an animal trainer, curator and spokesman for SeaWorld. How did that experience prepare you for running Gatorland?
A: At SeaWorld, you know, I worked in the shows and also developing entertainment. I think that's the one significant change that I brought to Gatorland...the focus of entertaining our guests, and giving them fun, smiles and special memories at everything that we do.
Q: You are currently chairman of the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau, which is searching for a replacement for retiring Executive Director Bill Peeper. What are you looking for in a new leader and how is the search going?
A: SearchWide, which is the firm we hired to do this national search, is already in the process of taking candidates and narrowing that field to a very strong list of outstanding executives. The search committee will begin interviews with the top candidates in mid-December.
Q: Orange County raised its resort tax by a penny in September, greatly increasing money available for tourist development efforts. Any thoughts on how the money should be spent?
A: The majority of that money is going to go to leisure marketing and advertising. We also have some of it allocated for convention sales and marketing. Our task with the Convention & Visitors Bureau is to take that new money and use it in the most effective manner that we can to drive total visitation to Central Florida.
Q: Universal Orlando just announced it would bring the Blue Man Group to its park. Walt Disney World has Cirque du Soliel. If Gatlorland were to add a big ticket show, what would it be?
A: The Green Gator Man show, if it was a big ticket item. We really stay low-key with some country bands now and again. We keep our entertainment a little lower key than that.
Q: Have you ever wrestled an alligator?
A: I've wrestled an alligator a couple of times. They don't let me do it that much because they think I would get bit, which wouldn't be out of the ordinary.
No scaling back of plans for Gatorland