New Darien Lake owners will emphasize local flavor
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The new owners, PARC Management, have renamed the amusement park “Darien Lake Theme Park Resort” and unveiled a new logo and website that, according to the company, reflects the new “regional focus” of the park. The 2007 season will include new attractions, including Le Grand Cirque, a comedy magician, new midway stage performances, and a nightly laser show called “LaserBlast.” Darien Lake will also showcase more local vendors.
Read more and see video from WSYR/Syracuse.
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New food choices took a bow Wednesday: Sahlen’s hot dogs, French roast coffee by S.J. McCullagh and whipped topping and pastries from Rich Products. These Buffalo companies were joined by Red Osier of Stafford, which will serve beef on weck.
“We have been part of Genesee County for 75 years,” said Rob Moore, owner of Red Osier, as he dipped beef slices into broth. He said he was glad his business, near the park, now has a licensing agreement to serve at a waterfront stand. “It’s kind of like Goliath and Goliath meeting up,” he said.
The changes are intended to make the park more family-friendly, said Parks, who came from Jacksonville, Fla., for Wednesday’s news conference. He said he revamped park prices after receiving complaints that they were too high. New this year is a $20 ticket after 5 p.m. to the 10 p.m. close. To encourage grandparents to bring children, senior citizen admission is the same as the one for children shorter than 48 inches: $25.
Parking will drop from $10 to $7. Beer will be $4.50 instead of $6. And a pepperoni pizza by Rich Products will be $17. Last year, another national brand sold pizzas for $25 and higher.
“We feel the opportunity with this is just incredible,” Parks said. The Parc firm bought Darien Lake along with six other amusement parks for $312 million from Six Flags, the brand name applied to Darien Lake for the last eight years. Parc then did a sale/leaseback with CNL Properties, a real estate investment trust, and now holds a long-term lease on the Darien Lake property.
The amusement park trade is old, said Parks, but still appealing. “It’s a business you get to re-create each year because it opens and closes.”
Local brands are good because the regional public is fimilar with them.
The prices, I'm still not too happy about. They dropped parking back to its 2005 price, but it's STILL too high. It should be maybe $5.00.
The fact that they're also still charging about $30.00 for admission (discounted), and the food prices are still on the high-side... it would be justifiable if they had new rides to compliment this, but they haven't recieved a new dry flat non-upcharge ride since 2001 (yes, it's been that long).
Laserblast has been around since 1992, so I don't know why they say it's something "new", when only the display show is new, but that's the case every year.
The Cirque De... will not draw any new guests to the park, however it will draw guests BACK to the park, or give them a reason to stay in the park.
Overall, I'm content with what's going on now. I like the new shows, I love the new logo. However, there's still a TON of room for improvement including:
- new rides
- lower prices yet
- a long-term plan laid out for the public
- mention of general improvements such as paint jobs, lighting, lighting, and overall 'theme'.
The idea of going local with your vendors, that is a HUGE win for PARC. The regional qualities of the SF parks had been pretty much eliminated, and was one of the things that made each park "unique and special". Great move, IMO. :)
Only thing thats updated is the new website look and shows on the home page. I like their webiste it looks inviting.
I know they need time to get the website up and operating, just that the first thing I would be showing is park hours. otherwise people do not know when to plan for their outings and they would lose business in the beginning of the season because of it. *** This post was edited by Cs6153 4/14/2007 9:37:50 AM ***
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