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Theme Park Plans Test Of Weekend Schedule

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By TED JACKOVICS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 29, 2008

TAMPA - Last year, Cypress Gardens Adventure Park suffered the dry spells of early fall when as few as 50 to 200 visitors attended on weekdays.

This year, the Winter Haven theme park is doing something about it and following the lead of other regional parks that expand and contract with the seasons.

Cypress Gardens will open only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in September, park officials said Monday, and they are considering the same strategy for October.

It is the latest plan for Florida's first major commercial attraction, whose success for a period of nearly 50 years since its opening in 1936 has been challenged by operating in the shadow of major theme parks in Orlando and Tampa.

Cypress Gardens joins Silver Springs in Ocala and Weeki Wachee Springs in Hernando County in closing on various days during slow months, when daily attendance can fall short of 200, the number of employees needed to operate the park.

"We are doing this obviously to ensure we will be around," said Haley Kish, Cypress Gardens' public relations manager. "We do have a great outlook on the future."

In recent years, a succession of new owners has contended with troubles ranging from hurricane damage to faltering attendance, relying on rides focused toward families in a pristine Florida setting that features its still-renowned gardens and water ski show.

Yet despite its location off the main tourism track, Cypress Gardens can survive the conventional wisdom that has written an ending to the storied park's history every few years since founder Dick Pope Sr. sold it to Harcourt Brach Jovanovich Inc. in 1985.

"A park closing during off seasons is not unusual if there is not enough attendance to justify a full staff," said Paul Ruben, North American editor of Park World, a theme park industry journal.

Ruben says there are several throughout the Northeast that succeed on limited spring and summer peak season schedules.

In Central Florida, Weeki Wachee will close on Mondays and Tuesdays in September and Monday through Wednesday from October through December. Silver Springs will be closed for eight weekdays in August, 17 days in September and October, 14 in November and nine in December.

"What Cypress Gardens faces is not unusual for a regional park - unlike major theme parks in destination resorts like Orlando and Southern California - in that once children return to school, attendance depends on adults without children and seniors," Ruben said. "It makes perfect sense to limit the number of days regional parks are open."

Cypress Garden's current attendance problems have less to do with the poor economy and high gasoline prices than with the fact that it relies primarily on a local draw in the autumn, Kish said. She said Cypress Gardens draws largely from a 50-mile radius, in particular from Polk County.

The park does not release attendance figures, customary for the industry. However, attendance reportedly averaged about 800,000 annually in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before the park closed in April 2003. At the time, attendance reportedly fell by 42,000 in March that year to an undisclosed number, then-park president Bill Reynolds said at the time.

A Georgia entrepreneur, Kent Buescher, purchased Cypress Gardens and reopened it later in 2003, but the park suffered $25 million in hurricane damage in 2004 that Buescher could not recover from insurance.

The most recent ownership group, a Mulberry real estate company that bought Cypress Gardens in October for $16.8 million after Buescher was forced to put the park into a bankruptcy auction, said the park drew 82,248 visitors in December, down from 99,283 in December 2006.

"I think with the proper marketing, Cypress Gardens will have an audience that obviously won't be as big as the major parks, but it can be affordable compared with the others," Ruben said. Adult tickets are $39.95, a little more than half the price of Walt Disney World.

"I believe the economy will have more impact on destination resorts in Central Florida and Southern California than on regional parks like Busch Gardens Tampa Bay and even Cypress Gardens," Ruben said. "I will be very curious to see what Disney reports in its earnings in a few days to see if they are holding up well."

Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at (813) 259-7817 or tjackovics@tampatrib.com.

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