Hard Rock Woes

Ever heard of Hard Rock Park? Probably not, which is why they filed for chapter 11. Hard Rock Park announced on its Web site that it is closed for the season "to allow management to focus on restructuring efforts." The announcement says the park will reopen in 2009. The closure will help the park reduce debt and ensure it can stay around. HRP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which will allow the park to stay open and try to cut back on its debt.

To give you a little background, Hard Rock Park is branded just like the restaurant/hotel chain in terms of theme, except here it is executed on a 140 acre, $400 million dollar amusement park. The star attraction is the B&M sitdown looping coaster "Led Zeppelin: The Ride," a steel machine that is set to the music of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love". The park features six “rock environs” celebrating rock’s culture, lifestyle, legends and irreverence. There's a dark ride called "The Trip" and the theme is, you guessed it, doing drugs and getting high. At an amusement park. Intended for families. Another notable ride is Maximum RPM, the first roller coaster to utilize a Ferris wheel type lift system and karaoke queue line.

Located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the park opened its doors for the first time this past spring with high attendance expectations: 3 million projected the first year. That didn't happen. Not even close. Poor planing did this park in. The rides had surprising low capacity (not that that's mattered thus far). The lack of a proper water ride was a big mistake. They had a water play structure with a dumping bucket that you find at most water parks, which was a stupid choice to put into a dry rides park. And the ticket pricing was probably too high for what the park had to offer.

That is one of the major problems of this park. The pricing versus the perception. Visitors go expecting a bunch of kick-ass rides and leave disappointed and feeling ripped off. There are a few good rides but not a lot of them, and the park is definitely lacking attractions the entire family can enjoy together. When the only major ride that families can experience together is the "Acid Trip Ride" I'm not sure that's going to go over too well! HRP is an amusement park but it's focused on the whole "experience" and it's not just about "the rides." The question is how do you market that?

HRP must have had some amount of operating capital or they would've closed in June. I'm guessing the original game plan was that they hoped to make enough money to operate year-round, even if it was at a net-loss for the first few years. It would seem to me that marketing would be even more important than any one attraction, so I wonder why the plan didn't include one less big attraction and a boat load of cash to sell the park to the world. What probably really happened is that they spent way too much operating the park and made way too little, a bad combination of poor marketing and a perfect storm of economic suckage.

Many people compare Hard Rock's situation to that of the now defunct Wild West World in that a brand new amusement park that opened has financial difficulties right from the start and closes soon after. The major difference is Wild West World was some guy who decided to build an amusement park without a proper business plan. He mortgaged his house and hoped people would come to his park. At least Hard Rock Park has investors.

Hard Rock Park is not going anywhere anytime soon. They just need to make some changes in order to be a viable entertainment option in their market, but it could work if the right balance of price vs. product is reached (see Profit-maximizing blog for more). This park has a lot of potential, it's in a great location where families are already going for vacation, and I think there is too much invested for it to go away. I hope they'll get their act together next year.

The Future of Transportation

Ford builds a car that gets 65mpg but won't sell it in the U.S. for "marketing" reasons. Ford will sell the car in Europe where gas prices may now be the equivalent of fifteen United States dollars per gallon. That's almost five times more than the average here in America, even though the U.S. uses much more barrels of oil per day. Europe uses much less fuel in cars because they have an amazing public transportation system and many people don't even own a car. Buses, subways, trams, trolleys, and high speed railroads are all in use in Europe, and have been around many years.

Why doesn’t this type of public transportation exist in America? The biggest cost in constructing a high speed railway system in America is the infrastructure. The civil engineering. Buying all of the land for the tracks to run on. Most people will be surprised to hear that this crucial step has already been completed. So where is all this land the railway tracks will go? Easy. Four-lane divided highways are the perfect solution. Take half of that divided highway and convert it to two tracks for bullet trains going opposite directions. Take the other half of the highway and paint a double yellow line down the center of it for whatever remaining cars there are and for service vehicles to use. Now Americans can pay their yearly travel pass of $2500 to $3000 and travel anywhere in America. At first $2500 to $3000 is a pretty steep upfront fee. But think about it and how much money would actually be saved by doing it this way: no car insurance, no gas, no car repairs. You could take several trips from coast to coast if you wanted. The possibilities are endless.

What keeps this from happening right now? Money. Not the cost to build the
system, but the money that people have invested in the oil and automobile
industries. The rich will do anything to stay that way and keep other people from becoming rich. The businessmen who have tons of money invested into oil pay lawmakers to keep these railroads and such from happening because it would make them bankrupt.

However, the day will come when a change will be forced upon America. Extremely high gas prices ($15/gallon) or lack of oil/gas altogether, whichever comes first, will force American's to quite driving and invest in public transportation methods. This will happen in our lifetimes.

Job Search has Begun

My search for a full time job has officially begun today. Anyone looking to hire a mechanical engineer? I figure there are basically two schools of jobs I am looking at: The first are "dream jobs." Ones that would be really fun, but farther from home, less pay, and less available. Therefore not very likely to get. The second are the less fun jobs that are more available, closer to home, but they do pay better. I guess the best thing to do is hope for something that is a little of both.

A Day of Volunteering

This past Saturday was a long day. I woke up at 6:45 to do Clean Your Streams at 7:30. Clean Your Streams is where a bunch of organizations get together and clean up the Ottawa River that runs through campus. The entire time we were outside it poured down rain and we got soaked. It was for a good cause though plus we got a free lunch, breakfast, and t-shirts and Sarah won a $25 gift card for gas!

Saturday night from midnight to 6am I got to help out with the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition house! It was a lot of fun. I helped move furniture inside and set things up. It'll be cool when they finally air the show and can say "You see that plant on that end table? Yea, I put that there." And if you don't like the way the great room is set up you can blame it on me as it was my suggestion. We saw all three designers on set the day before (Paul DiMeo, Rib, and Didi), but when I was inside Didi was the only one there and actually doing stuff.



The show on TV is kind of deceiving. They make it look like Ty and the designers are really important, but from what I saw they don't really do anything. Ty was only around for maybe 4 days, basically to get the shots they needed of him at the beginning and end and the rest of the time he was gone. Like I said, Didi was the only designer I saw actually doing something. All the contractors and volunteers do the majority of the work. Amazing accomplishment to get it all together in a few days. I am proud and happy I got to be part of it.

And no I am not going to be on TV, there were no camera crews out when I was working at house, but I'm pretty sure Sarah and I were on the Toledo news.





Pictures here:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2126036&l=42c81&id=30102517

My New Favorite Video

This is my new favorite video. It cracks me up, probably because I have seen this sort of thing personally on my co-ops.
http://www.break.com/index/it-guy-vs-dumb-employees.html

UC Bearcat Mishap

This is a video my brother took at the UC home opener football game during pre-game. Yes, you can laugh, he was ok.