The Rollercoaster Area Featuring the Cast of Scooby-Doo - Case Study Example

1 Movie Property a Scooby-Doo Mystery Cave b In this ride and attraction, guests will be able to explore the funhouse style ride on foot with an optional mystery game to those that wish to play before entering into the rollercoaster area featuring the cast of Scooby-Doo. Upon leaving the feature through either the Scooby-Doo fun house or rollercoaster exit, guests will walk through a gift shop and restaurant themed area. c The core features of this updated section will include a family friendly funhouse where families with younger children unable to go on the rollercoaster will be able to enjoy the Scooby-Doo area. The new gift shop will feature a wide variety of Scooby-Doo merchandise from the original cartoon to the feature films that play a large role in the design of the rollercoaster. In the restaurant themed area, guests will be able to watch Scooby-Doo while enjoying foods that are reminiscent of the series. 2 Movie World Proposal Outline a The core concept involved with creating this additional area surrounding the current Scooby-Doo attraction is that many younger fans may visit the park without being tall or brave enough to enjoy the ride as it is today. Being able to create an area that is more family friendly to those families with younger children will allow for them to experience an area that is designed with them in mind. Also, this will offer an interior space where rollercoaster riders are able to explore before entering the line. Guests entering the Mystery Cave will be offered a small booklet that will guide their adventure within the space to help the Scooby-Doo gang solve a mystery using clues from the area. A small amount of park staff will be located within the area to offer more clues to those that are truly stuck as upset patrons would not add to the ambiance. There will also be an option to just explore the space without participating in the mystery. The gift store and restaurant will offer televisions to guests showing Scooby-Doo cartoons and movies. Adding the gift store with merchandise and restaurant, will add to the potential profit of the area as guests going through this area will not be able to exit without walking through it. Park staff located throughout the whole area will be dressed as characters from the franchise or in clothing of similar design to add to the fun of it. b The area that is to be redeveloped surrounds the current Scooby-Doo rollercoaster, the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster. 3 Project Detail a Detailed outline of concept i The key features of this newly developed area will be the mystery funhouse area that is conducive to younger children, families and those individuals that are not as into the more intense rollercoaster. This area will heavily feature that mystery that guests are able to try their skills at solving, but will have the option of just being explored by those guests that are not interested in solving the clues. As the guests are exploring the area they will encounter staff members that are dressed up as their favourite Scooby-Doo characters that will either provide further assistance on clues that guests are having a hard time deciphering along with being a part of the clues themselves. The atmosphere of this area of the ride will be slightly less spooky to accommodate the younger children that may be too afraid if it was portrayed in the same vein as the rollercoaster. After solving the mystery, the family will be presented with an award page stating that they completed the area with highlights about the teamwork and effort put into the activity to create a fun and educational experience especially for the younger guests. Following the Mystery Cave experience, guests will be able to enter the rollercoaster area or avoid it depending on preference. The remaining portion of their experience in the realm of Scooby-Doo will culminate with a trip through the gift shop offering a large selection of Scooby-Doo items. This will include items that proclaim the person wearing them that they are part of the gang in solving mysteries or other sentiments to remember their experience that day. The restaurant area will resemble a diner that the Scooby-Doo gang might have visited during their travels with television sets featuring all things Scooby-Doo. The restaurant area will offer menu items such as Scooby Snacks, multiple layered sandwiches named after the characters similar to those shown on the cartoons and fun beverage options suitable for the whole family. ii The main characters that will be a part of this ride include Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne. Supporting characters for this ride can include the different villains featured in the cartoon. Guest stars may be an option, but would add considerable effort to being able to use the celebrity images such as Phyllis Diller, Batman, the Harlem Globetrotters and others that have been featured in the cartoon. b The main difference this attraction will have in comparison to the current set-up is that it will not alienate certain guests from being able to enjoy some of their favourite characters. Scooby-Doo is very appealing to younger children, but normally they would be unable to experience the ride due to height and weight factors along with the scariness involved with the current ride. It will be an expansion upon an already popular ride that will offer a cool environment to escape the heat and use problem solving skills, logic and games to decide who the culprit is in true sleuthing style. This will create a different type of experience that is able to be repeated on other visits using different clues to get to a different solution. The addition of the gift shop is a perfect place for fans of all ages to stock up on their favourite items. The experience of eating in the restaurant will not only encourage children to relax as they are able to watch Scooby-Doo as their parents finish the meal, but will offer a unique experience not to be repeated elsewhere. c The facilitation plan will need to be orchestrated in multiple steps. The first stage will be to design the different portions of this project in a way that coordinates with the current rollercoaster in place. This will be even more important if the second option is utilized with just expanding on the current area rather than moving it to a new section of the park that could be opened up. The gift shop and restaurant will be based on a basic layout used in other portions of the park. The funhouse portion will need to be designed in conjunction with the creative team that will be in charge of creating the mystery that guests will solve during their experience. It will be important that the design be specific towards the mystery while allowing for future mysteries to be created making sure that this will not become obsolete with returning guests. Offering a new mystery every six months or every year can help to push people back into the park that enjoyed their experience the first time around. This can also help to bring in school groups on a yearly basis. Next will come the construction phase which will include closing the existing ride. It will be necessary to begin by determining the area that this will be expanded towards and blockading this area off from the general public. Signs advertising the new attraction can be put up to ask the public to excuse the mess during construction of the fun expansion coming in the future. During this phase, it will be a good time to go over the existing ride to determine if there are any sections that require repair, updating any upholstery on the seats and other general maintenance that can help to spruce up the area to match the newer portions being built. As the area is being constructed in-housing postings of open positions can be interviewed for and about a month before the grand opening of the new attraction the remaining open posts can be open to the general public. The last process will be staging the area with wall art, benches, and other objects that will add to the area along with putting the finishing touches on the gift shop and restaurant. d The Human Resources considerations will be rather large for this endeavour as it will create more areas that will need to be staffed adequately, especially the funhouse portion of the Mystery Cave as they will play a key role within that area. There will need to be hiring for each of these areas in a variety of positions. Those that want to work within the Mystery Cave as Scooby-Doo characters should have some experience with acting or those without experience should be able to demonstrate their ability to get into character while helping patrons with all their questions. These questions could be anything from inquiring about wait times, clue interpretation opinions about the ride, and even what the special of the day at the Scooby-Doo Diner is that day. There also needs to be support staff available to keep this portion of the attraction clean, especially since guests will be provided with pencil and a booklet to complete the mystery quest. The gift shop will need to be staffed with enough people to handle two registers, keeping the store stocked and customer support for questions. Staff members working in the gift shop should already be familiar with the Scooby-Doo brand and interested in sharing their knowledge with guests. The restaurant area will need to be staffed with cooks, support kitchen staff, waiter staff, and greeters. Hiring will be more heavily weighted to those individuals that have previous restaurant experience. Current staff will be given preference for these open positions first before these positions will be open to the general public. e The physical considerations within facility deals with the fact that this building is more centrally located rather than off to the side where it could be expanded into a new area. Due to this restraint there are two potential options to be had for expanding this ride. One option would be to take down the ride in the current location and move it to a new section of the park that would expand the overall park. The second option is more cost effective in that it will take up the portion of sidewalk to the side past the current isle of landscaping and small building along with expanding the front of the building towards the sidewalk. While this will cut down on space for the sidewalk, it will add to the overall square footage by offering areas where guests can sit and relax before continuing their day within the park, an additional restaurant choice, more shopping and a fun activity. f The justification in spending the money to upgrade this area is that it will provide another option for family friendly entertainment within the park. Not all of the guests that will visit, especially tourists, will be completely enticed into the park by just a rollercoaster. On that note, it is true that a unique experience as being proposed here can help to bring in more tourists as this will add another enticing aspect to the park for those that are not thriller seekers which will help to add to the value of they see in purchasing a ticket. Plus, it will be offering something new that local guests will be interested in visiting to check out for the first time. Continuing to update the mystery that is offered in the Mystery Cave will entice individuals back even after they have completed the mystery on a previous visit as they will get another chance to use the clues to figure out the new culprit. Offering a beloved children’s character only in a format suitable for older children, teens and adults cuts out a large part of the character’s audience, and parents may not want to deal with whining children that they cannot take part in the Scooby-Doo area. It makes sense to expand the ride to help better accommodate those that cannot or are unable to ride the current attraction. 4 Considerations a The consideration of intellectual properties rights are not a big concern when it comes to the Scooby-Doo brand itself. The issue comes into play with the concept, as it will be important to determine if there are any other entities that have a similar product as the Mystery Cave funhouse portion of the ride. Also, it will be important to check about getting any permissions to use the images of the special guest stars, such as Batman or the Harlem Globetrotters that were frequently guests of the show. Dealing with potential royalties and licensing issues may make it seem more reasonable to exclude these characters. According to Groves (1997), “Royalty terms should not be discussed until the terms of the licence have been agreed, otherwise the licensee is agreeing to pay before he knows what he is getting” (p. 123). b According to Strader (2010), “If the use is for commercial purposes, it is less likely to be found to be fair use” (p. 44). Therefore, it would be highly important to take the appropriate measures to ensure no copyright infringement occurs with any of the licensing or brands that are used in the updated ride. As Warner Bros. Animation does own the rights to the franchise this may not be a very big problem, but if any additional guest stars are featured in the attraction it may be prudent to determine if there would be any copyright infringement upon their inclusion. It may be easier to just leave that particular person off of the ride rather than trying to negotiate for the rights to use them. c The marketing for the updates should be heaviest on those individuals that come with families or have indicated in past data gathering that they are not as interested in the more thrilling rides at the park. This will be a good initial demographic to go towards. The marketing campaign can start early in the process to start building some buzz about these new additions. The branding should be consistent with the park’s overall brand of providing great family entertainment that offers something for the whole family to enjoy. Emphasising that there is something for everyone in the new exhibit will be beneficial to bringing new and previous visitors to the park to experience something completely new while still having the same great quality that visitors have come to expect. d One of the biggest considerations in this product is the visitors themselves. The first important agenda piece to remember is that it will not be good for business to create any problems stemming from the construction project. Keeping the designated walking areas around the construction site free of debris, equipment and workers will help to make their visit a little more pleasant. Signage can also be helpful to let them know about the exciting changes coming to the property. For those visitors that are completely unhappy, management is able to give coupons or other incentives to visit the park again in the future to try to turn the visit around. 5 Focus Group Reflection a The focus group that will be used to test this proposal will consist of both individuals at the park willing to participate in a survey and online contacts that have signed up to receive emails from the park. A survey will be issued going over the different points of the new update to see how favourable it appears to the consumer. This focus group will be comprised of locals, individuals from around Australia and foreign-based individuals to help determine if any groups find this more favourable than others, and how attractive it is to each group. The survey will consist of short questions that demonstrate a clue, give an idea of the layout and other features to see how positive or negative an item is viewed. b The positive feedback focused mainly upon the ingenuity of the new plan to update the Scooby-Doo rollercoaster to make it friendlier towards families with young children and non-thrill seekers that visit the park. Many of the responses indicated that they would be interested in visiting this new attraction even if they had previously visited the park in the past. Focus group members were very satisfied with the fact that the Mystery Cave activity is optional. The potential for a new eating area also received very positive feedback in offering another option besides the usual theme park fare. The gift shop has positive results in that it would offer items to memorialize the day spent at the park emphasised with characters from Scooby-Doo, such as t-shirts, mugs, calendars, and postcards. c The negative feedback received through this survey included a few different topics. For one, many guests did not want to have to deal with construction on an upcoming visit. Many responded that they felt like changing a good think may decrease the fun value that it had in the past for the thrill seekers. Other focus groups responses included a worry that the activity would be repetitive and no longer fun after the first visit. Also, consumers responded that they felt that menu prices in the restaurant may be higher than they are willing to pay and are worried that the food quality would not be very good. It was additionally noted that gift shop items may be priced too high compared to other sources for the same items, such as DVD collections and books. d In summary, this focus group will be used to better hone the proposal idea in order to make it something that the public is very interested in seeing brought to life in the park. Consumer feedback can help to spot any potential negatives that can be brought up in the focus group process and turn them around into a positive. Also, any positives that are found during this process can be spotlighted during the marketing phase to make the ride more attractive to potential visitors. This information will ensure that this project is worth the time, money and effort that will be put into updating a ride that does attract visitors. References Groves, P. (1997). Intellectual property rights and their valuation: a handbook for bankers, companies and their advisers. Cambridge: Gresham Books. Strader, T. J. (2010). 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