Ed Hart talks about Magic Springs / Kentucky Kingdom

HOT SPRINGS — During the 1990s, Ed Hart worked to build up the Kentucky Kingdom amusement park in Louisville. The park, which had been closed, became a fast-growing attraction and eventually was sold and renamed Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom.

 

Last week, Hart recalled viewing in the late ’ 90s the closed Magic Springs theme park in Hot Springs when it was run-down, vandalized and filled with weeds. "We saw well past the weeds and the run-down buildings," he said. "We had done it once before in Kentucky, and we thought we could do it again... if we struck the right public-private partnership."

 

The Hot Springs park — with a new water park — reopened in 2000 and is operated by Louisville-based Themeparks LLC, with Hart as the largest investor. Hot Springs voters, meanwhile, have supported public bond financing for the park.

 

As Magic Springs & Crystal Falls prepares for its 2005 season, Hart has thus far been rewarded for his vision.

 

The park had more than 403,000 visitors in 2004, an increase of about 38 percent from a year earlier.

 

So is Magic Springs headed the way of Kentucky Kingdom — under new ownership? Hart wouldn’t rule out selling the Hot Springs park, but said that is not the plan. "We are thinking that this is the ideal... reasonably priced, first-class, family attraction that we can build out in the years to come," he said. "And that’s what we’re focused on. We’re not focused on selling the facility."

 

About $35 million has been invested in the park, said Dan Aylward, president of Themeparks LLC and Magic Springs.

 

Additions besides Crystal Falls include the Timberwood Amphitheater and concert series that debuted in 2003 and The Gauntlet, a suspended, looping roller coaster, arriving in 2004. Plummet Summit, which is to feature boats that plunge down a chute to create a splash, is expected to be open for Memorial Day weekend.

 

The Arkansas Twister, a wooden roller coaster familiar to many Arkansans, is operat- ing again and stands as a link to Magic Springs’ earlier days.

 

Steve Arrison, executive director of the Hot Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Magic Springs is again an important part of tourism in the area. "It’s a park that sort of matches Hot Springs," Arrison said.

 

The Magic Springs portion opens for weekends starting Saturday, while Crystal Falls opens for weekends beginning May 7. Starting May 28, both will be open daily as well. The schedule for both shifts back to just weekends in parts of August and September. Halloween weekends also are planned in part of October at the Magic Springs portion.

 

BROAD APPEAL While Kentucky Kingdom offered a template, it is not a formula for Magic Springs, Hart said. The Louisville park is at the state fairgrounds in Kentucky’s largest city. Hart said the focus there had been on adding thrill rides to keep people from turning to places such as Kings Island, a major theme park near Cincinnati and about a two-hour drive from Louisville. Magic Springs, by contrast, is a five- to six-hour drive from the closest major theme park, Six Flag Over Texas near Dallas. Hot Springs banks on family tourism and so the amusement park must "have something for everybody" — from The Gauntlet and children’s rides to concerts, Hart said.

 

The key is to not overbuild, according to Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services of Cincinnati.

 

Magic Springs opened in the late 1970s, but investors became burdened by millions of dollars of debt and sold the park in the 1980s to a group headed by businessman Melvyn Bell, who then had his own financial troubles. It closed in 1995.

 

Fitraco, a Belgian company, bought it at a foreclosure auction. Hart said he was approached by Fitraco, and decided to take on the project.

 

When the park reopened in 2000, the public was ready.

 

Hart credits pent-up demand and publicity for much of Magic Springs’ success that year, when attendance totaled more than 362,500 and beat expectations. "We said, ‘Wow, if we start with a base of 362 [thousand], this is going to be easy, ’" he said. "Well, guess what? It’s never that easy."

 

In 2001, attendance fell about 25 percent to roughly 272,000, and then to about 254,000 in 2002. Hart blames several factors, such as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and an economic recession.

 

The park also might not have had the necessary attractions, he said.

 

But Hart said the park continued to expand its offerings instead of hunkering down.

 

Attendance grew again to more than 291,000 in 2003, the year the amphitheater debuted. It topped 400,000 last year when The Gauntlet was added and the concert series was expanded.

 

GROWTH GOALS Eventually, Hart said, Magic Springs could have attendance of 700,000 to 800,000 a year. "It’ll take time, it’ll take patience, it’ll take money," he said. Speigel said that the theme park industry is no longer fast growing, but that there could be opportunities for the backers of Magic Springs. "I can see them in a market where there isn’t much competition... continue to see some growth," Speigel said.

 

Hot Springs voters have been crucial to the Magic Springs turnaround.

 

In March, voters approved $4.1 million in industrial development revenue bonds, according to The Sentinel-Record in Hot Springs. Voters approved similar financing in 2003. Financing for the project in 1999 included approval by voters of $6.5 million in industrial development revenue bonds as part of $11 million in state financing, the newspaper said.

 

Jackie Lovell, the sales and marketing director at Magic Springs, said about 60 percent of the park’s visitors in 2004 came from more than 30 Arkansas counties, predominantly in the central part of the state, but that other visitors were from places such as Shreveport, Memphis and Fort Smith. The park has 28 full-time employees, while several hundred work seasonally, she said.

 

Magic Springs has plenty of room to grow, president Aylward said. The park occupies about 80 acres out of about 240 acres under Themeparks’ corporate control.

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