This weekend’s Sunday Telegraph carried a neat piece about the roller coaster industry, journalist Rose George travelling to Alton Towers to experience the theme park's famed Nemesis coaster and over to Switzerland (the offices are in  “…Monthey, a small, less than beautiful city on a plain between dramatic Alps and more dramatic Alps”) to meet Walter Bolliger of Bolliger & Mabillard ......View more

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 InBev/Busch Gardens Africa? InBev / Busch Gardens Africa?  This week’s Update begins with word that Anheuser-Busch may be selling its chain of theme parks (the Busch Gardens and SeaWorlds, in particular) now that the domestic beer giant has been purchased by, InBev, one of Europe’s largest brewers.
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Wednesday, July 16, 2008 How the Airline and Amusement Industries are Tied Together With the recent high-profile failures of major U.S. banks and lenders like IndyMac, the troubled domestic airline industry has been given a respite from harrowing headlines. However, that doesn’t mean the threat to their business model has gone away.  Indeed, with oil surpassing $145 per barrel (and going higher at a brisk clip), most U.S. commercial airlines are facing bleak prospects in both the short and long terms. So, why does this matter to the amusement and recreation industry?...View more

Wednesday, July 09, 2008 Gun Laws and the Amusement Industry Take Center Stage Welcome to the first Blooloop Legal and Regulatory Update.  I’ll be writing this on-line column most Wednesdays. 
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Sunday, July 06, 2008 X2 – Thrilling As Ever, Almost To A Fault Recently, John Hogg and I spent a sweltering Sunday morning taking a couple of spins – pun intended – on the revamped X2 at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Briefly, it is probably as intense as I ever want a thrill ride to get....View more

Tuesday, June 24, 2008 Butterflies and the Law An interesting morning. Had a chat with Clive Farrell, the man behind the ambitious £25 million Butterfly World project here in the UK about  the economic and environmental impact it is set to make upon the local area. The centre piece of the project is an enormous biome, a vast greenhouse, set to include the third largest collection of tropical plants in the UK but also to boast a staggering variety of butterflies from across the world....View more

Monday, June 16, 2008 Growth of the Amusement Industry in India Investments to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore are likely to flow into the domestic amusement and leisure sector by 2020 with about 500 new parks are expected to come up across the country by then, an industry body has said....View more

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 Focusing on Families Hi.  It’s Will again. I said I’d try to share the benefits of what I’ve learned through a life lived in and around a theme park, Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari.  I’d like to kick off with a lesson I learned nearly 20 years ago about focus. Twenty years ago (OK, 25 if you’re keeping track), we were a smaller family park called Santa Claus Land. ...View more

Monday, June 02, 2008 Brush Boarding at Crealy There is nothing new under the sun . Everything has been done . Whatever your great idea might be, it's not new.  However, you've been surfing. You've been snowboarding. But have you ever Brush Boarded?  ...View more

Tuesday, May 27, 2008 Enjoying The Ride: An Enthusiast's Perspective As this is my first contribution here, allow me to further introduce myself. I’m Robert Coker and I’ve been riding roller coasters and thrill rides for as long as I can remember. Although my initial exposure to such delights was at Los Angeles, California’s Beverly Park kiddieland, it was a trip to Disneyland as a four-year-old that put me on the path I’m still following today.
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Friday, May 23, 2008 Brush Boarding to Launch at Devon's Crealy Devon, England : the lazy and popular stereotype would have it that the county’s social life involves sitting on a 5-bar gate with a piece of straw in one’s mouth talking about tractors, drinking coooider and pointing at aeroplanes . Not so....View more

Tuesday, May 13, 2008 A Wet and Wonderful Phoenix from the Ashes Didn't Geauga Lake Park close?...No, not really....View more

Thursday, May 08, 2008 Delivering the Wow! & the Pow! The Recce Period. Blooloop Blog  II.  What great fanfare! One hour after posting the blog I was on the phone to an industry contact and she said, “I just read your blog”. I also received a handful of useful e-mails. Thanks to everyone who took the time to write....View more

Tuesday, May 06, 2008 Holiday World starts to Twitter... Holiday World is "Twittering" and a week ago I would have had no idea what this meant. A week on and I now have a small idea. Kinda like blogging I guess but more immediate, messages are shorter and (as yet)   it seems even more informal. Looks fun too. HW is the first theme park to twitter......View more

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 Living the Tradition: notes from a Family Owned and Operated Theme and Water Park By way of introduction, I’m Will Koch, the president of Holiday World & Splashin' Safari, a small theme park and water park combination in Santa Claus, Indiana, USA... ...View more

Monday, April 14, 2008 Dubai Amusement Expo. And Madonna. This week the trade show merry-go-round moves onto the UAE where the DEAL( Dubai Entertainment, Amusement & Leisure Show) show takes place, starting on the 20th....View more

Tuesday, April 08, 2008 It's a Small World Rumours and Bristol's New Aquarium In the news today, the science based attraction in Bristol, "@Bristol" is adding an aquarium and the weekend saw Disney's Imagineering quash various rumours flying around the revamping of its iconic and much loved "It's a Small World" ride.
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Thursday, March 20, 2008 New Coaster set to Rumble at Universal Studios Orlando in '09 Universal Studios Orlando this week announced that its "Project Rumble" will in fact be a dazzling new hi-tech coaster which will sweep over the heads of the crowds in the Citywalk entertainment district and will wow riders with high tech wizardry, appealing to the "You Tube Culture."
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Saturday, March 08, 2008 Paramount Movie Theme Park planned for Kolkata A film city along the lines of Universal Studios in Hollywood could be on the cards for Kolkata as Paramount VP Tom Renger's visit with Priya Entertainment Private Ltd last week suggests......View more

Tuesday, March 04, 2008 Dubai: Theme Park Capital of the World? Dubai is in the news again with a number of major projects revealed, the main ones being the agreements involving Six Flags and Busch Entertainment, both big players on the American stage but until now with little presence overseas....View more

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 Thursday's Big Announcement by Busch Entertainment? Scheduled announcement ; what's it to be? International expansion say the analysts......View more

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 A Winter's Tale; Alton Towers and Singing Chickens A weekend, mid-Winter in the UK's premier theme park....View more

Monday, February 18, 2008 The Indian Amusement Industry Show ; Thoughts. I got back from Mumbai yesterday after we had a booth at the 2008 IAAPI trade show. The show was for us a great success and think this was feedback was echoed by almost everyone I talked to. ...View more

Sunday, February 10, 2008 Enough Vision, Let's see the Theme parks! The theme park, amusements and attractions industry in the Middle East needs to focus on the execution and delivery of the massive developments planned for the area, according to global industry experts....View more

Saturday, February 09, 2008 kung Foo Panda to Star at Dubai Theme Park Dreamworks move into Dubai......View more

Friday, February 01, 2008 The Rise and Fall of Appu Ghar India's oldest amusement park closes....View more

Thursday, November 08, 2007 Disney's New Theme Park in Malaysia? View the post