Ready to Ride

Guests take a turn on the Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree swing ride at Santa’s Village in Jefferson. (White Mountains Attractions Association)

The pandemic took many businesses on a roller-coaster ride, leaving many unsteady and queasy. This includes those that specialize in giving customers twists, turns and dizzying thrills. New Hampshire’s amusement parks made many adjustments including limiting the number of guests and instituting new safety protocols. 

Now more families are planning to include amusement parks in their plans this summer. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) is forecasting a 7% boost in attendance for North America theme parks with an estimated attendance of 308.5 million in 2023.

Consumer spending at parks is expected to increase 15% to nearly $32 billion in North America this year, which will allow the domestic attractions industry to regain pandemic losses, according to the IAAPA.

“To say the domestic attractions industry is looking at a good 2023 is an understatement,” stated Jakob Wahl, president and CEO for IAAPA, in a recent press release. “We expect the market in 2023 to fully recapture the lost spending in 2020, and the amount of investment planned for our region supports the demand we’re seeing.”

Families flocking to NH during the summer often have amusement parks on their itinerary, whether taking a spin on the Turkish Twist at Canobie Lake Park in Salem, body surfing at Whale’s Tale’s Akua Beach in Lincoln, taking a picture with Humpty Dumpty at Story Land in Glen, or enjoying one last ride on Rudy’s Rapid Transit roller coaster before it’s retired at Santa’s Village in Jefferson. Families are attracted to tradition and nostalgia along with the rides. 

And the prices help. While a trip to destination parks like Walt Disney World or Universal can set families back thousands, NH’s theme parks are geared to day-tripping families, costing between $30 to $45 a person for general admission.   

Jim Miller, spokesperson for Santa’s Village in Jefferson, says the park expects a 2% to 3% increase in visitors this summer based on early online sales of tickets. “I’m optimistic attendance will be strong in 2023,” he says. 

Small Cities Within Towns 

New Hampshire’s 10 major amusement parks, spread throughout the state, require thousands of seasonal and full-time employees to keep them running. There were 1,250 amusement and recreation attendants employed in NH in May 2021, which does not include cooks, maintenance employees, wait staff, and the army of other workers amusement parks need. Like other industries, parks are having to pay more to attract workers. In NH, the hourly median wage for amusement and recreation attendants in 2021 was $8.39, according to the NH Dept. of Employment Security. As of June 2022, the median wage for these positions had increased by 38% to $11.58.

Jesse Ansers, marketing director at Whale’s Tale, says employee retention at the park and its sister company Alpine Adventures, has been a challenge because of workforce shortages and wage expectations. He says the sweet spot for the number of employees needed to run the water park is between 70 and 100, and as of early May the company was still looking for summer help. Story Land spokesperson Laura Fullerton says the park, which employs up to 300 seasonal staff, has confronted similar challenges. “It’s hard to obtain people in this market,” she says. 

Miller says that with just under 30 full-time staff and over 300 seasonal workers, Santa’s Village had to increase wages. “A lot of our people come back,” he says, adding that hiring as of mid-May was winding down. “We’re at a place we want to be and we’re not running behind as we have been in the past couple of years.”  

Living Shores Aquarium in Glen. (White Mountains Attractions Association)

It takes more than a village to run these amusement parks. Fullerton of Story Land says the best way to think about the park is to see it as a small city. Palace Entertainment own Story Land (27 acres), nearby Living Shores Aquarium and Water Country in Portsmouth. “We have absolutely everything and we need a lot of services like a city,” she says, citing a lengthy list of jobs employees perform at the park as well as the maintenance required for smooth operations. This includes wi-fi connectivity, alarms, security, and water and sewer. “We have everything down to the companies who do tree maintenance and the street sweepers.”

Miller of Santa’s Village agrees with Fullerton’s comparison. “It is like having your own town,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of coordination and a sharing of responsibilities involved, like in a city.”

Santa’s Village sits on 15 acres of land, not including the parking and maintenance facilities or the pastures and barns that accommodate the park’s reindeer, Miller says.

Canobie Lake Park in Salem sits on 59 acres and is about 30 miles north of Boston. The park is one of Salem’s largest taxpayers—along with The Mall at Rockingham Park and Tuscan Village—with a tax bill of around $510,000 per year, according to Town Manager Christopher Dillon. In addition to tax payments, Dillon says the park assists the community in other ways, including providing residents in Salem and Windham with a special day at the park for a minimal cost. “Many of their staff members also serve on the chamber of commerce executive board and the Boys and Girls Club board of directors,” he says. “Canobie has also provided free tickets for the town’s recreation summer camp.”

Guests riding the Bamboo Chutes at Story Land in Glen. (White Mountains Attractions Association)

The park’s impact on the community, including water, sewer, and public safety, is mitigated by its work with various town departments, Dillon says. “Canobie hires details to assist with the security of the park, but [the park] also has their own security team that addresses most minor issues. The park [also] started an EMT program onsite which addresses most medical needs,” he says. In years past, Salem Fire Chief Lawrence Best says there were a lot more calls for service but that this has decreased significantly since the EMT program started. 

“They really are a great company to have in town,” Dillon says.

Strength in Numbers

While each park competes for its own share of the market, they benefit from  close proximity to one another as tourists can easily visit more than one park during a vacation. Having more attractions in the area is better for business, Fullerton says, because it gives people more things to do and reasons to stay longer.

Fullerton points out that Story Land has a good partnership with Santa’s Village. “Like us, they’re part of the White Mountains Attractions Association. All of the attractions, such as Whale’s Tale and all of the ski resorts, we’re all technically competitors, but we do better as partners,”  she says. “We want people to go to Santa’s Village for a day and to Story Land for a day. We want them to do both.” 

NLI Entertainment includes Whale’s Tale and Alpine Adventures in Lincoln and Candia Springs Adventures in Candia. Whale’s Tale is a unique attraction because of its short two-and-a-half month season. Whale’s Tale has 11 attractions, with recent additions of Shipwreck Island in 2010, Poseidon’s Voyage in 2013, and Akua Beach in 2017. 

Ansers agrees with Fullerton that having more people in the region is good for everyone’s business. He adds that the area is a destination most people choose ahead of time. “Most people don’t wake up and say, ‘let’s go to Lincoln,” he says. “They plan ahead.”

This is why Story Land focuses its marketing on Boston and Portland, Maine, and dips into Rhode Island. “People pick a destination based on the activities they’re looking for and we’re usually part of the destination,”
Fullerton says.

Whale’s Tale marketing also focuses on the Boston area but extends as far as New Jersey, Ansers says, adding the company’s strategy involves getting people in the planning phase of their trips. “There are a lot of attractions in the area and people go through the list of things to do,” he says. In the Lincoln area, that list includes ziplining, Clark’s Trading Post, the Flume Gorge in Franconia Notch State Park and more. “There’s an awesome list of things this area has to offer,” Ansers says. “Everyone has something slightly different to offer.” 

Creating an Experience

While some families have generational photos of kids sitting beside Story Land’s iconic Humpty Dumpty, these parks also know they need to invest in the future to keep drawing visitors.

For those looking to take a ride on Rudy’s Rapid Transit roller coaster at Santa’s Village, this summer will be their last chance. According to Miller, the roller coaster’s decommissioning was planned over the past year. “We’re working on plans for improvements of that space but haven’t finalized anything yet,” he says, adding that he is hopeful a plan will be released in the coming months. 

In order to improve the experience of parks goers, many parks have actually kept caps on the number of visitors allowed in the park daily. These were instituted during COVID and the smaller crowds appealed to visitors.

Ansers says the park has maintained the cap. “We used to allow 3,000 to 3,500 people in at a time. But since COVID we’ve found that our customers have a better experience when we’re capped at 1,400,” he says.

Rudy's Rapid Transit roller coaster at Santa's Village will soon be decommissioned. (White Mountains Attractions Association)

Santa’s Village actually started implementing caps before the pandemic. It started in 2016 and was only for the New Year’s Eve special event to create a higher quality experience. During the pandemic in 2020, a mandated cap was in place and while that has been adjusted, Miller says, “The cap we worked with since 2021 has worked out well for us, allowing us to minimize waiting times.” 

There are other updates too. In 2022, Story Land went cashless, and Fullerton says this went well because it allowed the park to optimize staff. “It also allowed us to just keep everything safer and flowing more smoothly and efficiently,” she says, adding the park has made IT infrastructure updates that will increase connectivity and increased vendor networks allowing people to buy its products online rather than at the park. “We’ve definitely got capital investment projects going as well and have been maintaining buildings with the expectation of growing and planning for competitive adjustments,” Fullerton says.