In late June or early July, something big will slam into the Three Worlds of Santa’s Village in East Dundee with a maximum force of 5.8 g’s, rocking the 55-acre amusement park and sending it spinning right out of the galaxy.
Park officials will name it Typhoon, for it will utterly blow everyone away.
Well, that’s not exactly how the roller coaster Typhoon will arrive at Santa’s Village. Park officials are having the steel track roller coaster shipped from Italy on eight semi-trailers. From the beginning, however, the $1.5 million project has been very hush-hush. As late as April, Grant Dahlke, director of marketing and communications and a resident of East Dundee, couldn’t even talk about Typhoon without looking furtively around the park’s Alpine Lounge.
“We are all excited about this ride coming here,” Dahlke said. “It’s definitely the right thing to do.”
Typhoon, he added, addresses “our biggest marketing challenge. You’ll hear it in the grocery store, in church: `My kids love Santa’s Village, but they’re 9; they’re too old for it.’ Hogwash. We love our 3-year-olds, but with this ride, there are probably a lot of adults who will get off and go, `Whoa!’ “
Even Don Holliman, vice president/general manager of North Pole Corp., the parent company of Santa’s Village and its water park, Racing Rapids, stated with finality: “I’m riding it once.”
The excitement stems from the fact that Santa’s Village is the only place in the U.S. that you will find the Typhoon this year and that the Typhoon is a new roller-coaster design–an important point for roller-coaster aficionados.
But it also represents the biggest expansion in the park’s 38-year history.
“We’re looking at it to be a more spectacular family ride, a major ride that will be extremely popular with all family members other than real small children,” said Holliman, a resident of East Dundee. “Everybody correlates roller coasters with amusement parks, and we really want to be part of that. Although we have been with Galaxi, this coaster is bigger and better.”
The Typhoon, manufactured by Top Fun, has generated interest beyond the northwest suburbs. In fact, Dahlke predicts that a lot of coaster zealots will descend on the park this summer. “There’s an organization called ACE, American Coaster Enthusiasts, who have been in touch with us and are planning on coming out,” Dahlke said.
According to John Graff, executive director of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions in Alexandria, Va., nearly every park has a roller coaster.
“Roller coasters are a very important part of most park’s high excitement level,” he says. “The industry is almost 160 years old, and the roller coaster is always a popular part of the offering.”
This spring, Santa’s Village sold and dismantled Galaxi, the Typhoon’s 10-year-old predecessor. Galaxi, an all-steel, mid-size coaster that reached 35 feet and had several spirals, was taken apart just in time for the arrival of the big gun, which will loom over the park at more than twice the height.
You can’t, as they say, miss it. Typhoon has a single, 49-foot high, 360-degree loop. Riders are first angled sideways in a screw position before entering the loop, where they are turned in a full revolution before returning to an upright position. Then comes the vortex, or fast, spiraling turns.
Dahlke described the vortex this way: “Picture a ball bearing in a funnel. The perimeter gets smaller and smaller, so the sensation of speed is tremendous before you reach the slowdown.”
As the 12 passengers in each of two trains travel along the 1,836-foot track, they willreach a height of 63 feet. Officials expect the ride to handle 1,100 passengers an hour.
“In the world roller-coaster race, this one wouldn’t be a top contender, but for a park this size, it’s quite a ride,” Holliman said.
Dahlke said the park is not interested in a roller-coaster war.
“This ride will thrill but not intimidate,” he said. “Children today are way more sophisticated and mature, both mentally and physically. They want to be on the big coasters now. We’ve all wanted a new one for the past two summers and were just looking for the right one. This really is in response to our customers and society in general. It’s very appropriate for our park and for what we’re trying to do.”
What Santa’s Village has been doing since 1959 is thrilling and spilling the 3- to 12-year-old set and satisfying their parents. Today, North Pole Corp. manages this privately owned park, which includes the 10-acre water park. The park employs 400 seasonal and 25 full-time employees.
Part of the Santa’s Village strategy is knowing exactly who its visitors are.
“As society has changed, so has our audience,” Dahlke said. “We get a lot of dads with children, young adults with nieces and nephews as well as the traditional moms with children. Racing Rapids attracts families, but also an older audience. It’s just a different excitement offering. This whole place is a marketer’s dream. You can go out in the park and see exactly how people are interacting with your product.”
According to officials, most fun-seekers come from within a 30-mile radius. Although attendance levels hover at a healthy 500,000 each year, they are highly weather dependent.
If you wonder how parks this size effectively compete against the likes of Great America, the answer is: They don’t.
“Great America isn’t our competition,” Dahlke said. “They have a completely different audience. Some would say Kiddieland (an amusement park in Melrose Park) is our competition, but they’re more toward the younger end. We really have that middle ground–(ages) 7, 8, 9. The key here is anything that has an interest to a family, and that family entertainment dollar, is our competition. Back in 1959, we owned Illinois. Times change.”
The amusement parks association reports that about 263 million people visit the estimated 600 amusement parks in the U.S. and generate about $8 billion in revenue each year. “The U.S. is fairly well built-out as far as parks the size of Great America or Busch Gardens go,” Graff said. “But there is a tremendous amount of building going on in terms of FECs (family entertainment centers) and of parks of all sizes overseas.”
The sprouting of family entertainment centers, smaller facilities with such amenities as go-carts, video games and kiddie rides, doesn’t unduly worry the Santa’s Village folks.
“The big difference is there’s tradition here, and your FEC isn’t so much a family togetherness outing,” Dahlke said.
Think of it this way. Taking your kids to Santa’s Village is like giving them the train or the doll you adored at their age. Santa is here, along with a 150-seat theater and some really old stuff that’s loved in the way your mother still loves her black Singer sewing machine.
Santa’s Village offers more than 40 rides, shows and attractions within Santa’s World, Coney Island and Old McDonald’s Farm. Only a portion of the park promotes the Claus theme. This is Santa’s World, where you’ll find the never-melt Snowball, believed to date back to the early 1960s. There’s Santa’s Slide, a charming relic that’s simply a fanciful piece of playground equipment and thought to be the oldest thing in the park.
Back in 1963, the park built the Polar Dome Ice Arena with its inflatable roof. After the dome tore three years later and collapsed in a snowstorm, they replaced it with a more practical, if less distinctive, oak beam structure. Open from September through April, the Polar Dome offers hockey leagues, tournaments, lessons, ice shows, public skating and a sport shop. Dahlke said it is believed to be the oldest continuously operating indoor rink in the Chicago area. The adjacent Alpine Lounge offers casual fare.
According to Holliman, who has been in the amusement park business since the 1960s, the park initially had probably only five or six rides, with a lot of scenery and theme areas. The Coney Island section, with rides and arcade games, was added in 1966 and the park went to a one-price policy in 1967-68. “We were one of the first parks that started that, and it really boosted attendance, although our operating costs were the same,” Holliman said. The Three Worlds marketing concept was adopted in the mid-’70s.
From Santa’s World, visitors can fly direct to Coney Island via Skyliner, a Swiss-style tram that brushes the birds’ nests.
Coney Island’s thrill rides include the new Typhoon; the Galleon Pirate Ship, a large swinging ship; the Great Wheel, a Ferris wheel-type ride with gondolas; and the Wipeout, a spinning ride that, according to Dahlke, “has all sorts of different g-force effects on you and seems to make everyone happy.”
Really old stuff in this world includes the antique car and firetruck rides. “The cars have unbelievable craftsmanship,” Dahlke said. “Working differentials, working suspensions–you just don’t see that today.”
The firetruck attraction, in which participants “put out a fire,” is a unique one for Santa’s Village. “Some say (it’s) the only one of its type in the country,” Dahlke said. It came from Adventureland, a now-closed park in Addison.
Coney Island visitors try their luck at a variety of skill games. About 900 cases of game prizes arrived this spring, with more to arrive throughout the summer. Guess what they use the Polar Dome for after skating season ends?
Old McDonald’s Farm rounds out the Santa’s Village experience with a bevy of barnyard friends such as llamas, horses, goats, cows and sheep.
Just to the north and down a hill is Racing Rapids, which was built in 1983. Open-spigot attractions include two giant slides rising 50 feet, lazy river tubing, bumper boats and small-child areas.
Amusement park technology has certainly advanced since the park opened in 1959.
“Regardless of that, there are some things that will never change,” Dahlke said. “It’s still going to be smell, sight, sound and motion that you’re involved in, out in the open air.”
With winds gusting noticeably faster at Santa’s Village this year.
THE TYPHOON
Cost: $1.5 million
Type: Steel track roller coaster
Maximum acceleration: 5.8 g’s
Height: 63 feet
Length: 180 feet
Width: 66 feet
Total track length: 1,836 feet
Number of trains: Two, with 12 seats each
Length of ride: 1 1/2 – 2 minutes
Unique features: Inclined loop and screw, vortex
