Sunday, October 09, 2005

RBBB Venice Qtrs. #1


These snap shots were taken in February of 1974 as we are seen leaving Venice bound for the Ringling Park. Crossing this bridge was my biggest concern since it was constructed of expanded metal and not only could you look right down to the water below but passing cars made a whining sound. My fears were unfounded, with "Anna May" up front we never even looked back. There were 17 elephants making this march, 7 of which were newly trained. Shortly after arrival at the park we took delivery on several more and we always had about 20 elephants during my four years there but were up to 22 when we took the herd on the Blue Show in 1978.

Posted by Buckles at 10/09/2005 07:24:00 AM

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why did Circus World fail? It seemed like a great concept. Didn't enough people attend? Was it too close to DisneyWorld and Sea World and Universal? Or too far? Was it too far beyond DisneyWorld from the Orlando airport? Or was it hard to find, out of the way? The idea for Circus World sounded great; what defeated it? ToddP

09 October, 2005 20:16
Buckles said...

Gulf Oil was the original backer for the park and shortly after construction started we had our first oil crisis and Gulf kicked out.
When we arrived with the elephants all that completed was the Reception Canter which featured a large tent-like structure with an IMAX theater that showed what the park would eventually look like but for all practical purposes it was already dead in the water.
Every year the park would be shut down while additions were made but for some bizarre reason the Park decided to have people from Grand Ole Opery to produce the show. Now we had animosity between the Felds and the Park.
They hung on as long as they could, wasted a lot of money until the place finally swallered it's tongue and died, long after we had left. All future attempts, including a Ball Park as the Winter Home for the Minnesota Twins met the same fate.
In summation, as I suspected from the very begining, the site is the location of an ancient Indian burial ground.

10 October, 2005 10:54
Anonymous said...

Todd: On March 18, 1982, Mattel, Inc. announced that Irvin and Kenneth Feld and some members of senior management had purchased the two units of Ringling Bros. Circus, Holiday on Ice/Ice Follies Combined Shows, Disney’s World on Ice and Siegfried & Roy’s Beyond Belief (Frontier Hotel) for $22.8 million cash. The purchase did not include Circus World, Haines City, Fla. In addition, the purchase did not include concession rights, which the Felds had retained since the original purchase from the Ringling family in 1967. With the introduction of the second Disney ice show, Disney’s Great Ice Odyssey, in 1982, the Felds discontinued the Holiday on Ice/ Ice Follies format. A Mattel spokesman said that the price for the units was “approximately net book value.”

Kenneth Feld said the circus operations had always been profitable and that Circus World was excluded from the sale because he and his father hadn’t any experience operating a theme park. “The natural purchasers of the circus were us,” he said. “We have wanted it back in our family for a long time; it’s our whole life.” Irvin Feld expressed some concern that Mattel might one day have closed the 112 year-old “Greatest Show On Earth.” “The good Lord never meant for a circus to be owned by a big corporation,” he said, adding that he wanted to assure that “it’s perpetuated for my family."

As you can see from the above, Circus World was not part of the sale. Mattel closed the park and put it up for sale.

John Goodall

10 October, 2005 16:30
Anonymous said...

I worked at Circus World from 1976 to 1986, and there are many reasons for its demise; it seemed like we were ridding on a slow downward spiral throughout those ten years. I have heard, and I have fabricate many reasons why we went belly up, but the best and most accurate is that indeed it was built on an old Indian burial ground.

The few folks that did come to our park had a wonderful time, and most of the time our Circus was the top notch. Even during the painful times of going from an orchestra, to a band, to almost just a keyboard, drum, and trumpet, it was always The Greatest Place on Earth and I never heard of a disgruntled guest. (No waiting in lines, and if you wanted to you could keep you seat on the roller coaster all day.)

I drive by the old burial ground every day on my way to Walt’s Amusement Park where I’ve been employed for almost twice long as my Circus gig. The ground is under construction to be Poisner City, or something like that. It will be interesting to see if Poisner can escape the curse.

11 October, 2005 23:26
Buckles said...

Early in the game the Park Management wanted suggestions for ways to publicize the Park. Chappie Fox asked me, Jack Joyce and Lloyd Morgan to attend a meeting and the whole affair was presided over by a bunch of yuppie Disney types.
Chappie pointed out that he had a background producung the Great Milwaukee Circus Parade and that he had access to circus parade wagons.At hand we had 20 elephants, camels, ponies, etc. and with Morgan's access to Ringling wardrobe, floats, and more importantly, transportation to move all this stuff from point A to point B. we could have produced quite an event. Chappie even went so far as to show a route in Central Florida the parade could make.
Finally he concluded by asking "Gentlemen, what do you think?" and some guy that looked like a Sophmore in college answered "Chappie, I'm afraid I'd have to pass on anything like that" and again Chappie asked "Is this your final word on this matter?" and he said "Yes".

12 October, 2005 00:09

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