CF: First off, what do you do as the CEO? What’s your daily routine?

SG: The good news is I don’t really have a daily routine except that I get up every morning and fire off a billion requests. Every day is different. I deal with everything from regular stuff like staffing, financing, and human resources, to just being out in the park and seeing the customer and making sure everything is right. I make sure the staff’s happy—I spend a lot of time with the staff. I walk the park every day and talk to as many of them as possible and hear their stories and give them my stories and tell them how much we really appreciate what they’re doing and also give them the feedback from the customer because that’s really important that they hear that it works. That’s probably the most difficult day right now while we’re going through this Sound Check [soft opening].


CF: Why Myrtle Beach—why this site?

SG: Jon [Binkowski, Chief Creative Officer] bought the Ice Castle Theater and he was trying to think how to evolve a theme park. And through the industry—through friends of the industry—I got invited up to come take a look at the site. And I came up here and stood outside the Ice Castle with Jon and he’s like “Picture this: a roller coaster over there and this and that…” and I went “You know what? I actually see it.” I’ve been to Myrtle Beach before, and knew how well it had done with the Hard Rock Café already so I was saying yeah, there’s potential here. So we just started roughing it out.


CF: How long ago did you start working on this project?

SG: 2001. We came up with the idea of doing Hard Rock in 2002. So it took us from late 2002 to early 2006, so that’s just over 3 years to put the whole concept together, design it, get all the bands signed on, and get all the money together. So that’s not actually that long by historical standards. I did Universal Japan starting in 1993 and that took us until 2001 to open it so that’s 8 years; so we opened this in 6 and a half.


CF: Was the band support like Led Zeppelin and The Eagles crucial to making the park authentic?

SG: Yeah, I think so. I think it’s good having the Hard Rock brand and we would undoubtedly be able to have really cool memorabilia throughout. It’s good having bands like Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, the Moody Blues, Queen agree to be a part of something new and different and literally be a different representation of their music, which they take very seriously. I think it’s an endorsement of the idea. And standing here today it’s easy to say, “Yeah this place is cool,” but when we pitched it to them it’s a risk for them to meet two guys who are just pitching an idea and saying, “don’t worry it’ll be really cool.” So credit to them for liking the pitch, liking the idea, and giving us their input.


CF: Did you have any bands that you had gone after that turned you down?

SG: Sure. Not really so much as turned us down. What we discovered was that there’s a process that you go through with rock bands, and music companies, and record companies, and publishers because you don’t go to one person. For example, Led Zeppelin: you’ve got the band—all the members of the band individually, you’ve got their manager that’s involved, you’ve got the record company, the company that owns the lyrics, the publisher—you’ve got a whole bunch of people to ‘get’ you. Some bands are just well set up to deal with that request. Zeppelin has one lawyer that represents all of those interests. So it’s really easy to deal with them once you get through the creative process with the band members. Other bands we found weren’t as easy to deal with. So in some case we would have two or more options of what we’d thrown out there, so we decided to work on the ones where it’s easier and you’re getting more response then the ones where you get, “Well, you know, I think it’s a cool idea but they’re touring,” or whatever. So it was line of least resistance in some cases. And we got such a good response from the ones that we did want that we didn’t have to shop around.


CF: Were these bands all your first choices to go after?

SG: Absolutely. Literally the first one we put down on the original park plan was the Zeppelin roller coaster. The first thing we did for the lagoon show was Bohemian Rhapsody. Standing there going, ‘What would be a great lagoon show?’
‘Oh it’d have to be Bohemian Rhapsody.’
‘We’ve got to have a sit down restaurant.’
‘It’s got to be Alice’s restaurant.’
‘Yeah, that’s a great idea!’
That’s how it came about. 60% of everything you see out there we came up with in 3 hours out in Hollywood. Me, Jon, and this girl who was writing her thesis. We’d keep going ‘what do you think of this?’ And she’d be like ‘you guys are stupid.’

CF: So was it just you and Jon making the decisions or did you have some sort of committee that you had to go to?

SG: Yes. Me and Jon just came up with the idea and we pitched it to everybody.


CF: So that gives you a lot of free range to go do you want?

SG: Yeah. Then, to flesh it out in more detail we got together a team of about 10 people, some with just rock experience, some just architectural experience, some rides and show experience, some landscaping and so we had everyone’s input around the room. We took the general idea that we’d come up with and we produced a book of general detail on it so every element whether it was a show, or a store, or a restaurant had a page in this book, pictures and examples, and a story of what we wanted it to be. So it was a team of about a dozen people put together. We always wanted an architect, which many people don’t do very early on, but we wanted someone that could keep us real because we would get lost very quickly with size, scale, and how things fit together. We wanted to make sure it worked from a customer point of view. Space, walkways, social interaction--all of those things-- which can get lost if you just dream up big ideas. The architects helped a lot.


CF: How did you decide on ride types—like how did you end up with Zeppelin being a sitdown, looping coaster?

SG: We got through the creative process with the band and we figured what song we were going to use. First of all, we knew we wanted to do B&M and we wanted onboard audio and so we kind of focused on it being a sitdown coaster so we could envelop you with the audio setup, and to shield you from the noise of the track and I think it worked very very well. It’s one of the smoothest, most silent coasters I’ve ever been on.


CF: Did your park plan really evolve from your first initial concept?

SG: Not a huge amount. It just became real. It just took kind of balloon diagrams and ideas. If you saw the original plan (which we might release one day!), you’d be amazed how close it is.


CF: This is kind of the standard question, but where do you see the park in 5, 10 years?

SG: Um, I think it’ll be right here. Maybe a little bit that way if there’s an earthquake, but right here. Hopefully, we’ll add, we’ll change, we’ll tweak. I just want it to be the most kick-ass coolest park experience anyone has ever had.


CF: Did you have any major plans or ideas that didn’t happen that you wanted to see or that you’re looking for down the road?

SG: No. We’ve got some ideas that we had that we decided to put on the backburner because we filled out what we could do in the first phase. We do have some cool ideas, but nothing we said, “No we’re not going to do.” We’re still working on it.


CF: What area or ride here are you most proud of?

SG: It’s hard to single out any particular ride or show, although I have to say the ice show. That blew me away. It’s the first show in my life that I wanted to give a standing ovation halfway through. Some of the sets were just amazing with what they could pull off so right now just because I can think of that; it’s in the lead. My favorite area is British Invasion, obviously. I’m British and I built a fish and chips shop at a park, so that makes me happy! I just like the whole thing. I like the fact that it doesn’t matter where you are in the park, it’s got a good vibe. It’s fun, and people feel relaxed here; they don’t feel like they need to run around the park. You see very little running here. You see a lot of people just chilling out having fun.



CF: What has to happen this season for you to be able to call this a great success?

SG: We have to get lots of people through who leave happy. Obviously, we have to make money, that’s a given—we’re a business. But I think that comes from the fact that people will be leaving having had fun. If people leave and have had fun, they’ll tell other people and the word of mouth will be fantastic. And it already is doing very well. People are giving it a 4.5 out of 5 on average across the board on everything we rate. So we’re pretty happy so far. It’s already been a great success.We’ve built it and we’ve opened it and everyone’s having fun.