Thanks to Jon Binkowski for taking the time to talk to us!

CF: First off, what do you do as normal day?
JB: I am one of three principles responsible for the construction and operation of the park. We have a CEO, Steven, we have a COO, Chief Operating Office, which is Felix, and I am the CCO, which is the Chief Creative Office. So my job is content. And that goes all the way from Led Zeppelin: The Ride to the live shows to the sign that’s on the bathroom. So some of it’s very glamorous—I get to work with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant—and some of it is not glamorous at all—I get to go in and make sure that the noses are polished on the costumed characters. And everything in between. So my job is to manage the content of what people come to experience and give them a good day out. So my typical day is untypical. Every day is completely different. It will revolve around testing and adjusting for rides and shows. It’s kind of a rough job—for instance I missed my meeting today because I had to go through the dark ride—they have a new effect that’s pumping in a little bit more smoke to one scene and they wanted me to ride through it a couple of times to get my sign off on it. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Showing off one of the interactive aspects of the park


CF: How was dealing with the ride companies and even like Peavey and the people that supplied things like the speakers? Did you have any difficulties dealing with the companies or were they all pretty easy to work with?
JB: Actually they’re all pretty easy to work with because they all wanted to work on a rock and roll theme park. And they all brought something to the table as well. I usually pose the challenges and then they would come up with the solutions. Technomedia [http://www.techno-media.com] is a good example. They’re a technical company that works for the themed entertainment industry. We had a problem—a challenge. We wanted to do onboard audio, but I was not happy with the onboard audio that existed in other parks. And mostly it’s because it was dealing with a 12 volt system like a car system. I didn’t know how to solve the problem, but what I said is we gotta be able to get some more fidelity and pressure out of these speakers so they’re not lost in the dust when we do it because we wanted the speakers to be in front. Anyway, Technomedia got with JL Audio [www.jlaudio.com]. JL does high-end car stereos and yacht stereos. So they do outdoor systems. And they developed, custom for us, a 24 volt amplifier. So that’s why Led Zeppelin: The Ride and Eagles and all that can pump as much as they can even though you’re totally exposed and wind is whipping by you and everything. All because of this 24 volt system. That will become the standard in the industry. And we are pleased to be the first ones to kick it off. I hope all of the industry out there takes advantage of it—because their onboard audio’s gonna be kickin’. It’s gonna be much better. Very good idea. Very good.


CF: Going along with the audio on the rides—how exactly does that work? Where exactly is the amp for example?
JB: The amp is onboard. And you know, I’m not technical so whatever I say is going to be wrong, but it’s not necessarily a battery that’s on board. It’s like a capacitor that takes a tremendous amount of voltage and then goes. But that’s all onboard. So it comes into the station, runs through some brushes, gets its pump of energy, and then off it goes again. It only has about 60 seconds to 2 minutes to be able to get its charge and then off it has to go for its next run. So that’s how we do it now. How we picked the music for it—for instance with Led Zeppelin—we bent the steel of the ride to work with that song that existed. But the Eagles re-did their music to work with the ride we already had.

CF: Do any of the companies, like B&M for example, offer service packages or are you on your own once that ride opens?
JB: Well most companies offer warranties for their work. And so we have warranties that we take advantage of. But most all of their systems are such high quality. We have a very experienced staff of technicians that maintain the products. Every one of those like B&M, Vekoma, Chance—all of those guys provide manuals for maintaining everything and they’re experts in their field. So they provide good documentation to maintain and care for these things well.


CF: Are there any expansions in the works already or are you just wanting to get through the opening first?
JB: Well, for me and Steven, we are always thinking we’ve gotta be a year or two or three ahead. Now, we think that we’ve opened the right size for this year. Just right. But absolutely we’re already planning the next major attraction, the next major live show, and also special events will be huge. This place is gonna kill for Halloween—it’s gonna be great. Rock and Roll and Halloween—you got Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson and all that. You know, it just lends itself nicely to that kind of atmosphere. And Christmas too—they’ve all done Christmas albums! Well, maybe not Alice Cooper…


CF: What kind of room do you have to expand seeing as this area is surrounded by roads.
JB: We have very cleverly disguised the areas that we have not expanded into—but I’ll point them out to you. For instance, over by the main live venue, you’ll see there’s a basketball game and a kids play area. Well those are very easily removed and it opens up acres of space behind that for a major attraction. Over in Rock and Roll Heaven, if you turn left, you’ll see there’s a big road going to nowhere. Well that’s because it’s a big road going to future expansion. So we definitely—within the walls of what we have right now—we have lots of expansion capabilities. And then we also have additional properties. We could double in size easily.

Future expansion?


CF: Are there any kind of “Easter eggs” hidden inside the park—like inside jokes for you and staff. For example, Universal Japan has street names after some of their employees. Do you have things like that here?
JB: Yes, we did. We didn’t do it to a great extent, but for instance, the cars on Maximum RPM, the license plates are names and birthdates of some of the team that’s been working on these things. Embedded in the floor of the first pad we had laid are the names of some of the key people—like myself, Steven, and Felix—that were involved in this. But sometimes we’re a little more out front about it. Instead of hiding it, we kind of celebrate it. In Lost in the 70s, we have the Graffiti Wall. We’ve all signed it and put on our own little notes. But we’ll also invite you and anyone that comes to visit the park to put their name on the graffiti wall. So we do have little things that are around. If you look at the back of the car when you first enter the plaza, it has the opening date when we first opened the park to any public. Little things like that. But no mouse ears, dude. Although I did get a pin—we had pins made. Thousands of pins made. And one pin came in a package and it had a little mouse ear backing to it. And it obviously got mixed up in the barrel there.

Those paying attention will notice the fort's name.


CF: What do you see as the biggest challenge as you guys head towards opening day?
JB: I think our biggest challenge is just getting across the message—and we’ll do this with word of mouth, blogs, websites like yourself—that this is something for the whole family. It’s kind of worked pretty easily for Hard Rock because Hard Rock Café’s are for the whole family, Hard Rock Hotel even though it has a very sexy side to it also has a very family nature to it. So we wanted to make sure that people know that yes, we have action rides, we’ve got families rides, but we’ve also got stuff for the toddlers too. Toddlers are going to be just as entertained as the teen as the adult if they come to Hard Rock Park. We want to make sure of that. That’s our challenge—let everyone know there’s something for everybody.


CF: And what is the nature of your affiliation with Hard Rock?
JB: We are a licensee. We happen to have a very close relationship with them because of a couple of weird reasons. One is that the guy who is the head of Café franchises and works on our license happened to be my next door neighbor coincidentally. When I asked Steven, who used to work for Hard Rock, who I would talk to about getting a license to be able to have a Hard Rock Park, he said “he’s your next door neighbor, dude.” And that was in Orlando—we lived in Orlando. Sure enough, Oliver Munday was right next door. And he was the guy that I would look over the fence and go, “Hey neighbor, how’s it going?” I went over with a bottle of wine and not a napkin, but a printout from a copy machine or what I thought Hard Rock Park would be and the rest is history. So we have a professional relationship with them because they are the brand and we adhere to their guidelines. Important guidelines like they want as much as possible to be real. “We want real brick. We don’t want faux brick. We want real memorabilia on the walls—not duplicates of things. We want our logo a certain way. And we want a vibe that is consistent with our brand.” We adhere to that. And we also have a personal relationship with them. Because these are our friends and colleagues who have worked hand in hand with us for years to make this happen. And they’re good people. They’re really good people.


CF: I hear from Steven [Goodwin, CEO] that you are kind of responsible for having this site. You had owned the theater?
JB: That’s right. We did not come here to build a Hard Rock Park. And that’s probably why this park is as cool as it is. Had we come in and stuck a stake in the ground and said, “We are here to build a Hard Rock Park,” it probably never would’ve happened. What happened was I bought a theater over here. In the mid 90s there was a big buildout or people trying to be like Branson Missouri—Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and Myrtle Beach built a bunch of theaters. They overbuilt. And some theaters made and some didn’t do so well. The ones that didn’t do so well went for sale at a reasonable price and I swooped in and I picked up one and then I picked up another one. And then I wasn’t doing so well, so I thought I better get to know my neighbors and we better get together and develop something around us to make the property value worthwhile. So I wanted to do a little tiny fun park around the lake. And they said, “Who’s going to find the money?” I said “Uh, I’ll get right back to you.” So I went to the industry, asked around, and they recommended this guy named Steven Goodwin. I got to know him. Now Steven and I got together and what was going to be a 25 million dollar project quickly ended up 100 million then 200 million now 400 million. But banks also got involved and they said you need to brand it. So there’s 2 things that got us to the point where we were at. One thing was that we wanted to do a theme park. We wanted to have the right size for Myrtle Beach—turned out Myrtle Beach is a lot bigger then we initially had anticipated. And we needed to have something custom for Myrtle Beach. So instead of a movie park or whatever, we did something that worked for Myrtle Beach as Myrtle Beach is a music town. This is where back in the 60s white kids would go see the black bands play at the Pavilion. This is the home of the Shag—the dance the Shag—and the Stroll. This is where the group Alabama was discovered at a bar down in Myrtle Beach. This is where summer love, you know, that they sing about in Greece. That’s Myrtle Beach. This is where kids would come from the East coast and hang out. So music is a natural for this town and so it’s made for this. In the meantime, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina invested billions of dollars to put roadwork into Myrtle Beach and that’s the only reason why there wasn’t a theme park here before then. There wasn’t the infrastructure in place to accommodate it. So we came at the right time. And I’ll tell you, if we didn’t come, somebody else would. Because now the infrastructure is in place and you can do it. And I believe that this town deserves a quality theme park attraction. It’s just what it needs. I can see in the future overseas visitors coming here. It’s funny when you’re on a plane and you see them advertising Orlando, Florida. You see the star on Florida and it looks amazingly close to Cocoa Beach. They make it seem like Orlando’s on the water. Because they’re promoting to the British, “Come to Florida, see the beach, go to the theme parks’. But they kind of neglect to mention that the beach is an hour away at the very closest. Here the beach is minutes away—you got the whole beach, you have shopping, and now you have a theme park.


CF: Last one now, what’s your favorite section of the park and what’s your favorite ride?
JB: Ok, now that’s like asking a parent who’s your favorite kid. So that’s not a fair question, but I will tell you. My favorite section is probably British Invasion. Why? It’s probably the biggest section that we have. It has the most integrated theming. We recreated Piccadilly Circus. We also did rural London and I just think it’s tied together nicely. Having said that, I think all the areas are great. And my favorite ride is Shake, Rattle, n’ RollerCoaster. That is a kiddie coaster, but why I like it is that first of all, I can go on it with my 6 year old daughter and it’s got two lap bars. Usually I go on something and my girth makes the lap bar stick out and she’s rattling around in there somewhere. And it’s a little more intense then you’d think so I love going on it with people who say, “Oh, it’s just a kiddie ride,” and then they get off and they go, “Hey man that was a little more then I thought it was going to be.’ So I like Shake, Rattle, n’ RollerCoaster. It’s our ride of passage. It has photo capture for the kids—‘My first rollercoaster ride’—and it’s what’s going to get them hooked to go on Eagles, Led Zeppelin and all the other coasters that are out there in the world. Shake, Rattle, n’ RollerCoaster will be their first love and I think that’s cool.


Jon's favorite ride!



I’d like to thank Jon Binkowski for taking the time to talk to us!
Brian Andrelczyk (CedarPoint6) | www.CoasterForce.com | May, 2008