(man coughs) So, anyway, the staff there is going, “Wow.” And then, he kind of realized what he’d said and he just goes, “Oh, well, okay. (quietly) Do you wanna buy them? Do we wanna buy?” Anyway, there’s many stories, but he was a quality guy, a quality guy, and… Read More
“This is Kasatka. This is not Shamu.” There is a pygmy whale stranding in 1988. Read More
You know, I heard it died today. Tell me what happened.” So he was involved, and he knew what we were supposed to do. Read More
Is there some good Auggie Busch III story that comes to mind?… Read More
Well, I think that the neatest story, well, there was a lot of stories, actually, but I was talking to a gentleman named Bob Wright who owned Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, Canada. And he had three whales. And he wanted to get out of that particular part of… Read More
And I go, “Monday?” And he goes, “Yeah, fly up to St Louis and we’ll we’ll take the jet,” ’cause he’s a pilot and he flies around in a jet. So on the way, though, we stopped at Bonners Ferry, Idaho to look at the hops. The hops were being… Read More
Another new owner, a very good owner, in a way. They had a division called Busch Entertainment Corporation which owned the Sesame Place park in Philadelphia and the Busch Gardens parks. And it was really interesting, because we had our first sit down with August Busch III, who was the… Read More
He was a tough guy to work for, because he remembered everything. And he would fly down to the parks and visit the parks and have tours and, “Fix this, fix that. Change the flowers.” And you better do what you were requested to do or you weren’t around very… Read More
I don’t think it was that personal, per se, but, you know, personal enough that he’d call me at home in the middle of the night ’cause he came up with an idea, and say, “Brad, we gotta do this,” or, “What the hell happened to this animal?… Read More
Now you had mentioned changing of the guard and so forth, HBJ is, no, Anheuser-Busch purchases SeaWorld from HBJ?… Read More
Correct. Read More
or another new owner?… Read More
At this time, was it you’re still competing, SeaWorld’s still competing with Disney?… Read More
Was there issues, do we know?… Read More
I think there’s always competing with Disney in some form or fashion, especially here in the Orlando market because of, you know, Disney World’s here and now Wild Animal Kingdom and Universal Studios with Harry Potter. There’s a lot of competition here in Orlando. I think even in San Diego… Read More
And somebody would say, “What are we gonna do with these elephants in Tampa?” And I’d go, “Well, what do you wanna do?… Read More
And why do you ask? What’s going on?” “Well, we don’t know how to do protected contact.” And I go, Well, I think we should talk about that then and talk about positive reinforcement and talk about the things that make sense, what’s evolving.” And so the evolution worked out… Read More
So it’s San Diego, Orlando, and the third is?… Read More
Well, actually, there were four for a while. San Antonio was being built in ’88, and SeaWorld of Ohio existed. So, at one time, there was four. Then the SeaWorld park sold the SeaWorld of Ohio park to a theme park that was across the lake, at Geauga Lake. So… Read More
What do you do? How can I help you?” Did you have new responsibility?… Read More