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
Well, basically, the new responsibilities was encompassing the whole animal collection at that point for all the three SeaWorld parks. And we were in charge of all the, you know, veterinary, education, conservation, animal transport, aviculture, aquarium, so all the different disciplines that were under that, those buckets were under… Read More
Was it that you, as you said, raised your hand, or was this a natural transition?… Read More
It was an interesting transition because I had only been working, after SeaWorld had bought the parks from HBJ, or HBJ bought the parks, or the Marineland park, excuse me, HBJ owned SeaWorld. They bought the Marineland park and then closed it, as I said earlier. And I was there… Read More
So I had to double my effort (chuckles) to try and get good relationships built with everybody that had been there for a long, long time. And I was sort of the new kid on the block. So it was fun, but I did the same thing I did in… Read More
I just asked, “Why? What’s your job?… Read More
And all we would do is sit down with the directors and producers and say, “What do you want?… Read More