Pop goes the wagon

I often get asked how I got into the theme park business. The answer is I just did. There was no place to learn and no one to teach me. Whenever I needed something I figured out how I could build it, using whatever I could find along with the simple tools I had at hand. In the beginning we didn't have the modern tools nor the fancy materials we enjoy now. We flew by the seat of our pants, making do. The projects are certainly bigger and much more complex these days but we still seem to operate at the same edge of the envelope.

One of our very first projects was a popcorn wagon - a very small business we started in Chemainus, BC. about 1985. I first looked into buying a wagon but quickly discovered they were far, far out of our budget. The solution was to build one ourselves. I scrounged some antique wagon wheels from somewhere. I got a friend to weld up the frame from scrap steel. We located a used popcorn kettle and then fashioned a plywood wagon around it. We sanded it down and painted it with a brush. Janis sewed up the striped canopy. In the end we spent but a tiny fraction of what a new unit would have cost. It turned out that the popcorn selling business wasn't nearly as lucrative as I had imagined and so we sold the wagon, recovering all of our investment - plus a little.

I discovered I loved to build creative projects much more than I liked operating them. While our little street vending venture wasn't a huge success it did provide us with some great experience in the theme building business. 

Very high and fast research

There is so very much to learn about the business we are in. I doubt I will ever know more than a smidge... but that doesn't stop me from trying. Today, Phoebe joined me for a long awaited adventure to learn about zip lining. We drove up to Peachland in the Okanagan to ride "six of the highest, longest , fastest, epic-est ziplines in Canada, criss-crossing the breathtaking Deep Creek Gorge." The attraction is ZIP ZONE. It lived up to everything they claimed on their website. The six ziplines are up to 1,800 feet long and the highest is 381 feet off the ground when you go over the beautiful canyon far, far below. Phoebe bravely and happily decided to lead the way. She leapt off the first platform without even a squeak. She also DANGLED on the fifth zipline - upside down with a giant grin - all the way to the platform far below. Believe me, there's nothing I know that compares to hanging upside down that high off the ground while zipping along a thread of a cable at high speed. Phoebe now has the T-shirt to show her friends when she goes back to school next week. It was a most excellent adventure!

Revamped ID

When we are between projects it seems to be the busiest time of all. That's when we try our best to catch up on all the things we put off when we were in the middle of a paying project. One of these important things was our own sign out by the road. In the last couple of years we have dropped our last name from the company ID to make it Imagination Corporation. We've used imaginationcorporation.com since the start. These days the internet is the primary way to market. It's common to see those stopped out by the road pull out their smartphone and do a search for information about us. Spelling our last name is not the easiest thing and it's tougher still to remember which made it time to make a change. As we reprint business cards, and get new vehicle IDs we have been slowly making the change. Over the last few months we routed a new face for our sign and applied the paint and gold leaf but the paying projects always took precedence and so the sign was tucked into a corner of the studio. Today it was dusted off at last and switched out with the old. Now those who pull up don't need to do a web search. They can just type in imaginationcorporation.com and read all about us and what we offer.