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Editor's corner

Wow, how time flies. Here we are almost at the end of summer. And for a lot of children who have already returned back to school, summer vacation has ended.

My travels have been frequent over the past few months; weekly with the exception of one week. Next week I'm heading up to Davis Farmland and Davis MegaMaze\ in Sterling, Massachusetts for our annual consultation. The Davis have been our client for twenty years. In 1994 we were retained by the Davis family to help them relocate and expand a small petting zoo they had started several years before on their dairy farm. We conducted a market feasibility study, including guest surveys that showed adequate demand for a major facility. We then worked with the Davis to develop a design for development of a “children's discovery farm” with an expanded mix of attractions targeted to families with toddlers to eight year-olds. The new facility was named “Davis Farmland.”

Then in 1998, the Davis's opened their Mega Maze on the other side of the road as a separate farm agritainment attraction. That year it was a Celtic double dragon maze theme. For years the Mega Maze has been considered the top corn maze in the world with its annual themes, role-play staff and double-decker and Y bridges. In fact, they describe it as Extreme Mazing. This year they've added X-Treme Outdoor Laser Tag.

Just about very year the Davis' have retained us to visit and evaluate their operations and recommend improvements and added attractions, as well as designs, to grow their agritainment business.

In September, I'm heading over to Amman, Jordan to work with a mall developer on feasibility and design for adding family entertainment center type venues to their mall. Hopefully I'll be able to include a travelogue about the trip in our next eNewsletter.

If you are a regular reader of this Leisure eNewsletter, then you've noticed a recurring theme in many articles over the past year or so - the impact of digital disruption of location-based entertainment and strategies to compete. In this issue we continue looking at the changing entertainment landscape in a number of the articles.

And in along the lines of that same theme, you might want to check out my latest blog, Is the Terminator prophecy [of the age of the machines] coming true?

Hope you enjoy and find some of our articles informative. Have an enjoyable remainder of the summer.

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