Q&A about Discovery Cove (expansion too!)

The Orlando Sentinel just had a Question & Answer session with Stewart Clark, the SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment vice president in charge of Discovery Cove.

Here you are the answers, that include also a hint to the new expansion!:

The following text has been featured here, but it is under the copyright of the Orlando Sentinel:

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There's quite a bit of construction underway in Discovery Cove right now. What can you tell us about that?

We opened Discovery Cove in 2000 and, since then, we've really looked for new and exciting ways to bring people closer to animals and really immerse people in animals' environments. And one of the key areas that we've had in the park, and we've always had a great deal of success with, was our tropical reef. It's no secret in town, but we are building a new reef area in the park. We'll be talking more about it — we're pretty excited about it — somewhere around Oct. 13th or so.

Discovery Cove is still a unique product in Orlando — limited capacity but high margin. How has the concept worked?

When we first opened Discovery Cove, we really didn't know what to think about the park. The challenge was, let's bring in a thousand guests a day and let's give those guests an experience that they would never be able to get anywhere else in the world and really just bring them closer to the animals that they had maybe admired from a close proximity — but not actually being in with them — at places like SeaWorld. That was kind of the mission when we started the park. And in the 10 years, we've just been really delighted with the success.

What are some of the challenges of operating a park like Discovery Cove?

A couple of things. One, with such a small attendance base each day, it comes with a great advantage in that there are fewer people in the park. But the disadvantage, from an operations standpoint, would be the guests arrive with a very high expectation. And our job is not just to deliver on that but obviously to exceed that expectation. The other challenge would be, we've run zoological parks for years where we're able to take care of the animals and provide life-support systems and that kind of thing. But when you add humans into the mix, it really presented a whole new set of challenges for us. … We process pretty close to 60 million gallons of water a day here. We've got very large bodies of water, and then we're just constantly cleaning that water and putting it through our filtration system.

Have you learned anything at Discovery Cove to apply at SeaWorld Orlando or your other big parks [Busch Gardens Tampa, Aquatica, Adventure Island]?

The attention to small details is really what we teach our employees here. It combines that theme-park experience with the high-level resort experience. And those sometimes can be two different types of employees even. So what we've worked hard here to do is really combine that: Somebody who can operate a facility and take care of people in a great way but also obviously provide the best care in the world for animals and systems and that sort of thing. That's the lesson we've learned. And kind of like a Ritz Carlton service-training class, we have a Discovery Cove service training that our people go through. And we're really proud of the employees here. They're amazing.

You've spent more than 25 years in animal training and yet you have a 'not-so-well-trained' dog. How did that happen? 

That's true. … You know, my wife is also an animal trainer, and you would think that our dogs and our animals would just be the best in the world. It's like anything else — you just want to leave work at work, I guess. My neighbors make fun of me all the time, they're like, 'Good golly, you should take that dog to obedience school.' And it cracks me up. I'm like, 'Well, we know a couple of people that work animals around here.' 

Copyright © 2010, Orlando Sentinel

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Well, this is all very interesting, and we look forward to October 13th! They may unveil all the new experiences that this new expansion will bring!!!