Podcasts about tussauds

This episode our guest is a perpetual optimist/habitual pessimist, the Madame Tussaud of WWE2k, and a guy who does stuff known as Keith MakiWhere he would like to be found: @letterkennywrestling on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, @solfreedom10 on instagram; On WWE2K23 and WWE2K24 Community Creations #Letterkenny or #Shorsey6:20 Q1: When did you know you wanted to become the Tussauds of wrestling games?It was all a dreamAn interesting phone callInteractions from Letterkenny cast and othersDownsides of having popular content13:16 Q2: What do you wish you had known when you started out?Unexpected and strange WWE2K and Letterkenny dramaA WWE/UFC diversion20:08 Q3: What's your go-to order at your favorite hometown restaurant?Simple as ABCIt's in the sauce?21:43 Q4: What are you curious about?The Future23:59 Q5: Is there anything I should have asked, but didn't?Genius Inspiration29:25 Q6: If you could create a new holiday, what would it commemorate?Maybe Don't DayImportance of general mindfulness

Oggi Marica ci racconta l'affascinante storia dietro le statue di cera di Madame Tussauds. Dalla Francia all'Inghilterra, scopriremo la vita incredibile di questa donna, che ha immortalato per sempre nella cera re, regine, rivoluzionari... e criminali!Nel blocco centrale la storia paranormale dell'ascoltatrice Alessia, che ci racconta di uno spirito che si reincarna all'improvviso nel corpo di un malcapitato conoscente. Ne hai una da raccontarci? Mandaci un messaggio vocale!Di là del velo Stefano dopo aver parlato nelle puntate precedenti di Processi alle Streghe e di Salem, per par condicio oggi parlerà di Lupi Mannari e Licantropi. Ci racconterà le origini di questi nostri amici pelosi, sempre in competizione con i più affascinanti vampiri. Ma è vero che i lupi mannari ululano alla Luna? Proveremo a rispondere a questi e altri interrogativi! In chiusura un test facile facile per scoprire se siete Team Vampiri o Team Lupi Mannari! Auuuuuu!Fonti su Italiapodcast.itSeguici su Instagram: @mentremorivo_podcast e raccontaci LA TUA storia paranormale!Lasciaci una recensione sulla tua app di ascolto preferita e offrici un caffé simbolico su Ko-Fihttps://ko-fi.com/italiapodcast

Edgar Estrada nos cuenta todo sobre el mundo del entretenimiento; espectáculos, cultura, cine, televisión, teatro y muchas recomendaciones a tu alcance. ¡Estamos "Del Tingo al Tango"!Una producción original de Audio Centro

EPISODE NOTESSkip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese. Download the Rubber Cheese 2022 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the first digital benchmark statistics for the attractions sector. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.  If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast Competition ends January 31st 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.   Show references: https://www.convious.com/https://twitter.com/MrTicketeerhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andypovey/ https://blooloop.com/technology/news/convious-consumer-pricinghttps://blooloop.com/technology/news/convious-digital-trends-webinar/ Andy Povey joined Convious in November 2021 as managing director for UK and Ireland. Andy has worked in the attractions industry since the early nineties when he began as a ride operator at Chessington World of Adventures. He stayed with the Tussaud's company and later Merlin Entertainments for another 18 years, working in a variety of operational jobs at Rock Circus, Madame Tussauds, and central support, where he was responsible for the group's ticketing systems. After Merlin, he worked for Gateway Ticketing Systems for ten years, opening and then overseeing their UK operation, before transferring his experience to the Convious team. Outside work, Andy enjoys visiting attractions of all shapes and sizes with his family. Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in, or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. In today's episode, I speak with Andy Povey, Managing Director, UK and Ireland for Convious. Andy shares with us the five key digital trends attractions shouldn't miss out on and research into dynamic pricing for theme parks and tourist attractions. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.Kelly Molson: Andy Povey, it's so lovely to have you on Skip The Queue podcast today. Thanks for coming on.Andy Povey: Thank you. It's my absolute pleasure.Kelly Molson: And I know you've been a bit poorly. So let's just state now, poor old Andy has had COVID, and he's got a little bit of a cold today. So be kind to him.Andy Povey: It's man flu.Kelly Molson: It's always man flu, Andy. Right. As ever, we're going to start with icebreakers and I've got a really good one for you. So how would you describe your job to a three year old?Andy Povey: Oh, to a three year old? Well, I've got eight year old twin girls. So as far as they're concerned, daddy gets to go to zoos and theme parks without them, which is not brilliant. But no, I make computers work, I suppose.Kelly Molson: Make computers work for cool attractions like zoos and theme parks. I think that's perfect.Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: Good job, Andy. We'll talk more about that later. Okay. What one thing would you make a law that isn't one already?Andy Povey: That's a really difficult one.Kelly Molson: They're always difficult, Andy. It's always.Andy Povey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're being mean to me. Yeah. Oh, I'm in our office in Amsterdam at the moment, so I'm traveling a bit. And I do have a theory that you should never, ever fly from an airport where people feel it's appropriate to turn up in flip flops.Kelly Molson: Well, even if you're traveling back from holiday and it's a bit warm.Andy Povey: So the law would be, if I'm at the airport, and I'm waiting in the back to get to Carousel, you need to get out of my way.Kelly Molson: I think that's fair. Everyone goes a bit savage at the airport. Don't you think? You know when you go into London, and there's a certain way that you act on the tubes to get to places. You've got to walk really, you've got to be very determined, haven't you?Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: That's how I feel when I go into London. I've got my London walk on. And I feel it's a bit like that at the airports as well. Everyone's all in it for themselves. They don't care about anyone else around them. It's all just-Andy Povey: No, no. Get out of my way.Kelly Molson: Yeah. It's a good law, Andy. Right. Everyone has to get out of Andy's way at the airport. That's the law. Nice. Okay. And this one, I've asked a few people this one. Because I really like this one. What would you buy as you exit through the gift shop?Andy Povey: I'm not really into things. I'm much more of an experience kind of person. So if there was another experience, or something to enhance the experience, then it would be something like that.Kelly Molson: Okay. Good answer.Andy Povey: Yeah, something to enhance the experience.Kelly Molson: Good answer. I like that, Andy. And we'll talk about that a little bit more later as well. What would your twin girls pick? What would be their things from the theme park?Andy Povey: Oh, cuddly toys. You must be the same. Shelves and shelves and shelves of these things in the house.Kelly Molson: My daughter is doing incredibly well from all of the visits though that I have been on recently. Yeah. Let me tell you the gift shops, I've been [inaudible 00:03:28].Andy Povey: Squish 'em alls.Kelly Molson: To the gift shops. Yeah.Andy Povey: What do they call them?Kelly Molson: Squishy animals, all sorts of stuff. She's now got from various attractions that she's never been to that I'll have to take her to, to say thank you.Andy Povey: No, when mine were the same age as your daughter, I went to Orlando a few times for IAAPA. And I would buy them Mickey Mouse and Mini Mouse cuddly toys, and bring them home. But because they'd never seen anything to do with Disney, these were just referred to as Boy Mouse and Girl Mouse.Kelly Molson: Oh, bless them.Andy Povey: They didn't know what Mickey Mouse was.Kelly Molson: Oh. And I'm sure they do very well now.Andy Povey: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.Kelly Molson: All right, Andy, what is your unpopular opinion? What have you prepared for us?Andy Povey: I actually did a poll of my colleagues in the office, because I was looking at something to do with Eurovision, and actually trying to work out whether my opinion was unpopular or not. And unfortunately it wasn't. So Eurovision massively overrated is my opinion of this.Kelly Molson: Gosh. So-Andy Povey: I knew we were going to fall out over this.Kelly Molson: Well, it's not just me. There's a lot of listeners that you are going to make very unhappy about that statement, Andy. Not to mention Rachel MacKay, who, if she hears this, I don't know how she's going to feel the next time she sees you. So that is for you to feel awkward about.Andy Povey: You asked for an unpopular opinion.Kelly Molson: Okay, let's put it out there. How does everyone feel about Eurovision? I feel like this is definitely going to be an unpopular one, Andy. Thank you. Right. Okay. Andy, so you have got over two decades in the attraction sector, self proclaimed attractions industry nerd. I think that's fair. Tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up working in the sector.Andy Povey: A colleague did tell me the other day that it's actually 30 years, and I was trying to hide away from this. Yes, I am old. So many, many years ago, started a temporary seasonal job at Chessington World of Adventures, having left college without a clue about what I wanted to do when I grew up. My first job was driving the train around the park at Chessington, and absolutely fell in love with the attractions industry. And then stayed with Merlin or The Tussauds Group, which then became Merlin Entertainment for about 18 years, and doing all sorts of different jobs. So that's how I fell into it. And I've never looked back.Kelly Molson: It's a really common theme actually, from guests that come on who've gone to work in a theme park or an attraction as what they probably thought would be a temp job for a while. And then absolutely loved every minute of it, and then have just risen through the ranks. Whether they've stayed in one group or they've moved around. But they've just continued to learn, and learn, and learn, and progress. And that comes across so frequently with our guests. It sucks you in.Andy Povey: It absolutely does. And it's a great industry. And I love the fact that you can build a career within our industry from starting right at the bottom, and just work your way up. I think it's a testament to the industry.Kelly Molson: What kind of roles did you work in then as you moved your way up?Andy Povey: So I did four years at Chessington as a ride operator. Then went to Rock Circus, which was a subsidiary of Madame Tussauds in the Trocadero and Piccadilly Circus in Central London. It was there for four years, and we were told that someone from head office was going to come and install the till system and tell me how to make it work. At which point I went, "Oh, maybe not." So I went and became that person.Kelly Molson: Oh, you were a tills man?Andy Povey: Yeah, I was. It was a tills man. So I started in ticketing before the internet.Kelly Molson: Yeah.Andy Povey: Before anybody really knew what the internet was, and then moved to Madame Tussauds for a short period of time, and then to what was Tussauds Group head office in Tottenham Court Road looking after all of the till systems for the organisation. And then did that for about 10 years, and then left, went and joined the supplier that we were using, Tussauds, so gateway ticketing. I was with them for 10 years. Basically convinced them to set up a UK office, and I ran the UK office for 10 years. And then after COVID, decided it was time to go and do something else. So came across Convious, the company I work for now, and whose office I'm sitting in today. And that's it, really. That's a very brief summary of Andy's career.Kelly Molson: Excellent career. I'd like to hear a little bit about Convious. So I am aware of you, and I think that most people at the moment would be aware of Convious. They're everywhere. Convious are everywhere.Andy Povey: Yeah. We're bright pink, and we shout a lot.Kelly Molson: And they're pink.Andy Povey: Don't know what they do.Kelly Molson: You have fantastic stands, events that we all attend. But I think there's something really different about Convious. Can you just tell us a little bit about it?Andy Povey: So it's not just what Convious are doing. There's something going off in the whole world of technology that the sales force are referring to as the fourth industrial revolution. And so competing with third industrial revolution from sort of 1949 to 2010, the fourth industrial revolution's all about data. And five years ago everyone was talking about big data. That was the buzzword that was everywhere. So we were just storing loads and loads of information. The fourth industrial revolution we're seeing now is actually doing things with that data. Because there's no point in just paying for a load of storage somewhere, if you're not going to do anything with it.So what we're doing at Convious with that data. It's really sitting on top of our partner's websites rather than being a page that you go off to, and gathering as much data as we possibly can. So we pull in long range weather forecasts, we're pulling in all sorts of information about how people are interacting with the website. And ultimately just using it all to drive sales and increase sales for our partners.Kelly Molson: I know that the weather thing is a really small thing of the system. It's a tiny thing, but it's the thing that sticks in my head the most. Because I just think it's blooming genius. I know. It's such a small thing, but it's such a clever thing to have.Andy Povey: It really does affect attendance at so many attractions. And I love Dom Jones when he was talking to you. I love his take on the weather, of actually, if you're going to blame the weather, you should also give the weather credit when you have a great attendance.Kelly Molson: I agree. Yeah, I love that quote from Dom. So it is really interesting in terms of what Convious do. Because I think that one of the things that attractions could be better at is using the data that they already have in more sophisticated ways. And the Convious platform allows you to do that really easily. Because let's face it, marketing teams are overstretched in attractions. And they can be quite small at times as well. We had Danielle and Ross on from Drayton Manor a few weeks ago. And the two of them pretty much head up their department. And I know they're a head of marketing as well. But that's a small team for what is a significant attraction.Andy Povey: Yes. Yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: So anything that we can help to put in place for those teams is ultimately going to make it easier for them, and make it better. And they'll be able to understand better what their customers are actually doing.Andy Povey: And ultimately it's about making it easier for the customer. There's a whole focus on personalization at the moment, again, across the industry. So rather than it being one too many, it's one personalisation. And looking at, if we know something about the customer, so take me for example. I buy family tickets, and I love industrial heritage. So Google knows that about me, and Google will tell every website that I go to, that's who I am. So if we've got a family offering as an attraction, then let's promote the family offering. If you've got an industrial heritage offering, let's promote the industrial heritage offering to the people who've identified that they are. Ultimately it's about giving people what they want.Kelly Molson: And that's the really smart bit, isn't it? That the system can identify the person that's coming, and show them the things that are more relevant to them from that attraction. Then the standard things that they might like, they might buy. But actually this is the one that they really want, because that's connecting with them at a completely deeper level. That's some of the stuff that I want to talk about today. So one of the things that's good about Convious, and I'd like to hope that Rubber Cheese are aligned in this way as well, is that when we think about talking to attractions, we're giving them things that are useful. I think, that ultimately from any marketing perspective is how useful can you be? This content that I'm putting out, what value does it bring somebody? And how can they engage with it? And is it helpful for them?And that's what I feel Convious does really well. And I see a lot of your articles on Blooloop for example. And a month or so ago there was an article about the five key digital trends for attractions as we roll into 2023. And I think that this is a really good time to talk about these things. Because people are doing a lot of planning at this time of year. They're in Christmas, which this year feels very busy, because it's the first Christmas people can-Andy Povey: It certainly does.Kelly Molson: It's the first one though, if you think about it, that people can actually go out and feel comfortable that the things they're going to book, they can actually do. Last year we still had that Omicron. Do we do big groups? Do we just stay inside a little bit longer? But this year feels busy. And I think that attractions will get through Christmas, have a brilliant Christmas. And then January will be that time when they go "Right, what are we doing? This is what we need to focus on now." So this is very pertinent. It comes at a great time. One of the key trends that you just mentioned was personalization. So you talked about making things relevant to your audience. Really, really relevant. Are we talking about exclusive here as well? Because we talk about that quite a lot. Exclusive events and things that they can only get at certain places.Andy Povey: Yeah, I think so. And I think that's one of the things that, not just around digital, I think it's one of the things that the attractions world will do to really weather the economic storm that we're going through at the moment. Generally what we've seen over the past 12 months is that if you've got a short event, or a short-term event, it tends to sell out. So looking at what you as an attraction can do that creates that exclusive event. So if you are a park, can you get Peppa Pig on site for two or three days? Can you get Paw Patrol there for a couple of days? So giving people their incentive to come, and come again, and come again. So not just being, this is the six weeks of the summer at my theme park. This is the Peppa Pig, fortnight, although two days. And this is the Paw Patrol for two days. So improving that repeat visitation.Kelly Molson: And what you talked about data, I guess that comes back to really understanding your audience.Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: So you need to be collecting the data to understand what those people want in the first phase to then be able to tailor your offering to what they like.Andy Povey: 100%. 100%. There's no value in creating a Peppa Pig experience if none of your visitors have got kids. A great way to waste a load of money.Kelly Molson: I don't need to see Peppa.Andy Povey: No. No, no, no.Kelly Molson: You can keep Peppa. So you talked earlier about what you like, and that Google knows that about you. How do attractions tap into that? I guess through advertising, right?Andy Povey: Well it's not just advertising. It's actually looking at... And you did the survey a few weeks ago about the attractions, and understanding Google Analytics, that kind of stuff. It's free. You do not need to pay to get Google Analytics data. It's there for you. And there are so many venues, and so many prospective clients that I'm talking to now, that don't have access to it. It's almost criminal. There are still vendors out there that don't share this information. So I suppose to come back and answer your question is, go and look at the data that you've got. Google Analytics will give you a view of everybody that's coming to your website.Kelly Molson: Find out who they are, what they like, and then give them what they want.Andy Povey: Well, yeah. But tailor something for them. So if you've got a large foodie audience, then look at your catering.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's really good advice.Andy Povey: Can you put on a Heston Blumenthal event, or a Jamie Oliver event?Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's really great advice actually, taking it to that deeper level. The second key digital trend was about online and offline, which we're talking a lot about online and offline as well. So this isn't just about digital, but I guess one of the things that was mentioned was about digital experiences. And I guess you can talk about that from a pre-visit perspective. How do you engage people digitally before they turn up at your event? But also, once they're at your venue too. So digital experiences that deepen or extend the experience that you were already giving them. Can you think of any really good examples of that, that we could talk about from an attractions perspective?Andy Povey: That's really difficult. The reason that we go to attractions as human beings, is because we like doing physical things. We want to be with our friends. We want to be with our family. Particularly after COVID, it's has been difficult to go and see granny, and whatever. So it's safer to go and visit a park, or to visit a garden than it is to possibly all sit around in the lounge, having a cup of tea. I can give you an unusual example, I suppose. The Forestry Commission did something a few years ago with The Gruffalo, and it's an augmented reality thing.Kelly Molson: Yes.Andy Povey: So as a parent, you could sit your child on a tree trunk and hold up your phone, and the augmented reality would superimpose an image of the Gruffalo sitting next to your child. They pulled it within six months, because the parent is having this experience of looking at their child through a phone. Whereas the child's sitting there going, "Well, mummy and daddy's just on their phone again."Kelly Molson: "Where's the Gruffalo?"Andy Povey: "Mummy and daddy's just on their phone again. What are we doing?"Kelly Molson: Yeah.Andy Povey: So in that situation it's about getting back to reality, rather than being digital. So it's a really fine line. At what point does an app, or a park map, or something like that, at what point does it enhance your visit, versus intruding on your visit?Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's a really good question. It's really funny, because when you mentioned that, I was like, that's a perfect example of this, how digital interacts with nature. But you're right, aren't you? Because the child doesn't interact with it. They just see you pointing a phone at them again, or you interacting with your phone and not with them. I hadn't considered that, and what message that actually sends out to them while they're outside in nature as well.Andy Povey: Yeah. And so I'm not a [inaudible 00:18:44] who's going, no, no, digital should be nowhere near your experience. It should be there, and it should be enhancing. But actually really understand that it is enhancing. So if you talk to the guys from BeWILDerwood, I know there was a podcast with Hannah. They delight on the fact that you can't get a mobile phone signal in Norfolk. Because you should put your phone away. You're here to have a day out with the kids.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's a really good point. I actually quite like it when I can't get any mobile signal, because it means that I'm present.Andy Povey: Yes, absolutely.Kelly Molson: It means I'm not worrying about having to check something. I'm actually not even that concerned about, oh I needed to get this picture for the gram. I just forget about it if I've got no signal. It's just not going to happen. One thing that we do have to think about though, from an online perspective, is about bookings. So what we have seen, and again we've seen this in our attractions website survey that we've just published, is that bookings are increasing on mobile year, on year, on year, on year. So we do have to think about that pre-visit, and how easy we make it for people to book tickets. So actually, someone asked me this question on LinkedIn yesterday. What's one of my top infuriations with attractions websites?And I said for me, I'm often on my mobile phone when I'm doing things, because I'm out and about and I might be booking my tickets on a mobile phone. And I really hate when you're forced to create an account before you can actually buy anything. And I'm like, "God, I've got literally five minutes before I get off the train, and onto the tube. And I've got no signal. And I've got to get this ticket. I don't want to be creating an account right now."Andy Povey: No, no, no.Kelly Molson: Just give me the ticket. I might get an account afterwards, but just give me the ticket.Andy Povey: That was one of the things from your report, wasn't it? The account creation is a massive turnoff to conversion. And for me, I never remember any of those passwords. So every time I go back to their store, I'm having to reset my password, because it's just an absolute pain in the butt.Kelly Molson: I'm with you. So there you go.Andy Povey: Don't do it.Kelly Molson: Top tip from this podcast. Don't make people do that.Andy Povey: Yeah. Don't do accounts.Kelly Molson: Two very angry consumers here.Andy Povey: Absolutely. 100%.Kelly Molson: All right. So number three on our digital trends list is increasing loyalty. Now this is a big one, isn't it? Right? So again, it's interesting. So from a personal perspective, again, I was asked about memberships. We have a National Trust membership, it renews in January. I'll absolutely be renewing it. It's great value for money. It gives us so many places locally that we can go to. It's not a free day out, but it's a great day out, and we can take quite long.Andy Povey: It feels like it.Kelly Molson: It feels like a free day.Andy Povey: Yeah.Kelly Molson: Yeah. But do attractions need to think a bit more about that now? So should attractions be rewarding loyalty? So member perks for example? Or just small things that members get for being a member, that you couldn't get unless you were a member?Andy Povey: Absolutely. It's almost those money-can't-buy experiences. So it doesn't necessarily cost the attraction anything to do these things. And you can go have a member exclusive event to walk a coaster track, or to a behind the scenes tour of something. But yeah, all right. It might cost you a couple of hours for a member of staff to put it on. Again, as we came out of COVID, the first people that came to your rotation, were your most loyal customers. They've come to see you as the first thing they can do. So as an attraction, you have the opportunity to harness that loyalty, and turn these people into advocates. And that's going to be your best marketing resource, where they're recommending to people to come along to you. So if you can deepen that relationship by rewarding, by sharing, then absolutely you should do it.Kelly Molson: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's understanding what they want as well. So when we talk about delivering what they want, should attractions be surveying their members, and finding out what more they can give them? And again, it comes back to the data thing again, doesn't it? How well do you know your audience? From a member's perspective, are you actually giving them what they want?Andy Povey: No, absolutely. And surveying's great, but there's so many other ways you can capture information about members and what they're doing that isn't actually going and asking them a question. It was interesting when we did the dynamic pricing consumer research. The responses that you get from people when they're answering a survey aren't necessarily what they're doing in real life.Kelly Molson: Interesting. Give us an example.Andy Povey: There was, 30% of people believe the airlines aren't charging dynamic prices. And I'm looking at this going, well, this can't be right. This is obvious. But actually, if you dig into it a little bit more, and we did with the guys from Baker Richards. And it's actually, the consumer's not looking at the price changing. The consumer's interested in the price they're paying for the date and time that they want to get on the plane. It doesn't matter that the price changes. It's how much am I paying today? What's my price now? That's a very long winded way of answering your question about the value of surveys.Kelly Molson: Yeah. No, it's really important, isn't it? So how else do you get to know your members? If surveys are giving us not quite the full picture, what other ways can we find out about-Andy Povey: So if you are looking at app, then obviously you are tracking, or you have the ability to track where people are going, how they're engaging, that kind of stuff. I was at IAAPA a couple of weeks ago in Orlando. And there's guys there with a new product that's actually harvesting location data from 200 different apps, and bringing all that, and presenting it back to you. Which I'm not a hundred percent sure that it is GDPR compliant, or [inaudible 00:24:44].Kelly Molson: Is that okay though? I'm not sure about that.Andy Povey: Yeah. But there it's looking at where people are going, how long they're staying there, and that kind of stuff. So that's one example. Going back to what we do at Convious, we don't capture addresses, postal addresses. Because we're not interested in old school CRM. We're not going to produce a mailing, a physical piece of paper and post it out to somebody. So why are you asking them to fill in all those fields with their address on?Kelly Molson: That's interesting. So even from a geographic perspective, it's not always relevant to understand where your customers are traveling from.Andy Povey: You can get all of that from the IP address that they're coming from.Kelly Molson: Sure.Andy Povey: So obviously it's really important to understand whereabouts in the country, and how far away your customers are from you, and that kind of stuff. But there are other ways to gathering that information, rather than traditional filling in. Back to your comment about filling in my address on the phone. Yeah, I've got fat fingers. I'm not going to type my address in on the phone.Kelly Molson: And I'm busy.Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: It's not going to happen.Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.Kelly Molson: All right. Yeah. No, I like that.Andy Povey: Make it as simple as you possibly can for people.Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. And the data's already there, so just gather it from the right place without giving people something else that they need to do. Good. Okay. All right. Well, our next one is about engagement, digital engagement. So digital engagement, from a marketing perspective, I always think about user generated content at this point. Because you're asking your visitors, from an offline perspective, you're asking them to engage with something that's at your physical attraction, but then you then encouraging them to share that digitally. So you're getting that double exposure and, you're also generating content from your users, which is invaluable for your marketing team. So that's the thing that I always focus on from digital engagement. What other things can we ask attractions to focus on?Andy Povey: A story someone told me many, many years ago was that their marketing guy actually ran a training session at this attraction, I can't remember which one, for staff on how to take the best photos.Kelly Molson: Oh that's great. Yeah.Andy Povey: You see a family, and mum or dad's taking a picture of the other parent and the kids, obviously the member of staff is going to offer to take the photograph for them. That's just human nature. That's what we do. But if you've already identified the most memorable background to put these people in, then the member staff can just move them slightly. And it improves and increases the rate of those photos being uploaded and shared.Kelly Molson: That's such a small thing, isn't it?Andy Povey: Isn't it?Kelly Molson: But again, that's genius. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get a better picture for people. They're more encouraged to share it. I love it. That's so clever. I hadn't even considered that. But again, that comes back to the people. People make places.Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: So you empower the people to make those things happen better for those guests. I love that. Yeah, great one. Okay. And then I guess reviews is something that's really important about engagement. And how do we encourage people to leave reviews about the venues?Andy Povey: It can be as simple as your post visit survey. Standard. Everyone's doing them.Kelly Molson: Ah, are they though? Are they though?Andy Povey: Well, yeah okay. Everyone should be doing them.Kelly Molson: Okay. Should be.Andy Povey: Everyone should be doing them. And then you can have some intelligence sitting behind it, that if you get a lot of high scores, whatever, then direct the consumer over to the review site at the end of the review. If you're getting some negative scores, then direct them to your customer service team and do something about it. As human beings, we're happy to share this kind of information, as long as we're getting something back from it. It's a transactional relationship at that point. So we talk a lot about harvesting data. But morally, you can't do that if you're not giving the consumer something back, and giving them a benefit for doing it. Back to your comment about accounts. What's the point of me creating an account? What's my benefit of doing this? There isn't one. I'm just going to get annoyed about it.Kelly Molson: This is the thing, actually. So most of the time when I've had to create an account to get my ticket, there hasn't been any further interaction other than someone's whacked me on their mailing list. And I'm probably going to unsubscribe from that mailing list, because I'm annoyed that I've had to make the account in the first place. So what is that benefit? Yeah. Think about if you are going to force people to do something, at least make it worthwhile for them than a newsletter. Just sticking them on the newsletter list is not going to cut it.Andy Povey: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And then for a long time I was on the Encore Hotels mailing list. I get an email from them a couple of times a week. And it started, Dear Povey, you-Kelly Molson: Dear Povey.Andy Povey: Dear Povey, you have got that so wrong. You cannot. Your CRM is so bad.Kelly Molson: Can I tell you though? So sometimes when I have to sign up for stuff and I have to put my company name, I get emails to Dear Rubber. That's not okay. I'm quite used to it, but it's still not okay.Andy Povey: No, no, no, no. So yeah. We're talking a lot about examples of how not to do it, than how to do it better.Kelly Molson: Well I think this is important, right?Andy Povey: It is.Kelly Molson: There may be attractions listening to this, going, "Oops, we might have done that. We might need to change that." So it's all relevant.Andy Povey: Oh no, on a positive. I got an email from Father Christmas yesterday. It's from an attraction we took the kids to last year to go and see Santa. And it's the first mail I've had from that venue since visiting, so 12 months. So I'm not getting spammed. And you see Father Christmas arrive in your inbox.Kelly Molson: Oh, that's nice, isn't it?Andy Povey: It's a very special moment. So that was very well done. Very well done.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's really smart, isn't it? If you're just going to send one email a year, make sure it's from Santa.Andy Povey: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: Right. Let's talk about pricing, because that's our number five key digital trends for attractions. Now pricing's really interesting. We've talked quite a lot about pricing recently. So we had Dominic on from Mary Rose, talking about pricing. We also had Simon Addison from Roman Baths, talking about pricing.Andy Povey: Yes.Kelly Molson: Let's talk about dynamic pricing, because it's something that we touched on just earlier when we were talking about the airlines and the surveys. So airlines use something called real time pricing. When a plane's almost full, the airline company's going to bump their prices up. Because they know they're going to sell out, and they know that somebody really wants that ticket, because they have to get somewhere on a certain day at a certain time. So it's a bit of a no-brainer for them. Is that something that attractions should be doing?Andy Povey: I think so. And as an industry, we've talked about dynamic pricing for the past 20 years. And when I was Madame Tussaud's, we implemented what then was peak and off-peak pricing. And so we changed the price of the ticket three times during the day. And actually, because we were very explicit about what the price was, we were stuck at this 1995 price point, and had been reluctant to change for a while. We actually increased our ticket yield by about 30%, whilst also increasing our value for money score, which seemed counterintuitive. And actually what was happening there was that the consumer was choosing how much they were going to pay.So rather than being told what the price was, the consumer chooses. So naturally we are more comfortable about a situation, where we feel that we've had some choice. Dynamic pricing does that. Real time pricing, which is where we sit at Convious just makes that run much more efficiently, much more quickly. So a lot of dynamic pricing consultancies out there at the moment will talk about changing prices every day, which if you think, generally people are buying tickets to an attraction three to five days before they visit. They're only going to see three to five different price points. Whereas the way the modern world is going, or the way we are is, we're changing prices, or we can change the price as a result of every single transaction.Kelly Molson: Does that make it more difficult from an operational perspective, if you're constantly changing your prices though? Is it harder to do your forecasting, for example, if that's your price strategy?Andy Povey: If you are forecasting on individual ticket price level, yeah, absolutely. So don't do that.Kelly Molson: Good advice.Andy Povey: Yeah. So every attraction that I've ever worked in and around has a target yield, or a target ticket price to achieve. And we've been doing variable pricing through all the coupons that get put out on all the leaflet racks that you see on every motorway service station. So you can't control how many of those coupons are coming back, and how much discount you're going to get. So having much more control makes it easier for you to manage that, and get the computer to do it. Obviously if you're sitting there changing the prices all the time, then yes, it's going to be a nightmare.Kelly Molson: Nobody wants that job.Andy Povey: No. And the other thing on dynamic pricing is, we still get hooked up on the idea that dynamic means increased, and it doesn't. If you're doing it properly, then it doesn't mean the price is going up necessarily. Obviously you get a better yield. But the guys at Pleasurewood Hills down in Lowestoft, they have a very transient market. So there are loads and loads of holiday parks in their area. So Mondays and Fridays are change over days. So their total addressable market on a Monday and a Friday drops by 50%, because people are packing up and going home. So if you drop the price on a Monday and Friday, or drop the price on a Monday and Friday. Someone who may have come on Wednesday, is now going to come on Monday or Friday, have a much better experience, because venue's not full. And so it smooths their demand. So there's a lot of science behind it.Kelly Molson: Yep. And that all comes back to data, what we started talking about, right?Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: Knowing-Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: Knowing where people are coming from, what they're doing, how you can change their mindset about things just from the data.Andy Povey: Yeah. And actually watching what they're doing. So we have an artificial intelligence engine that sits behind what we're doing. And it can monitor in real time what's happening about your conversion rate. So if you put the price up by a pound and then your conversion rate drops by 5%, you've probably gone up too high. So drop it down a little bit. So just manage it better, I suppose, in summary.Kelly Molson: I think that's good advice for life in general, isn't it Andy?Andy Povey: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Kelly Molson: Just manage it better.Andy Povey: Just manage it better.Kelly Molson: This has been a great chat, Andy. Thank you. I think there's loads to take away from. So what we're going to do in the show notes. So there will be links to all the blog articles that we've mentioned today about the digital trends. And I believe there is a webinar that you ran about dynamic pricing as well. And I believe that we might have a link to that too that we could share, which would be great. But Andy, we always end our podcast by asking our guests to share a book with us, something that they love or they've really enjoyed that they think our listeners would also like.Andy Povey: So I've pondered this for a while, and I know that some of your previous people you've spoken to have got away with two.Kelly Molson: Yeah.Andy Povey: So I've got a request for two books.Kelly Molson: Oh, God. Okay.Andy Povey: One's a business book. Really simple, about a half hour read. It's called Who Moved My Cheese?Kelly Molson: Good book.Andy Povey: It's one of my favorites when I first read it 20, 25 years ago, something like that, it really gave me a different way of looking at change. So I really recommend that. And the other one is actually a book I love reading to my kids, called Oi Dog!Kelly Molson: Oi Dog! Great.Andy Povey: Oi Dog! Yeah. So there's a child in all of us. And that for me really just tickles all of my childish bones. Yeah.Kelly Molson: Oh brilliant.Andy Povey: So it works pretty well.Kelly Molson: Well, both of those books are right up my street. So Who Moved My Cheese? Unsurprisingly within a company called Rubber Cheese, you won't be surprised to know that somebody bought that for me when I set up the business. And that was nearly 20 years ago. So that was one of the first business books that I think that I ever read. And it did make a big difference about how you deal with change, and how you compartmentalise it into an easier way of dealing with. But Oi Dog! sounds right up my street. I'm going to put that on my list too? Right listeners-Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: So as ever, if you want to win a copy of Andy's two books, then if you go over to our Twitter account, you can just search for Skip the Queue, and you retweet this podcast announcement with the words, "I want Andy's books." Then we'll enter you into a draw to potentially win them. Andy, thank you. It's been lovely to chat today. I've really, really enjoyed it. I'm sure I will see you out in events soon. And if I don't see you-Andy Povey: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: Before, have a wonderful Christmas.Andy Povey: And to you. Thank you very much, Kelly.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned.Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.. 

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor NumbersIf you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this episode.Competition ends October 1st 2022. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://maryrose.org/https://www.historicdockyard.co.uk/https://twitter.com/DominicJonesUKhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicejones/ https://www.nmrn.org.uk/https://www.historicdockyard.co.uk/news/item/1152-buoyant-bounce-back-bodes-well-for-portsmouth-historic-dockyard Dominic Jones was recruited to the Mary Rose in 2019 ago as Chief Operating Officer, and became CEO in 2021.  He brings an excellent background in commercial visitor attractions (Disney, Merlin) and creative visitor experience development.During his time at the Mary Rose, he has already driven an excellent commercial and operational performance and worked closely with previous Chief Executive to create the new Portsmouth Historic Dockyard joint venture with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, which launched successfully in August 2020.  Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. In today's episode, I speak with Dominic Jones, CEO of the Mary Rose Museum and Director of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Dominic shares the amazing impact of the joint venture between the Mary Rose Museum and the National Museum of the Royal Navy and his advice for any attractions looking to start and improve their partnership arrangements. If you like what you hear, subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.Kelly Molson: Dominic. Welcome to Skip the Queue. Thanks for coming on.Dominic Jones: Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it, I think.Kelly Molson: You are looking forward to it. You don't need to think about it. Can we just point out, I know, listeners, you can't see this, but if you're watching this on YouTube, can we just see, you've got a lovely little, "I love Skip the Queue" graphic in the background there. Look at that.Dominic Jones: Yeah, I think it's important to get across that I do love Skip the Queue and it's important to get that across before the icebreaker questions, I think, just in case you had a couple and you were thinking, "Oh, I'm going to be a bit tough." And then, so I did that and I tweeted this morning how excited I am about your forthcoming website attraction questionnaire, so that's a double. That's a double positive, right?Kelly Molson: Thank you. Thank you. Don't worry, listeners. I've got a special little recording so you understand what we're talking about that will be coming out in the next week or so, so you'll find out more about that soon.Dominic Jones: And I bought you a rubber for your rubber collection. Can you see that? Mary Rose rubber?Kelly Molson: Wow. Look at that.Dominic Jones: You may or may not get that depending on how the icebreakers go, so that's my third attempt.Kelly Molson: Gosh, I've never been bribed for a good icebreaker question.Dominic Jones: It's not bribery. It's a nice gift. It's a nice gift.Kelly Molson: Right, well, let's get cracking on the icebreaker questions, shall we? I think I've been quite kind to you. Tell us something that you are really great at cooking.Dominic Jones: I really like cooking. I actually find cooking really relaxing, so on a Friday or Saturday, I often cook at home, so it depends, really. I quite like making my own recipes, so just using what we've got in the house. So for example, scallops with chorizo, or if you're doing a steak, might do it with some sort of watercress and various cheese, or just sort of experimenting. I really like sort of seeing what we've got, putting it together and making it work. I think it's important, when you're cooking, to drink some wine as well.Kelly Molson: Oh, I agree.Dominic Jones: So cooking with wine is something I enjoy doing.Kelly Molson: We can be friends, Dominic.Dominic Jones: There we go.Kelly Molson: Absolutely, we can be friends. Also, really great choices of food there. I would definitely eat both of those. You'd be really good on Ready Steady Cook, then. That would've been your show.Dominic Jones: Yeah. Do you know what? I used to... So I once applied for a game show, which I didn't get on, I was very disappointed, but Ready Steady Cook was one I think I could have done. Because it's not hard, is it? Most things go with things, and it's also about having the confidence to carry it off and knowing... The only time it went wrong was I wanted to cook for my girlfriend, who's now my wife, a lemon pasta dish and it tasted awful and it had lemon rind in it and stuff, so... But apart from that, it's always worked out.Kelly Molson: Well, I mean, you must have done all right. She married you.Dominic Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: She married you in the end.Dominic Jones: True.Kelly Molson: All right. Well, our next one, I've gone topical for this. If you were the captain of a pirate ship...Dominic Jones: Yeah?Kelly Molson: What would be the name of your ship?Dominic Jones: That's a good one. Oh. I do like pirates. I think, because I'm Welsh and because I'd want to be a pirate who... A bit like sort of the Warrior in the Dockyard, which isn't a pirate ship, by the way, but when it came in, people normally surrendered, I want to be a scary pirate that people would think, "Oh, don't..." Maybe, like, Smoking Dragon or something like that. And then we'd light smoke as we came in so people are like, "Oh, here's the Smoking Dragon."Kelly Molson: Yeah, I like that. And there'd be a big dragon's head on the front with flame and smoke coming out of it.Dominic Jones: And people... Because a lot of pirates were Welsh. I don't know whether you know this, but a lot of pirates were Welsh.Kelly Molson: I didn't know that.Dominic Jones: Yeah, it's massive.Kelly Molson: Wow.Dominic Jones: Massive.Kelly Molson: Okay. All right. This is great. That's an excellent answer.Dominic Jones: I have to say, these are slightly biased questions because I was listening to a few of your podcasts recently and, like, you had someone from the zoo, "Oh, what's your favourite animal?" Or you had someone from IAAPA, "What's your favourite ride?" And I'm getting a "name a pirate ship"? Know what I mean?Kelly Molson: All right, what's your favourite boat?Dominic Jones: No, only joking. I'm not going to answer that. I'm not going to answer that.Kelly Molson: All right, but what is your favourite smell? That's my last question.Dominic Jones: Genuinely, we're looking at smell now for the museum, because smell is so important, it's something that can make a difference. When I was at Madame Tussauds Amsterdam, we used smell, as well, as part of the experience, because it just creates that emotive moment. I do like cookie dough and cookies and the smell of that sort of baking which you get pumped in in Disney parks. I quite like the smell of red wine.Kelly Molson: Yeah. Yep.Dominic Jones: Yeah, so I think it's food or drink smells I like, but yeah. Good question.Kelly Molson: Good answer. We are at Unpopular Opinion Point. What have you got to share with us?Dominic Jones: This is a hard one because I've decided to go work on this and I did have some really cool ones about lager and N-Dubz and stuff, but I decided to go with work because one of the things that through my whole career, anyone who knows me will know is I get really frustrated when people blame the weather, so I think you shouldn't blame the weather for anything because what happens is when someone blames the weather, when the weather's... So I've worked in theme parks and in museums and aquariums, indoor and outdoor attractions, and you probably know that when it's bad weather, it's great for indoor attractions, when it's good weather, it's good for the theme parks, right?Dominic Jones: So you get people that, when it's good weather in theme parks or bad weather in museums, they say, "Oh, our marketing and our everything we're doing is brilliant because the visitors are coming." And as soon as it's the bad weather or the good weather, depending on what you are, then it's all about the weather. So, "Our visitors are down because the weather was good." If you're in an indoor attraction and it really, really irritates me, and it's one of those things, they're mutually exclusive, you can only blame the weather if you give the weather credit when it's good, and it's one of those things, if things are good, I always think you should look outside the window and think, "Right, what's the reason for that?" And then if things are bad, you should look inside your organisation. It's one of my pet hates, but probably doesn't work for the podcast, so I should probably go with the lager or N-Dubz one, but anyway, there we go. But it is important, right? I think it's a good one.Kelly Molson: It is important. No, I think, yeah, that is important. It's really interesting. I've never really thought about that before. We need to give the weather more credit.Dominic Jones: Well, you need to give the weather credit if you're going to use it to blame. For me, it's a constant. It's something... And these days, weather forecasts are 10, 14 days out, so you should be able to plan.Kelly Molson: Yeah. Okay. Good. All right.Dominic Jones: I'll get off my high horse now. Yeah.Kelly Molson: Listeners, let us know how you feel, so let us know if you want to know about that N-Dubz one as well. I'm intrigued. Right, Dominic, I want you to tell us about your background because we met up recently, didn't we, at the M+H exhibition? And you were very humble about coming on the podcast and you said, "Oh, I'm not going to have anything... You've had really interesting people on and I'm not that interesting." You are really interesting and you've had such an incredible background. Tell us a little bit about it and how you got to where you are now.Dominic Jones: Well, I'm not sure about that. I do like listening to your podcast and you have some amazing guests and 9 times out of 10, I normally think, after listening to them, "Right, I'm going to either do something that they've suggested." Or I follow them on LinkedIn or Twitter and think, "Right, let's learn from them." Because I think you should always learn from other people, but so my career is a lot of luck, a lot of opportunity and a lot of chats.Dominic Jones: When I was growing up, I wanted to be a leisure centre manager. You know? Like you probably won't remember The Brittas Empire, but that was my dream. That was my dream, much to my mum's disappointment. And so that was all I ever wanted, so I went to college and did a leisure studies course, a HND, and there was a placement in PGL Adventure, which is like an adventure park, and I was a Multi Activity Instructor. Absolutely loved it.Dominic Jones: But then I sort of realised, actually, there's a whole world out there and decided I wanted to work in theme parks, so I applied to work at Disney and didn't get it the first time. I was very cocky, I was the wrong sort of person for Disney, but I went back three times and eventually got it and I did a placement in Disney and it was the best thing I ever did and it changed my life. It's one of the few jobs that I've left and thought, "My life will never be the same again." So good. So I did that and I got my master's degree. I didn't get the doctorate because I went on spring break, but hey, I was young...Kelly Molson: Well, spring break, though.Dominic Jones: Exactly. I was young. And then sort of went to Thorpe Park and was a Ride Operator. I remember my friends and some of their family were saying, "That's a real waste of..." Because I went to, in between Disney, went to university in Swansea, and they said, "It's a real waste of university, operating a teacup for £3.50 an hour." Or whatever it was at the time. But I loved it and for me, it was... I thought, "If you want to become a manager or you want to become, eventually, a General Manager or a Director of a theme park, it's really important to know how these things work."Dominic Jones: So I loved it, and just in case you ever get to operate the teacups, it's not too complicated, there's a red and green button, the red is to stop and the green is to start. I mean, it was five hours of training, but I finally mastered it and you can't actually make it go faster, so when you're there on the microphone and say, "Do you want to go faster?" You can't, it goes faster anyway, but I loved it and then very quickly rose through the ranks, so I became a Ride Supervisor, Team Leader, Area Team Leader, Coordinator, went to Chessington, worked there just at the time when Tussauds had bought Thorpe Park, so it was a real great time for career opportunities.Dominic Jones: Then I went to Madame Tussauds, was the Customer Service Manager there and helped create the first contact centre, if you like, call centre, where we sold tickets for things like Rock Circus, which is no longer in existence, but Rock Circus, the London Eye, Madam Tussauds, the Planetarium and that became the Merlin Contact Centre in the future, and then I started applying for loads of jobs, more General Manager jobs, and didn't get them and realised that I needed to get some marketing and sales experience.Dominic Jones: So I left and went to work for Virgin and then I was there for nearly 10 years and absolutely loved it and instead of getting the sales and marketing, well, I got the sales experience, I ended up becoming Vice President of Europe, the Middle East and Africa for the logistics side of the business, and then also, so we opened up Kenya, had some amazing life experiences, we saw the whole world and then was Regional Vice President Sales in Hong Kong for Asia Pacific, so great time.Dominic Jones: And then my wife became pregnant, obviously, I was involved in that, and it made me realise that I probably couldn't do a job where I was traveling 24/7. I mean, for a while, I did literally consider, which makes me sound like a bad person, "I could call in from Skype and things like that." And my wife was like, "Come on." So we went back to Wales and it was really hard to find a job that would allow me to be at home and be around so I actually thought, "Well, originally, when I went to Virgin, I wanted to have marketing experience."Dominic Jones: So I actually went to Thorpe Park and the marketing team and looked after the partnerships and promotions, did some really cool things, the Ministry of Sound nightclub deal was there, did some stuff with Lionsgate. A really good time doing the "buy one, get one free" things, the partnerships and events, got some good bands together on the stage that hadn't been on stage with the Wideboys and the [inaudible 00:11:55] boys if you know your dance music, it was massive.Dominic Jones: Anyway, so I did that for a bit and then got an opportunity to go back to Wales, which is where my wife's family is from. I'm from North Wales, she's from South Wales, so I got a chance to run Oakwood Theme Park, which I absolutely loved and probably would've been there forever if an opportunity hadn't come up with Merlin and Merlin, it was to look after the rest of Europe and the rest of Europe was basically anything in their midway, so Madam Tussauds, Dungeons, Lego Discovery Centre, Sea Life, that wasn't in the UK or Germany, so it was like Istanbul, Helsinki, Paris Blankenberge in Belgium, Spain. I mean, it was brilliant and I did that for a few years.Dominic Jones: Then I went and ran Thorpe Park for a few years, which absolutely loved because that was where I started as a teacup operator and I remember, there was a guy there, good friend of mine, he said, "I remember, when you were on the teacups, you said, 'One day, I'm going to come back and run the place.'" And I did, so amazing. And then, in that time, I had three kids and really was commuting from Christchurch, so decided to change careers again and come into the heritage world and came as the COO of the Mary Rose, which I did for two years, and then, during the pandemic, became the CEO, so quick sort of... Yeah. But lots of luck and right place, right time, all those sort of things, but that's good, right? That's most people's career.Kelly Molson: Whoa. That is amazing. I mean, you've been to so many different places. I love that you went full-circle at Thorpe Park as well. What an incredible story, to have gone in there as an operator and then end up running the place. That is amazing.Dominic Jones: Yeah, I loved that. And actually, all the jobs I've had have really become part of our story. I was talking to someone yesterday about the Mary Rose and they were talking about what they were going to do next but how the Mary Rose had been a massive part of their story and I said, "That's the beautiful thing about work and careers and life. Whatever you do, it becomes part of your story and you're part of their story." So whether it's Thorpe Park, whether it's when I opened up, for Virgin Atlantic, the Nairobi route for logistics and the Hamlin, it was amazing and I've been to Kenya probably more times than I've been to Birmingham, you know? So that's part of my story, and when I leave the Mary Rose, I hope isn't any time soon, this will always be... It'll be my favourite Tudor warship. I mean, it's probably the only Tudor warship, but also my favourite one, so yeah.Kelly Molson: That was the answer to my question, as well. "What's your favourite ship?"Dominic Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: Wow. I'm blown away by your career. I just think you've had such a phenomenal journey to get to where you are now. There's something that I want to talk to you about today and that's about your joint venture that you have with the Mary Rose and the National Museum of the Royal Navy. I just want to read out a tweet that I saw because this is what sparked this conversation, so this is a tweet that went out on the Mary Rose Twitter account.Kelly Molson: It says, "We are very pleased to share that Portsmouth Historic Dockyard saw a 150% rise in visitor numbers in 2021, reported by ALVA today. The significant rise in visitors demonstrates the effectiveness of the joint venture between Mary Rose and the National Museum of the Royal Navy in our first year."Kelly Molson: I am very intrigued by this because this has been kind of a constant throughout most of the podcast conversations that we have is about how collaborative the sector is, but this is really specific about two attractions collaborating together to bring more visitors in. I would love you to tell us about this.Dominic Jones: Well, yeah, the end result's fantastic. 150% increase in visitors. It really feels joined up. My son's school is coming in today so I was in the visitor centre and I was waiting to see what time he was coming in because he obviously wouldn't tell me the time he's actually in, so I was looking around the visitor centre and I couldn't be prouder, when you see the mixture of Victory and Warrior and Mary Rose, and how far we've come since we started, but if you go back in history, the Mary Rose used to be part of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and there was one ticket and there was a separate company called Portsmouth Historic Dockyard that ran it, and lots of trusts, at that time, there were lots of trusts that fed into it, and then, for whatever reason, some of these trusts went independent.Dominic Jones: And so when I joined the Mary Rose, we were separate. We had a separate ticket, visitor centre, if you like, so imagine, I guess, like a... You know when you're on holiday and there's people trying to get you to go on boat rides or they're trying to get you to come into their restaurant? And literally, we were competing, so when a visitor was outside, there'd be the Mary Rose saying, "Hey, come and see Henry VIII's warship, the biggest Tudor collection in the world." I mean, it's amazing. And then the people next door, "Hey, come and see the Victory and the Warrior." And it just was really difficult for the customers, and for whatever reason, we weren't together and we had these two separate companies, so for quite a while, when I started, along with Helen, who was the CEO and Dominic and a gentleman called John in NMRN, we had meetings to see if we could get closer and to get a deal, and then I think Matthew joined, as well, from NMRN, and eventually we kind of got to an agreement.Dominic Jones: It was about, "What can we do together? What, collaboratively, can we do?" We came up with three things. We can sell tickets together, we could run a visitor centre together, so that's #1, the visitor side. We could market the destination together, and we could do strategic operations like events. So we then looked away and came across a deal, and for us, it was important that the two parties, so Mary Rose and the National Museum of the Royal Navy had a 50/50 parity of decision so it wasn't a one-sided joint venture and it was really... There's lots of talent in both organisations, so I've always admired what the National Museum of the Royal Navy have done over the years and how they've told history and how they bring it to life, and obviously, I love the Mary Rose.Dominic Jones: And so when we put us together, it was just a real opportunity, that synergy. You know when people say "one and one and you get three", but it was exactly like that and it worked really well, so we share marketing, so marketing costs, we share, we share marketing resource, so Mary Rose marketing people work along with NMRN marketing people. We do some things independently so our trusts are independent, our conservation, our research and all that sort of stuff, that's just Mary Rose and NMRN is just that, although we are working on some projects together, but in terms of the visitor, we have one visitor centre, we have one ticket you can buy, lots of options, we could talk about that, some amazing pricing we did which allowed us to do that.Dominic Jones: Because when you're competing against each other, you almost are encouraged to discount more, so we had, at times, the National Museum of the Royal Navy who were saying Portsmouth Historic Dockyard then might have a deal on Groupon, we might have a deal on Wowcher and you'd just be discounting, discounting, discounting, and you wouldn't be really getting across the real value for the customer, so yeah, it was really hard, and I remember, we would really fight for every single visitor because, for us, 84% of our money comes from tickets, so I remember, we'd get Henry VIII down the front, out the front, we'd have him talking to the visitors, saying, "Oh", you know, and with people talking in French and he'd go up in French and say, "Well, I was the king of France. Why are you going to Victory? Come to Mary Rose." But he wouldn't be taking them away from Victory, because that would be bad, but he would be saying, "Go to both." And we'd always be positive about NMRN, but we'd also want people to come to Mary Rose because that was how we were going to survive.Kelly Molson: Just going back to those times, then, was it more like a rivalry than anything?Dominic Jones: Yeah, it was really hard.Kelly Molson: So it was really difficult?Dominic Jones: It was really hard. I mean, we all respected each other, but it was really hard. It was like one of those ferry terminals or restaurants on holiday. I mean, I remember, we would flyer, like circus marketing, bumping into the brand, resort domination, we called it. We would be literally, when it was sunny because you can't blame the weather, when it was sunny, we'd be on the beach with Mary Rose leaflets saying, "Hey, get out the cool, we're air-conditioned, come to the Mary Rose." We were literally in all the restaurants, we had colour-in sheets, "Come to...", it was all about getting everyone to come and actually, we quickly realized that the NMRN was spending so much money on getting people to Portsmouth that we needed to make sure when they're in Portsmouth, they came to the Mary Rose and we did.Dominic Jones: I mean, I look back on it now, we had adverts that had, because we'd been very lucky with Tripadvisor, five stars, I mean I would've dreamed of that at Thorpe Park, but five stars constantly so we'd have posters that say, "You've just missed the best thing to do in Portsmouth." And then another one. "Turn around." You know, like when you go to Camden Town and there's a McDonald's, a Burger King and then outside the Burger King, there's a sign. "Why are you going to Burger King? Go to McDonald's." It was like that, so it wasn't great.Kelly Molson: It's quite intense, as well, isn't it, for the visitor?Dominic Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: That's a lot of pressure.Dominic Jones: Well, it is and I would do it and I would literally go down and leave, because you've got to leave from the front, and I would put my Mary Rose coat, which I've still got here, and I'd be down the scenic and we'd be... And I remember coaches would turn up and one of the ladies who was fantastic with us, Sandra, she's now one of our Visitor Experience Managers, but she'd jump on the couch and say, "Have you booked your tickets? Where are you going? Can I tell you about the Mary Rose?" And she'd bring whole coaches in. It was hard and it was really... I went to sleep every night easy, because it was so tiring and it wasn't sustainable and we did need to get a deal, and actually, the National Museum of the Royal Navy and the Mary Rose always treated each other with respect, but it was like the Battle of Victory Gate and that's not the way to behave and that's not the long-term way to run a business.Dominic Jones: So what was really great was we've got a deal, we got the ability to sell tickets together and we got the ability to work together and there's some really super talented people in the National Museum of the Royal Navy and in Mary Rose and we did some great things, so when we reopened after COVID, we did this really cool video where we had Henry VIII and we had some of their characters from Warrior and some of their actors all visiting each other's attractions in the lift, wearing face masks, getting hand sanitiser, and it just feels joined up.Dominic Jones: I mean, I've done lots of partnerships in my career. At Merlin, we had a Sea Life in Helsinki, which was a joint venture with a theme park called Linnanmaki. If you ever get to interview this lady who ran Linnanmaki, or she might the CEO there, she was amazing, but we had this joint venture. See, it's really hard in a joint venture because, especially if it's a 50/50 parity decision one, you've got to get agreement and that means that you work really hard on doing the right thing, so what's quite nice is if we were on our own, we probably would've done marketing campaigns and other things which were okay, but because we end up working together and we've got to make sure we get that joint agreement, the results is always way better. It's brilliant. And the customers benefit, because it's one entrance, it's one ticket, there's a lot more value in it, so yeah, it's been really successful.Kelly Molson: I hadn't realised quite how intertwined the organisations were in terms of decision-making and marketing, like you say, and sharing all of those resources. You talked a little bit about the visitor centre. Did you have to change the infrastructure and stuff? Did you have to build new buildings and all of that and agree on that?Dominic Jones: Well, no, they had a big visitor centre because, I mean, they've got a lot more footprint, more attractions, they've got the Warrior, they've got M.33, they've got a Submarine Museum over in Victory and we've got the Mary Rose, which is amazing. And so we had a building called Porter's Lodge, which was here and then there's the gate, and then they had their visitor center and their visitor center was perfect, so we moved in there, but we agreed to make it look and feel like it was Mary Rose and National Museum of the Royal Navy, so we spent a bit of money on the look and feel of it, so that was good and same with the brand and the marketing and making it feel like it was something new, but yeah, so there was a bit of that.Dominic Jones: I mean, in terms of infrastructure, we went with their ticketing system because it made more sense because it would be a bigger cost for them to change. We went with some of the Mary Rose's media buying because, at the time, we were buying media cheaper and better. And actually, now, we're in the process of going to tenders together, so the digital agency, we've done together, the PR agency, we've done together and it's great because it's a bigger portfolio and you get different views, and I always think the best way to run any business, so, for example, the Mary Rose or Thorpe Park or wherever it is, to talk to your customers, to talk to your staff and then, obviously, to talk to the manage experts. And we get that in spades, because we've also got our staff and our customers and our volunteers, but we've got NMRN staff and customers and volunteers and together, we are getting some really cool ideas and things we can do, so it's working well. As you can see, 150% increase in the first year.Kelly Molson: I mean, I've read it with my own eyes.Dominic Jones: And I hope you saw, NMRN, they did a little nice fist bump reply, and it just is in the spirit of it. We are working together and I think that's so important.Kelly Molson: It is massively important. You mentioned something about pricing earlier, and we've spoken about this before, but you said that you did something interesting that you'd implemented that allowed you to grow the yield and the revenue as well. Was this something that you did jointly too?Dominic Jones: Yeah, it was. So we had to come up with a new pricing structure because we were doing something new, so they had, what was it called? Full Navy Ticket, which was for all of their attractions and we had an annual ticket, so when we merged, we had to come up with a new pricing structure and it's a good opportunity to change, and 84% of our business, our revenue comes from tickets, theirs is about, I think, 80% or so, I can't remember, so it's still important to them as well. So we had to get the pricing right and it allowed us to really think about what's the best value for the customer and what's the best thing to do that stops us having to discount heavily?Dominic Jones: So we created a... It's like a decoy pricing model, like supermarkets have been doing it for years, so if you buy one attraction, it's a really bad ticket. I mean, still, a few people buy them, it's a really bad ticket, so it was... I mean, it used to be £18. We put the price up to £24. It used to be, if you bought one ticket, you could visit that attraction all year. You can only visit it once. So we made it a really unattractive ticket, so that's your lower decoy, so the idea of that is you only buy that if all you really want to do is go to the Mary Rose or all you want to go is go to the Victory and if you've just come to see one of those things, that's the sort of money you would pay, it's very competitively priced with other things on the South Coast, so that's what we did.Dominic Jones: And then we created a Three-Attraction Ticket or Three-Ship Ticket, which was slightly more money, so that went up to £39, which was the biggest sort of sting, about a £15 increase, big, big jump. And that was an annual ticket. That was, you could pick your three attractions and visit them all year. And then we did, "But for £5 more, you could have an Ultimate Explorer and have everything including the..." And that sort of, so you've got the lower decoy, which is the single attraction, then you've got the medium decoy, which is three ships, but then you go, "Well, for £5 more, you could do everything."Dominic Jones: And 80% of people do the Ultimate Explorer and they do everything, and it's so good value. I mean, it's less than the price of a football game and football game, 50% of the time, you're disappointed, and you don't get long, do you? It is incredible value and you get to go to all the attractions, you get out on the water, it's brilliant. So we've got that. And then we were going to put in an upper decoy, now, an upper decoy is a premium, really expensive ticket, so for example, we might, "We have, at Mary Rose, you can go into the ship for £300 and have a private experience." And we were going to put that in, but actually, because the decoy system worked so well, we didn't need that so we've just kept it as Single Attraction Ticket, Three-Attraction Ticket and Ultimate Explorer and it's working really, really well.Dominic Jones: So yeah, that's our pricing. And because of that, we don't have to discount because we put all the value and loaded the value in, actually, we don't have to discount. And then, when we do discount, we want to reach the right people, so, for example, we do, between the months of November and February, we do a Loyal and Local campaign where we go out to Portsmouth and Southampton regions and we say, "Bring a bill in and you can get a considerable discount." All year round, we do a discount for people who've got a Portsmouth leisure card, so anyone who's on Universal Credit, so they get 50% off.Dominic Jones: And we do some other really cool community engagement stuff between us with schools and stuff like that, and then if we do do a discount, so discounts are still important, so there's some amazing partners out there, GetYourGuide, Picnic, lots of the providers that really support businesses, Virgin, Ticketdays, all that sort of stuff. But we do it at the right level, so we've got like a playground, so whereas before, we might have been competing against each other, thinking, "Oh, we need to discount by 40% or 50% and then give them extra commission so they push it." We now do it at a really fair level, so there is a bit of a discount, but it's not much.Dominic Jones: And then for the consumer, we want the cheapest, best-value ticket to always be on our website. And we used a couple companies, so we used a company called, they were called Brand Incrementum, they're now called Magic Little Giants, we use them, we use some insight into what previous businesses have done before, but we copied the American Six Flags website model. If you ever want a quick lesson in pricing, just go to Six Flags. Their website is that... I mean, you're into websites, right?Kelly Molson: I am.Dominic Jones: It's the best website for pricing. I love it and I check it nearly every month. It makes me laugh, how focused they are on decoy pricing and how in-your-face they are, but how you don't know it as a consumer unless you know. It's amazing. It drives my family mad. I love it. Anyway. Yeah.Kelly Molson: This decoy pricing, I've never heard that phrase, I've never heard that used in pricing before. This is all new to me.Dominic Jones: It's like supermarkets when you get... And I remember, we've got a local supermarket near us and the guy did, "buy one bottle of wine, get one wine free". And then he had, "or buy one wine for £7 or buy two for £7". We were always going to buy two for £7 or two for £8. It's all that sort of trying to encourage behaviour, but he didn't quite get it because recently, I went in, it was like, "buy one, pay for one" and I was like, "Isn't that... That's the same as normal, yeah?" "Yeah." But he's a nice guy so I bought one. Well, that's my problem.Dominic Jones: But no, it's the same way supermarkets have been doing, where they try with the club card to get you to purchase things, or they're trying to do that, and all we're trying to do is encourage everyone to go for that Ultimate Explorer, which is the best value. It's almost like you can imagine it on the website, it's got a sign saying, "Pick me." So even to the extent we still don't, this day, discount our Single Attraction Ticket on our website. We don't give any discount for it and then we give a £5 discount on the three attractions and £5 on Ultimate Explorer. But yeah, loving the pricing.Kelly Molson: Love this. This is such great insight. Thank you for sharing. This partnership is really intriguing to me because I think it seems like the perfect setup, right? Because you're literally neighbors in the same area, you could make this work really well. What advice would you give to other attractions that are thinking about partnering with other attractions? Like what would be your top tips for people to make this work well?Dominic Jones: I mean, it's really hard. You've got to think about, because often people see it as competitors, but you've got to think in terms of getting the customers or the guests or the consumers, whatever you call them, giving them the best value, and during lockdown, when we were being interviewed and stuff, we'd always say, "Come visit the Mary Rose or come visit..." Once we did the joint venture, "Come visit the Historic Dockyard. But also, if you can't come visit, go visit your local museum, go visit anyone." It's important to share that, and I think there are always benefits of working together, you're always stronger together.Dominic Jones: When I was at Oakwood Theme Park in Wales, amazing theme park, you're in West Wales and we were thinking, "Well, how do we reach further and advertise more?" And actually, we ended up working with a farm, which was a stunning farm that had rides and animals called Folly Farm down the road and we worked, then, with Manor House Wildlife Park and Heatherton, and you actually work together and you can work together and I'd always say, "Try it on something." So try it whether it's an event or try it whether it's a destination marketing campaign. I mean, we're working with the people of Portsmouth, so with... "The people of Portsmouth", that sounds a bit grand. We're working with attractions in Portsmouth on trying to get people into Portsmouth, so we do something with Portsmouth Council where the Spinnaker Tower and D-Day Museum and Mary Rose and National Museum of the Royal Navy and now Portsmouth Historical Dockyard, together, we advertise in London because actually, advertising in London individually is really expensive, but if you do it collaboratively.Dominic Jones: There's lots of ways to do stuff collaboratively and find another angle. So we've got other people on our site that we're not partners with at the moment, so the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, amazing people who run some of the small boats that we did the Gunboat Race with the D-Day veterans on the weekend. Fantastic. So yesterday, we had a really great Volunteers' Tea Party to celebrate the end of volunteer and we had the volunteers from the Property Trust, we had the volunteers from the NMRN, the volunteers from the Mary Rose, there's always some synergy and I would say, in any way, find it.Dominic Jones: Everywhere I've worked, I've tried to get partnerships with local businesses, with other theme parks, with other attractions, because, actually, it's your stronger together, and if you're going, especially, after a local market, because you've always got to love your locals, that's the most important thing. If they see that you actually are the sort of people that work with each other, it makes them almost more proud of you. You remember the Game Makers in the London Olympics in 2012 and how amazing they were and how they did that sort of course where everyone was recommending all this stuff to you, that's kind of what you want, but I would find some common ground, whatever it is.Dominic Jones: Whether it's lobbying, we found common ground at Thorpe Park with other attractions to lobby the government for things, for VAT to level... Or whether it's in Oakwood, trying to get some advertising to get people from Bristol to cross the bridge to come into Wales or whether it's, I'm trying to think, in Amsterdam, we worked, so Madame Tussauds Amsterdam and Dungeons, which I was responsible for, we worked with Heineken because they had this amazing experience and with Tours & Tickets, so we'd make sure that if anyone came to Amsterdam, they came to our attractions. It's those sort of partnerships, finding the common ground and making it work.Dominic Jones: And don't be scared of it, because you are always bigger and better together and customers have so much choice, so working together delivers amazing results. I would never want to go back to not being part of a partnership with the National Museum of the Royal Navy and I would love it if we could do more. We are keen to do more with other attractions in the South to get people to come to the South Coast, to come to Hampshire. But yeah, I would definitely do...Dominic Jones: And also, you get bigger buying power, so say, for example, Merlin are really strong, so they don't necessarily need those with other partners because they can do a campaign in the press, Sun, Days Go Out and you've got all the Merlin attractions, but if you're individual attractions, you can't, so if you do a partnership with your competitors, you can then suddenly say, "Right, well, we want to do a Days Out campaign in the press between all these independent attractions."Dominic Jones: I mean, it's brilliant. I love it and I love, also, this industry, how collaborative especially the heritage side is. You can say, "Oh, I was thinking about doing this. What do you think?" Or, "What do you think about that?" And everyone will share and everyone is almost willing you to be successful. It's crazy, right? It's one of the best industries in the world. If you were in, I don't know, the restaurant business, you wouldn't be doing that, would you? Or another... It's so good. Anyway, hopefully, that answers your question.Kelly Molson: Oh, absolutely.Dominic Jones: I get very passionate about it. I'm so sorry. I love it.Kelly Molson: I'm so glad that you do because it answered my question perfectly and I think you've given so much value to listeners today in terms of all of the things that you've done, I couldn't have asked for a better response. Thank you. It's a big year for the Mary Rose, isn't it? And I think it would be very right that we talk about that. So it's your 40th year celebration this year, isn't it?Dominic Jones: Yeah, 40 years since the raising, so 1982, October. I am obviously older than you so I remember watching it on Blue Peter as a child and it was the world's first underwater live broadcast. It was watched by over 60 million people worldwide. I mean, it was amazing of its time and so yeah, 40 years, and because of that, we've now got the world's biggest Tudor collection of everyday life, there's nowhere else in the world you can get closer to Tudor and we've got the biggest maritime salvation, so we've got a lot of plans to celebrate. Unfortunately, the pandemic got in the way. During the pandemic, I'm not going to lie, it was horrific. There were times when we were drawing a list of who we were going to give the keys to, got really, really bad and it got dark for everyone and every museum, every attraction, every business, I'm not trying to say, "Oh, poor us." Everyone had that tough time.Dominic Jones: But it meant that actually investing, we were going to do another building, we were going to do a whole museum dedicated to the raising and actually, probably one of the best things that came out of it is we didn't because we got the joint venture, which is brilliant, our trading improved, we had a fantastic summer and then we were like, "Right, we should really do something for the 40th anniversary, but we can't afford taking another lease of another building or building another building, so what can we do?" And we managed to come up with a few plans, so the first thing we're doing is we're doing a TV documentary, which is going to be brilliant, coming out in October. Honestly, I've seen, they started some of the filming and the pre [inaudible 00:37:39], it's going to be brilliant.Kelly Molson: Oh, that's so exciting.Dominic Jones: I can't give too much away because we've had to sign something, but it's going to be great. And actually, we even had, because we're responsible for the wreck site, so we had Chris and Alex who helped raise the Mary Rose, our Head of Interpretation, Head of Research, amazing people, they were out diving the other day because we're still responsible for the wreck site and it just gives you goosebumps. I saw the footage and oh, it's amazing. So we got that. We're also building a 4D experience.Dominic Jones: So when we reopened last summer, we opened with this thing called 1545, which was an immersive experience and we wanted to get across the Mary Rose didn't sink on its maiden voyage, it was Henry VIII's ship that he, when he came to the throne, he commissioned two ships, the Mary Rose was one of them, it fought in lots of battles, it had a long life and then sank defending Britain in a battle, by the way, the French who were invading was twice the size of the Spanish Armada, but because history's written by the winners, we don't hear that.Dominic Jones: But amazing, so we did this amazing, immersive experience. We got Dame Judi Dench to do the voice and you feel like you're going to get sunk. Well, the ship does sink and you go under and then you go into the museum and it's so good and we were like, "We want to do something for the end. We want to have a finale that says..." Because the thing about our museum, it's authentic. There's 19,700 artifacts. You can't get that anywhere else. I mean, it's just brilliant. Anyway, so we thought, "How are we going to end this?" And the thing we don't do justice to is the finding, the raising, the excavation, all the divers, there was 500 volunteer divers. From the 1960s, people were looking for it.Dominic Jones: I mean, Alexander McKee, who found it, was on the news and people would say... It was like an Indiana Jones movie, they were saying, "Oh, he's never going to find it." And other people were looking, the Navy were looking and there was a bit in Indiana Jones where they got the map the wrong way around and all of that. Brilliant. So they found the Mary Rose and then they got Margaret Rule who was this amazing lady who had, when she went to university, I think she didn't get a place at university at first because she was a woman and this is amazing, today's day story, and she didn't dive, she was an archeologist. And then she said, "I'm going to dive." Taught herself to dive and without her, this museum, the Mary Rose wouldn't be here, so Alexander McKee, Margaret Rule, two amazing people, both of them...Kelly Molson: What a woman.Dominic Jones: Yeah, what a woman, but both of them, both of them, without them, we wouldn't be here. So we want to tell their story, but also, we want to put the guests and the visitors to what it's like to dive, so with a mixture of real-life filming, footage from these 500 volunteer divers, outtakes from the Chronicle programs that are on the BBC, including, if we can get it to look right, even His Royal Highness, Prince Charles diving. It is stunning.Dominic Jones: So we're going to take the guests on a bit of a pre-show with the history, then they're going to get into the 4D theater and it'd be like you were boarding a red, going out to the wreck site, there'll be a dive briefing, you'll have the wind in your hair, the seats will be buzzing, but I'm hoping it's this good. I better ring the people after this [inaudible 00:40:38].Kelly Molson: You're really building it up, Dominic.Dominic Jones: Yeah. Well, it better deliver. No, they're brilliant. Figment are amazing. They're so good. So you get in there and then you dive and then you go down and you see what it's like to be under the water. The Royal Engineers were involved, the divers were involved and then you'll be there when the Mary Rose is raised, we're even going to recreate the moment where it... Oh, it'll be brilliant.Dominic Jones: So in answer to your question, we're doing a documentary and a 4D experience, and we've got anniversary lectures so if you're around in October, come and get involved. We've got a lot of people, from historians to divers to... Just talking about the relevance of the Mary Rose and the history of it, and also the diving, and we've got a new coffee table book coming out, so we've got lots and lots and lots going on.Kelly Molson: Oh, my goodness. It's all going on.Dominic Jones: And if we'd have done it the old way, if we'd have done it with a new museum and a new building, I don't think it would've been as good. I mean, I joined the Divers' Legacy group, so about 150 of the divers, on a Zoom call a few weeks ago and it's just, it takes you... These people, who, some of them are retired now or bear in mind this was 40, 50 years ago and hearing their stories and it's living history and it's so important that we tell these stories and capture them now, because in 50 years, they won't be here, and part of our responsibility, our charity objectives, if you like, is to tell the story and forever, and I think that bit of the story's missing, so if that's one thing that we do while I'm at the Mary Rose, I'll be really proud.Kelly Molson: Ah, that is wonderful. And it is [inaudible 00:42:12].Dominic Jones: You have to come, right? You're going to have to come.Kelly Molson: Well, this is the question. When do I need to come to experience everything that you've just sold to me? Because I am sold.Dominic Jones: Yeah. You probably want to come after our anniversary, because we're hoping to launch all this around that time, which is in October, which is, now, this is an interesting one because this was a good conversation with our trustees and our board. "Do you want to launch something in the off-peak period? Don't you want to launch it at Easter or the summer or..." And my view is we should launch it because it's the right thing to do and we're launching this in October because it's a legacy, we want the divers there, we want as many of them there as possible and it's going to be at the Mary Rose forever. This is the ending to the Mary Rose Museum. So it's not like we're launching something for Easter or summer, so we are going to launch it in October, so I'll let you know the details, come and get involved.Kelly Molson: All right, absolutely. I am there. If it's as good as what you've just described, then it's going to be one amazing day out.Dominic Jones: It'd be better. And then, and final thing, sorry, which we're not doing, but I wanted to do is we've still got some of the Mary Rose down in the ocean, so one day, I'd like to bring that back up. I don't think I'll be here to do that because it's probably be in 15 years' time or something because we need to raise a lot of money and do that, but we want to bring the rest of her back up or whatever's left down there back up, and that's quite exciting because our story continues. We still do research.Dominic Jones: We did this fantastic piece of research on skeletons, on human remains. It's a really cool diversity story. Out of the eight skeletons, one was Spanish, one was Venetian, two were North African, second generation, not slaves, a real diversity story in Tudor England. Amazing. Maybe the Victorians whitewashed history. Who knows? But what a great story. And we keep learning and we've got this amazing team of curatorial staff and all of our staff, from the maintenance to the visitor staff to the volunteers and every day, we learn something new, so [inaudible 00:44:03] we want to do. And then, at some point... Have you seen The Dig on Netflix?Kelly Molson: Yes. Yes.Dominic Jones: Great film.Kelly Molson: So good.Dominic Jones: Great film, but I want to write to Netflix to do The Dive. Can you imagine? This story about human endeavor with the Mary Rose? It'd be amazing, so we'd like to do that as well at some point, but we just don't have enough hours in the day, right?Kelly Molson: No. Just add it onto that long list of stuff.Dominic Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: Wow. Thank you.Dominic Jones: So if you know anyone in Netflix, let us know, or if anyone from Netflix is listening, get in touch, we want to do that. It'd be cool.Kelly Molson: I would love it.Dominic Jones: I've already casted.Kelly Molson: If someone from Netflix was listening, that would be incredible. Who have you casted?Dominic Jones: Well, so local, because you've got to get local, so for Margaret Rule, I reckon Kate Winslet, she'd do a good job. Great actress. I mean, we've already got Dame Judi Dench, so the same sort of caliber in our 1545 experience, and then also another local who could bring the Alexander McKee, Kenneth Branagh, but to be honest with you, Netflix can do all of that, because let's be honest, I'm not going to make movies, am I? I'm running a museum. But I just think it'd be really cool. It'd be really cool.Kelly Molson: I don't think there's anything that you couldn't do, Dominic, to be honest, after this podcast, so who knows?Dominic Jones: It'd be really cool. Yeah, who knows?Kelly Molson: All right, last question for you, a book that you love that you'd recommend to our listeners?Dominic Jones: I love this question and I really struggled, so I went back and thought about a work example, because I think that's probably more useful, so in all of my career, I've come across lots of people who talk about strategy and I have my own view on what strategy is, but there are lots of books you can read about strategy and there's only one book, in my opinion, that is worth reading and it's this, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Hopefully, it's still in print. It is the only book to read on strategy. It's the best book I've... And without this book, I don't think I would've been able to do half the stuff that I've done, because it's all about how you formulate your decisions, how you make your decisions, what the outcome is, it's about execution, it's about everything that, for me, you need to be successful, so I recommend this book. Really good book.Kelly Molson: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. I have not read that book, but I feel like that's going to go...Dominic Jones: You should read it.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's going to go top of my pile. All right, listeners, if you want to win a copy of this book, as ever, if you just go over to our Twitter account and you retweet this podcast announcement with the words, "I want Dominic's book." And then you will be in with a chance of winning it. Oh, my goodness. I have had such a good time listening to you today. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. It's been so valuable. Yeah, that's blown me away today. I'm very excited about coming to visit and thank you for sharing the insight into your partnerships.Dominic Jones: Yeah. Absolute pleasure. And thanks for being kind with the icebreakers, you're going to get the rubber, that's going to your collection.Kelly Molson: Oh, yay. A rubber rubber.Dominic Jones: Because I was really upset that you've got a rubber collection without the Mary Rose. That actually hurt my feelings. It hurt my feelings.Kelly Molson: Well, I'm sorry, I've never actually visited the Mary Rose.Dominic Jones: Well, we're going to put that right.Kelly Molson: We are going to change this, aren't we? So yeah, I'm sorry. I will come and get my rubber in-person, then. Don't post it to me. I'll come and get it in-person when I come and visit.Dominic Jones: Yeah, let's do that. Thank you. Keep it up.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Figurative sculptor Amelia Rowcroft lives in the lovely Sussex town of Lewes on the South East Coast of England, which dates back to 961AD. She was kind enough to invite us into her studio in a building that once housed a brewery in the 1600s, and that's where we recorded this episode of BWBoR. Amelia has been sculpting practically, working in clay for over 20 years, creating primarily fine art portraits and figurative sculptures, though she has also worked within the film industry, and for the world's leading wax figure museums including Madame Tussaud's, and we talked about it all. She studied at Central St Martins, and the Florence Academy in Florence, Italy, and interestingly enough, was also a student at Wimbledon School of Art where Stuart attended, though a few years behind him. As fate would have it, another of our upcoming podcast guest artists, ZBrush Master Madeleine Scott Spencer, also studied at the Florence Academy and remembers Amelia, but we'll save that for later. We chatted for a good hour and a half and covered a variety of sculpture-related topics, such as why isn't there a Museum of Crap Renaissance Sculpture so we can see the failures of the Masters – because there had to be some - and creating a likeness sculpture vs. creating a caricature of a subject. We also chatted about sculpting digitally vs. pushing actual clay around. Amelia was kind enough – incredibly generous is more like it – to allow us to explore her online sculpture course, and it is jaw-dropping in content and ‘lightbulb' moments. We urge you to at least look at the sample video lessons on Amelia's website www.sculptingmasterclass.com/collections. We suspect you'll want to enrol to take advantage of the instruction offered by this incredible sculptor. Whether you sculpt practically or digitally, this information is invaluable and transferable between mediums. -------------------------------------- Many thanks as always for your time checking the stuff out. You can email us direct at stuartandtodd@gmail.com or leave us a voice message directly on our site. If you enjoy this podcast and got something out of it, would you do us a solid and tell just one more person about us? Send them a link and help us grow! -Stuart & Todd

EE.UU. ve "inevitable" una tercera dosis de la vacuna contra covid-19; EE.UU. enviará 3.000 soldados a Kabul para evacuar casi toda su embajada; Italia registró la temperatura más alta jamás medida en Europa; Maduro sería investigado por el tribunal multilateral de la CPI por violar los derechos humanos; Quito, el mejor aeropuerto de Suramérica; Bad Bunny arrasa en las nominaciones de los premios Billboard Latinos; Maluma tendrá su propia figura de cera en Madame Tussauds; Justin Bieber encabeza nominaciones para Premios MTV

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor NumbersIf you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcastIf you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this episode.Competition ends March 31st 2021. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references:https://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoff-spooner-079b6a15/Transcription:Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip The Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. In today's episode, I speak with Geoff Spooner, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Warner Bros. Studio Tour - The Making of Harry Potter. We discuss the tour's phenomenal success, and yeah, you guessed it, the motivation for launching with pre-booking only. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip The Queue.Kelly Molson: Geoff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm excited to talk about you. We've got lots to get through today. But as ever, I start with my icebreaker questions.Geoff Spooner: Okay.Kelly Molson: So first one for you. Are you a believer in having a very regimented morning routine? Are you a 4:00am start kind of guy?Geoff Spooner: I can't think why anyone would want to start at 4:00 AM. I can't think of anything worse than that. I am fairly regimented because I have children and I think that necessitates that in order to actually get them out of the house at a certain time which I've done a lot more of during lockdowns. And my wife just broken her foot, unfortunately, so-Kelly Molson: Oh, God.Geoff Spooner: Having to do a lot of that, and appreciating all that she does normally. I think routine is good, but you know, you read it in these things and they say, "Tell us about your daily routine." And they're like, "Oh, I wake up at 2:00am and I go for a swim," and you think, "Oh, you're absolutely mental."Kelly Molson: No, you don't! You're a crazy fool if you do that.Geoff Spooner: Absolutely mad. Why would you do that?Kelly Molson: It's the middle of the night. I'm totally with you on that. I just don't get it, and I think it's part of that really horrible hustle culture that we have at the moment where every waking minute you should be pushing yourself and pushing yourself, and actually you should be getting up earlier for your morning routine as well. No, it's not for me. We've got dogs, so again, I have a very regimented set routine.Geoff Spooner: Same thing, same thing.Kelly Molson: But it definitely doesn't start at four o'clock in the morning.Geoff Spooner: Kids are just more expensive versions of dogs, really, aren't they?Kelly Molson: Yeah. Probably less messy as well.Geoff Spooner: Yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't know.Kelly Molson: Okay. All right. Next one. If you could bring back any fashion trend from your youth, what would it be?Geoff Spooner: Well, I'm a child of the '80s, so I certainly wouldn't recommend bringing anything back. The stuff that my mum used to make us wear, I just think is... It's harrowing images in my head when I see it, so yeah. I think my wife would disagree with you, but I try to sort of block the '80s out of my memory, really.Kelly Molson: See, I'm a big nostalgia person and the '80s is my era as well. That's where I grew up, so I have a real fondness for it. Not so much the fashion. It wasn't cool, was it?Geoff Spooner: No, it wasn't. It's not one we look back on and go, "I looked damn good then."Kelly Molson: Actually, I don't think there's any year that I look back on and think that-Geoff Spooner: I look at what my 10 year old wear and I think, "Look what I had to wear when I was 10. Oh my God."Kelly Molson: So, can you tell me your unpopular opinion? Something that you believe to be true, but almost nobody else agrees with you on.Geoff Spooner: Probably a bit controversial for the company that I work in, but my preference really is I think that film trailers are too long.Kelly Molson: Oh.Geoff Spooner: I don't know. I think less is more, less is more. There's a point where you're telling a bit too much of the story, and I think I want to be surprised when I go to the cinema, and I love going to the cinema. So that would be my probably quite unpopular opinion.Kelly Molson: Well, no. I'm with you on that. I love a trailer, so I get really excited at the cinema when the trailers come on, because I think, "This is a great buildup." But yeah, you're right. Sometimes you think, "Have I just watched all of the best bits from that film? Probably."Geoff Spooner: It's tricky.Kelly Molson: Well, let's see what our listeners think, whether that's controversial or not. I'm sure they'll let me know. Thank you for answering those silly questions.Geoff Spooner: No worries.Kelly Molson: I want to start with your background, because you've got a really impressive career in the travel and leisure industry. You've worked at Warwick Castle, LEGOLAND Windsor, London Eye. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Was it always a sector that you were really passionate about and wanted to work in?Geoff Spooner: No, not really. I look at my kids today. My daughter's headmaster, she's only 10, asked if I'd do a careers talk for her school, and I thought, "Gosh, isn't that fantastic?" No one ever used to tell you these things. You'd do your certificate of achievement and things like that at school, and you'd do your test and they'd say you'd have some completely random job that you never even thought you'd be interested in.Geoff Spooner: So I don't think I had a massive career plan when I was a child, but once I went into university and things like that, I was really interested in animals. So I thought I would end up working with that really, because I have a Zoology degree.Kelly Molson: Wow.Geoff Spooner: So I'd be like Newt Scamander from the Fantastic Beasts. That was before my time. So I was working in a zoo, at Chessington, actually, in their zoo team there. I used to do that during the holidays, and while I was doing my degree and I thought... I tell you what. Working in a zoo is such fun. It is really, really great fun.Kelly Molson: Aw, I bet.Geoff Spooner: And I loved that so much. Randomly one year I ended up, rather than being in the zoo, ended up going to work in guest services at the park, which is... In a theme park, guest services can be quite a fun place to work as well, for lots of different reasons, and I really enjoyed doing that. Then I worked in admissions with the admissions team as well, just the year that I was graduating. That was 2000, and Tussauds, who owned Chessington at the time, had just opened the London Eye.Geoff Spooner: I think probably, looking at all the parks and then looking at... It's essentially a Ferris wheel. What can go wrong? Then we opened the London Eye and found out, what could go wrong? So then there was a lot of emphasis on, "Okay, we've got to get this back quickly, because so many people want to come and experience it." So I ended up joining them as the front of house visitor service manager with the team there, putting together a team. They didn't have a visitor service team at the time, randomly. Just let anyone go behind the information desk and give out-Kelly Molson: Wow.Geoff Spooner: Give out any old random sort of information, which sounds absolutely crazy now, but that's kind of the way it was. So I had lots of fun with that, working there for five years, and then I moved to manage admissions and that was a massively, massively... I mean, still is a massively popular attraction. But you know, having 12,000 pre-booked visitors and 12,000 people on the day coming to the attraction is, if you've been... I'm sure probably everyone who's listening has been to the London Eye. That is a tiny little footprint of an attraction. But when we were duty director or duty manager and you're walking around that attraction, you're easily doing 7,000 meters, or 7k, on your Fitbit or whatever it was.Geoff Spooner: So yeah, that was really good fun. Then not a lot was happening, really, at Tussauds, and I'd thought I'd really enjoyed the London Eye, and I was sort of looking at, "What else should I do? Maybe I should go and work in a different industry," and maybe looked at ticketing, that sort of thing.Geoff Spooner: An opportunity came to go and join National Express, which is a very different industry to visitor attractions. Travel has many more challenges, mainly because lots of people arrive at you very angry for [crosstalk 00:07:51] no fault of anything that you've done, particularly, because their plane's been seven hours later or something like that, and then they're amazed that at 2:00 in the morning, you haven't got a coach that's going to wherever it is they live. So that was a really different experience. Worked with their teams there, worked all of their airport sites. You know, very, very busy, and a really, really demanding kind of job. I think the thing you find there is that when you work at an airport, there's nothing worse than going to an airport every day and not going on holiday.Kelly Molson: Oh, gosh! Yeah, that must be really soul-destroying.Geoff Spooner: So I did that for about five years, and then I was really missing visitor attractions, though, and so wanted to get back into that. An opportunity came up at LEGOLAND, and I joined there as Operations Director, and had lots of fun working there. LEGO's a great brand, LEGOLAND's a great brand, and it's a really fun attraction. During my time, we were really lucky. We put in things like the Star Wars Miniland that they had. We were sort of fine-tuning the Atlantis Submarine ride and the sea life that went with that.Geoff Spooner: Everyone thought we were absolutely mad, because we decided to open an open air outdoor water park in DUPLO Valley, and we just ended up opening it on the summer when there was the biggest heat wave ever. So from April till about September, it was one of those ones where it was like 80 degrees every day, and we looked like complete geniuses after that, to be honest.Kelly Molson: Perfectly timed.Geoff Spooner: Yeah, it was good. But sort of halfway through that, unexpectedly, really, the role at Warwick came up, to be GM for that, and it's just such a fantastic attraction. It's so beautiful and an incredible place to work. I thought, "Well, I'll give that a go." I was allowed to go and do that, and so we moved up to Warwick, where we still live, and I had a lot of fun there putting in lots of different combination offerings and things like that. Literally very happy doing all of that, but got a call asking if I'd be interested about coming over to Warner Bros. Probably the only other attraction that I would have considered doing.Geoff Spooner: Yeah, so then I came over to work with a really amazing team here, and a really equally special kind of brand, with Harry Potter and the filmmaking and everything that goes along with that.Kelly Molson: I mean, it is, isn't it? It is a hugely iconic brand. It must've been a really tough decision, because Warwick Castle, like you say, it is, again, iconic, and absolutely incredibly beautiful. All of the attraction places that you've worked at, actually, have a really huge draw for people, for very, very different reasons. So with the Making of Harry Potter tour, have you been there from the start? Were you there when it first opened?Geoff Spooner: No. So I joined in 2016, and the tour opened in 2012. And you know, if you walk around our building, there's lots of pictures of the opening and William and Kate attending, and Jo, and all of that, and there's a lot of our team actually here today who were here in 2012 for the opening, or were here while we were building it. A couple of our duty managers were in the films. So you know, there's that huge kind of love for it, really.Geoff Spooner: One of the things, I suppose, that really appealed to me, and sort of convinced me to come over and drive an hour and a half to work every day is that Warner Bros. just have a really amazing approach to the way that they work. They have this incredible, I suppose, expectation of quality, and they want everything to be done to a very, very, very high standard, and also to invest to deliver that as well. So it's not unattainable. They very much very consider what they want to do. What is the experience we're trying to deliver? What is the service levels going to be like?Geoff Spooner: I suppose the opportunity to come and work in that environment, knowing also that we were going to be building, if I came along, that I'd be working on an expansion that was massive, which is the one that we've just opened in 2019. So there was a lot to be doing, lots to going on, another expansion that we'd be opening in 2017 in the meantime. A really amazing brand.Geoff Spooner: It's a bit irresistible, I suppose, is probably the best way to... You know, you wouldn't really get that opportunity. I think people couldn't quite understand it in 2016. They couldn't understand, why would you go there? It's sort of over now. It's a bit done. Harry Potter's a bit done. What's happening? But I did know that, obviously, the Fantastic Beasts films were in development, so that was going to bring the whole Harry and the wizarding world back to the people's front of mind. And also, we had the Cursed Child play opening, and all of those things kind of happened at the same time. So the brand was very, very resurgent, people still really, really want to do it.Geoff Spooner: Also, from my point of view, part of the challenge is, in some respects, it's not easy. But if you go to attraction and you're going there to make it much better, that's can be very exciting, and gives you all sorts of opportunity to try.Geoff Spooner: If you're going to an attraction that's got 25,000 five-star TripAdvisor reviews, and has a five-star trip about, you can mess that up, I suppose. So the challenge for me, I think, was to come in and really maintain that, but knowing that we were going to have to get bigger, knowing that we were going to have to grow our numbers, knowing that we probably have to grow our price and do all of those things, and make that all sort of successful and be profitable at the same time. So it was a very unique challenge to find yourself presented with as an opportunity, but I'm really pleased that I did it, because it's been absolutely huge fun for since 2016. It's kind of flown by really.Kelly Molson: Yeah, and an opportunity that you just couldn't have missed out on at all. It was interesting what you said there about an attraction that has such a highly rated, been so highly rated by people because of a couple of stats here. I think I read that since it opened to the public in 2012, it's welcomed up to 6,000 visitors a day during peak times, and TripAdvisor reports that it's been the highest-rated attraction worldwide every year since the tour opened. I mean, it's really a peak, isn't it? To maintain that is something else, but to build on it is a whole other story.Geoff Spooner: Yeah. And even when we opened, we weren't open at the levels that we were out in 2013 or 2014, so we ramped up to about 5,000. When I joined in 2016, our top day was 6,000. We looked at the operation and tweaked that to six and a half quite quickly before we had the expansion, and with the expansion now, we're up to seven and a half thousand people a day. And you know, like you say, we've got sort of 40,000-odd TripAdvisor reviews now, and our average day is 96%.Geoff Spooner: It's amazing to do that because I think people come based, I think, on word of mouth, based on that sort of reputation, but their expectation because of that is set really, really high, and our team have this mission to exceed the expectation. But they, all credit to them. They manage to do that really consistently, and the experience is really consistent. We see that not just on TripAdvisor. We see it on Google reviews, we see it on Facebook.Geoff Spooner: So it's lovely to be in the role that I'm in, because people say, "Ooh, I went to Harry Potter World yesterday." No one ever gets the name of the attraction right. You think, "Okay." And then they say, "And I had a fantastic time." You can walk around the attraction and someone says, "Are you the manager?" And you sort of think, "Oh yes. How can I help you?" And they go, "We're having such a great time!" So-Kelly Molson: Oh, that's nice!Geoff Spooner: Yes, you know, if you walk around the bus station and someone says, "Are you the manager?" You know what's coming. So yeah, it's great.Kelly Molson: Yeah, completely different story.Geoff Spooner: It's a lovely change.Kelly Molson: Oh, that's a really nice. I loved what you said earlier, actually, about having to re-engage people with the brand. You knew that the new films were coming out and new things were happening. But I think that with Harry Potter, the story is ingrained in so many of us from such a young age that I now see that progression where... You know, I read all of the books when I was younger, and I've watched all of the films, and I've been to see the play, and I've been to the attraction. And now I can see, like, my friend's children are growing up. My friend's eight year old is Harry Potter obsessed. She's loving the books. As soon as the attraction opened up after lockdown, they went, and it's really lovely to see that progression.Kelly Molson: I guess one of my questions for you was going to be, how do you keep the magic alive for repeat visitors? Because people will come back time and time again. But I guess they bring small people with them, and they bring different people with them over the years as well.Geoff Spooner: Yeah. I think we have a real range of audience as well. It's not just sort of one type. It's not just families. Yes, we have lots of families, but we have lots of couples. Today there's a lot of couples in the tour. It's mid-week and it's in December. We have also grandparents bringing kids. And like you say, there's the original generation that watched the films, grew up with the books, and they're transferring that. I think good stories, good storytelling, stands the test of time.Geoff Spooner: My oldest daughter, for some reason, not into the books. Likes Harry Potter a lot. Just, I think, a bit scared by the books. She's 10. My youngest daughter, who's seven, absolutely loves everything. Wants the books read to them, wants all the characters' accents done properly. You know, everything. So for us, that's great, and that gives you the demand, and we have to create the pull to make people want to come in the first place and visit again.Geoff Spooner: Now, fundamentally, we've got a really good attraction. The sets, the props, the costumes that you see... Most people have that mental image of what does the Great Hall at Hogwarts looks like. They have what they've watched on the television. And when you walk through the doors and you're in the Great Hall, you are standing on that set, and it has become a kind of Mecca for Harry Potter fans. So that is absolutely a massive plus to start off with. But how do you get them to come a second time, or a fourth or fifth time?Geoff Spooner: We've taken the approach of doing two things. One is expansions, and the other one is a kind of seasonal features. The expansions we've done three of. Our first one was in 2015. We built out one of our stages and knocked a wall down, and then all of a sudden you were standing in King's Cross station, and you have the actual Hogwarts Express train stood in front of you, and people absolutely love that. Then in 2017, we moved all of our on-site warehousing and things like that, and we moved all our photography around. A very big internal move in an attraction that's open. We introduced the Forbidden Forest, so you can meet enormous acromantulas and Aragog, and they all come down from the ceiling. There's lots of ghostly fog, and you can see centaurs, and you can see Buckbeak and bow to him. And that's been really... People absolutely love that, and that's helped to keep people coming back.Geoff Spooner: Then with the expansion, we had last year, Gringotts bank has just been.... It's a huge, huge expansion, but it really, really delivers, and I think we had lots of secrets in that as well. So we told people that you could see the bank. We told people, "You'll see the Lestrange vault." We told people that you would see goblins, and how they're made, and people are really interested in how you make somebody into a goblin. But they didn't know that when you leave Gringotts, you walk through destroyed Gringotts bank and you see this huge dragon coming at you, and I think that's a real surprise element that I've now ruined, but I think most people really, really love.Geoff Spooner: So those are some of the things that we do. And then we have features where it's more like touring exhibitions, where we focus on a particular aspect of the story and the filmmaking process. So we might have a feature like Wizarding Wardrobes, which we did, which is all about costume. We might have a feature about, specifically, the Goblet of Fire. This year, we launched our new Celebration of Slytherin, and we were just about to open that before the first lockdown, so we actually ended up opening on the 20th of August. So slightly delayed. With that, we try to bring in... For example, you come into the Great Hall, all the Slytherin banners are there. If you are a Slytherin, it's a big wow. If you're not, it's a big wow, but you sort of wish maybe it was your house.Geoff Spooner: Then we introduced the new... We basically took the Slytherin common room set, and we recreated that and put that into our stage. I think the great thing about where it is is that you would never know it hadn't been there forever. So we're always kind of mixing up what the inside of the tour looks like, and trying to re-present that in different ways. We've just launched, because it's December, Hogwarts In the Snow. So very Christmassy, lots of trees at the moment. If you go into Diagon Alley, that's all snowed at the moment. So a really beautiful time here. Lots of people come back for that. Lots of people come back for our Dark Arts season at Halloween, where we have floating pumpkins everywhere, and you can meet lots of Death Eaters and duel with them.Geoff Spooner: So lots of those things keep coming back. We have lots of event dinners. They're timed with some of those features, Valentines, things like that. So yes, lots and lots of things just to keep that presence there, and keep noise around the attraction. And all of that is backed up, I think, with some really amazing work that our marketing and our PR teams do to deliver that in a very eye-catching and very memorable way. So yeah, it's a great brand to work with from that perspective, because you've got eight films to work with, plus Fantastic Beasts in the future.Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. It feels like because of the additional films as well, it feels like there's always going to be something else that could be added, and something more exciting that can come along and on. I mean, I'm smiling the whole way through listening to this, because I am a huge Harry Potter fan, and just the way that you talk about it, it just paints such a magical picture as well. It makes me want to go back.Kelly Molson: I kind of want to go back to the start of when it opened, and I know that you weren't there from 2012, but I mean, it's a hugely hot topic at the moment, and it has been throughout the whole of this year, is pre-booking. It's controversial to some. Some love it, some hate it. But when the studio tour opened, it opened with pre-booking and Carly, a good friend of mine, Carly Straughan, who was a recent guest on the podcast. She said that when the decision was made that that was going to happen, everybody was up in arms about it and said, "Well, it's not going to work. You know? People won't come." It's very clear that that was completely and utterly wrong, and people did come. They come in their thousands.Kelly Molson: I mean, I don't know how many of these questions you can ask, but I kind of wanted to understand what the motivation was for launching with that model, and then really what the kind of main benefits were, as well.Geoff Spooner: Well, it was actually, I think, at the time when the studio tour... And we've obviously got a huge film studio at Leavesden Studios next to us. When all that was going through planning, I think there was this sort of, however much you said it wasn't a theme park, there was this perception, I think, or concern, that the tour would be like a theme park. And there is an association, I think, there of there's peak flows into and out of theme parks from a traffic point of view. So actually the reason that we are a pre-book only attraction, it is actually, and timed as well, is because of our planning conditions basically. So it was actually sort of something that was thrust upon us to prevent traffic congestion in the local area.Geoff Spooner: Like you say, I think at the time, there were a lot of people who were concerned that maybe that'd be a bit of an Achilles heel for the success of an attraction, but actually it's turned out to be probably one of our best positives as a visitor attraction. I think I've been on lots of calls in lockdown, and it's interesting to see lots of other attractions saying, "Oh, it's great. We know who's coming now. It's amazing!" You know, and you're sort of saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."Geoff Spooner: But I guess the main benefits are, firstly, it is really helpful to know who's coming, and how many people are gonna turn up on... Lots of times in different attractions, you've staffed up for 3000 people, you've no reason to expect there to be more than 3000 people coming, and 12,000 people turn up, and the experience is terrible, and you can't cope and you just get completely overwhelmed. So by knowing who's coming, you've got the best chance of preserving a really fantastic visitor experience.Geoff Spooner: It means that you can design your attraction to a maximum. So you know that you can operate it at that maximum, and actually the maximum is designed to work as a visitor experience. So rather than there not being an infinite capacity, but, you know, where everything's creaking and it's difficult and there's loads and loads of queuing, and all those sorts of things. You can avoid that if you design the attraction to cope with it. And particularly again, if you have the timed element, you can stagger people through the day. That really helps. It just makes sure that the attraction doesn't get overwhelmed. You've got an opportunity to manage yields really well.Geoff Spooner: Also, I think when you have limited capacity and you have to pre-book, I think by managing that, you can actually create demand in the quieter periods. So in the non-school, non-weekend periods, I mean, you have to do that. You have to ensure that what you're doing is good and people want to come on the really high-demand days, but then if it then starts to become quite tricky to book a ticket, then people will generally... Suddenly people want to come to you on what would traditionally be a quieter day, which is really helpful, and that's a great balance, I think.Geoff Spooner: Then I think if you could combine pre-booking with timed entry, you can really create a really fantastic experience, because it's much more sustainable to deliver, and you can deliver it probably more efficiently than if everyone just rocks up on the day. Because if you allow people to choose when they come to you, okay, you've made them pre-book and you know that sort of, let's say, 10,000 people are going to come to you. If you say, "You can come whenever you want," they're all going to pretty much come within the same three- or four-hour window. They'll come between 10:00 and 1:00. So you then have to gear up your admissions area to deal with all processing all those people at the same time, or in that really short period, and you have to process everybody through your rides, or your experience, or your interactives, or your show, or your restaurants. We have toilets. All those things have to be scaled up so much more to be able to cope with that peak demand that actually, if you can phase it all so that there's a constant number through the day, you don't have that, so you don't need to have 27 restaurants and 4,000 different toilets, you know? It's much more manageable.Geoff Spooner: So we have two big restaurants, a cafe and toilets dotted about, but all of that is able to make sure that none of that ever gets overwhelmed. You're not queuing for ages anywhere. If you look at our reviews online, that's not what people say about our experience. So it just makes it feel, I suppose, smooth, slick, all the things that you would want the attraction to be. So definitely pre-booking, and particularly combining that, if you can, with a timed element, it helps you to avoid that. Helps you to know who's coming and manage a sort of constant demand through the day.Kelly Molson: It's really nice that you mention the two different sides of that, because obviously, it is a real benefit to the attraction itself, in terms of operational processes. But visitor experience ultimately is improved because of it, because nobody's having to queue. Like you said, there's not an over-demand for toilets, or they can't get seated in the cafeteria or the restaurant that they want to eat in. So it just has a huge, hugely positive effect on the visitor as well as the attraction itself. What about downsides? Can you see any downsides, or are there any downsides that you've come across?Geoff Spooner: Yeah. I mean, normally when people say, "What are the downsides?" There's if you're sold out three months in advance, there's not massive, massive downsides there. But you have to have, obviously, the product's got to be right, and it's got to be compelling, and all those things. But certainly, the downside of being sold out three months in advance comes along when you have a lockdown, and you have to refund all those people.Kelly Molson: Of course.Geoff Spooner: That can be quite eventful. But we managed to do that really well. And the team, particularly, obviously, the service team, did a fabulous job of getting all those refunds processed really quickly and doing it in a way that's automated, so no one had to call us to get the refund, which was great, and we did be very clear that we would do that. So that's worked very well. So there's that element to it, I suppose. I mean, hopefully, we won't have lots of COVID-related things going forwards, but it's something to bear in mind, I suppose.Geoff Spooner: I think if you're highly weather-dependent, I think it's always going to be a challenge to compel people to come out when it's wet or freezing, so you know. But then I think maybe some of your experience is as a seasonal experience, then maybe you don't open at those times anyway.Geoff Spooner: I think probably the challenge that we found the most is when you design an attraction to a maximum of X, and then you see that actually the demand is there so that you could actually do probably a bit more, or that you want to expand it, well. How are you going to do that? When you want to move it to Y, there's quite a lot of things you need to tweak all around the place to make sure that it still works as you originally intended it to. So you know, routes. Maybe you have to move something. Maybe you have to put some extra toilets in. We've just built an expansion on our cafe to help in the back lot there. So that can be a challenge, mainly because you might be quite space-constrained, so sometimes you have got to put an expansion on a building, and maybe you can't do that. So those are the sorts of things I think are the biggest downsides to it. But for us, it works extremely well.Kelly Molson: Do you ever get people turn up? Do you ever have instances where people turn up where they haven't known it's pre-book, or they've just decided to take a chance anyway?Geoff Spooner: We don't really. I mean, it amazes me, if you think how many people come to us, we have hardly anybody. If we do get people coming, they'd normally come to Watford Junction and spoken to our security team, who are helping people onto the shuttle buses there to come to the tour, they'll have told them, and then they'll probably have got a cab anyway, up to the tour, and then we'll tell them the same thing. So we get hardly anyone. We try to make sure no one leaves crying, particularly if they're children, but really, I mean, it is a handful of people that come a week, so it's not a big problem. Particularly during this lockdown period, it's not really been a problem at all.Geoff Spooner: But our marketing is very clear, and I think that's what helps us to ram that message home, really, is that we say everywhere, advance book only, and that's what everyone will tell you. So people know that it's difficult. So much so that I saw a BBC article, and the headline was "Getting a COVID test is harder than getting tickets for Harry Potter," or something like that. So I don't know if that's a positive or not, but it did make me chuckle, so.Kelly Molson: It's probably true. So this is quite a big question, and obviously, pre-booking is something that's been kind of forced on attractions at the moment. My personal opinion is, I have no idea why an attraction would want to go back to not having pre-booking. I think people's behavior has changed. It's an accepted part of the process now. I've always found it quite unusual that attractions don't need you to do that. It's not a requirement. Do you think that UK attractions should continue to offer pre-booking post-COVID, once we are back to a form of normality?Geoff Spooner: I think it depends on their model, and certainly if you are something which is a... Let's say you're limited capacity, but you're high membership. People will be able to think of the different organizations that fit into that category. That can be a challenge for them, because unless you... It's very easy to go, "Well, I'm going to come every day in the summer," and I'll actually only turn up when it's sunny. I think definitely, people with memberships have found that quite challenging to overcome, and you do need people to commit to come. So that's the sort of area where I think it can be a little bit tricky.Geoff Spooner: But I think it's a very positive thing to do. I can't see why people would completely come away from it. I think there maybe will be a bit of flexibility. I think certainly for the really peak times, it's a great way to... If you know that there's not going to be huge demand in your park, and your attraction is not going to be at capacity, then on certain days, maybe you could turn it off. But for the days when you know you're going to be busy, you want it to be there. And also there's an element of, might what if people, that helps to drive demand. It helps to make you this hot ticket that people want, feel they need to book months in advance. I spoke to somebody in the tour yesterday, and it was their daughter's birthday. I said, "Oh, when did you get the tickets?" And she said, "February."Kelly Molson: Oh, gosh. Wow.Geoff Spooner: So if that's what you want to achieve, if you can... I think people have learned a lot from it. One-way flows and things like that. But I think if they're thinking about it now, they also need to think about, what is the visitor flow, and how you manage that as well. Theme parks are like a big ecosystem. There's lots of little things. Anyone little tweak in one area can have quite a big effect on something else.Geoff Spooner: So yeah. I think many of them will continue, and some will probably change a bit, but people seem to talk very positively about it when you're on attraction calls at the moment, and people seem to have found this, like, "Oh my gosh, if you, if you just make people one-way through the experience, they see everything, and the experience is so much better." You know, if you walk through some of these cavernous places that are like mazes and you feel, "Did we see everything? I don't know."Geoff Spooner: It's been a really interesting time, and I think that lockdown and COVID has really forced attractions to really think about their experience and how they deliver that. I think a lot of attractions got into thinking, "Well, gosh. This is going to be really challenging. It's not going to be as good." But actually, if you're doing it right, the end result seems to be, the visitor experience is better at the moment. Even better in our case. We were really clear we didn't want to open if the experience wasn't going to be as good as it was normally, and we've been really pleased with the feedback that we've got from that. So I think there's lots of learnings that attractions will take, and lots of different variables that need to be considered, and each attraction will think of what its makeup on who's coming is, and that will influence their decisions a lot, I think.Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely.Geoff Spooner: We'll still be pre-book, definitely.Kelly Molson: Yeah. I can't see that changing any time soon.Geoff Spooner: No.Kelly Molson: And so as we start to enter this exciting new year of 2021, which I think everyone just can't wait for, do you have any advice that you could share with the sector? Any pearls of wisdom as we start this new year?Geoff Spooner: Well, hopefully, 2021 has to be better than 2020. It'd be pretty impressive if it was worse, but... Zombie mutant bees or something next year, but...Kelly Molson: It could happen. Don't even say it, Geoff.Geoff Spooner: It's a good opportunity to reflect, and to really look at what's worked well, what hasn't worked well. I think if you've been a popular attraction pre-COVID, you'll still be a popular attraction post-COVID, and you just need to look at what you're carrying through from the learnings that you've made. I do definitely feel that the industry will come back, that demand will come back. People want escapism and they want different experiences a huge amount at the moment because they're missing that. Not to interact with other people, but just to get away from everything that we've had this year. You see that talking to people in the tour, and from the comments that they leave, it was just fantastic to be somewhere magical for three hours, and not talk about COVID. I think that that applies to lots of attractions across the country.Geoff Spooner: So it has definitely been very difficult and challenging, and attractions have had to think on their feet, and it's been a bit of a battle. I think most attractions have come through that battle, and that's a real positive, and they'll learn a lot from it. I think organizationally, they'll be a lot stronger from that going forward. So yeah. I think we just need to see the demand starts to increase. Maybe capacity will increase. I think some of the limits in demand that we have at the moment are slightly offset by the fact that you've got lower capacity. Not completely. And we'll just have to see really.Geoff Spooner: I think it's a case of keeping calm. Everybody knows what business they're in and they know who they're talking to and who wants to come to them, and those people, I think, will still be there. I think the one thing that maybe it will change from a business's point of view is visitor's perception of what is an acceptable level of busy. Whilst I think there's a proportion of people who are quite sort of COVID cavalier and don't mind sitting on your shoulder kind of thing, at the minute. But there will be people who just think, actually, if your attendance was 10,000 before, say, and all those people were in the attraction, nobody would have minded that before. But perhaps there'll be more people now who, if you ask questions in your exit surveys about, "Was the attraction crowded?" Going back to normal, I think I would probably expect that percentage who thought it was crowded to be a bit higher. Maybe not massively, but I think that that is something that everyone's got to really think about, and we won't suddenly all just throw our masks away and go back to normal. I think it's going to be quite gradual.Kelly Molson: Yeah, I completely agree. It's interesting what you say. I mean, this is not an attraction, but we have a Saturday market in our local town, and even at the moment, that feels busy, because you're not used to that many people being around you. So I can completely understand how people would feel about coming to a really busy attraction, and suddenly feeling quite overwhelmed by it, actually. It's a really good point.Kelly Molson: I think that the demand will definitely be there as well. I agree with you. As a consumer, we've missed out on a whole year of making memories, and I think that that's what we want to get back to doing. It's fun experiences and doing things, like you said, you know? Doing things that are magical experiences and remembering them. Thank you, Geoff.Kelly Molson: I have one last question for you that I ask all of our guests that come on and it's if you have a book that you'd recommend. So a book that you either really love, or something that's helped shape your career in some way over the years that you could recommend to our listeners.Geoff Spooner: I don't. I mean, it's shocking, really. I really like reading, but I don't get much time to read generally. So probably the last book I read was about the Battle of Waterloo. I've read a couple of a couple of books on that, and that is a really interesting book to read from a point of view of clutching victory from the jaws of defeat, and also the importance of really clear communication and trust. I think it's a really, really interesting book to read because it's sort of, you know, the allied forces probably shouldn't have won that battle. But it's a very interesting book to read, but not everyone's into military history, I'm sure.Geoff Spooner: So I mean, the one thing that I am able to do at the minute is read to my kids, and my youngest daughter is very keen on Harry Potter, and I think really, it is a great book to read. We're kind of... Where are we on? We're doing Goblet of Fire at the minute, and it's been nice to read them all. Just what impresses me the most, knowing, having seen everything in the films... And I came to Harry Potter, my experience of Harry Potter originally was not reading the books. It was seeing all the films in the cinema. So I was literally the only person who wasn't expecting what had just happened on the screen to happen. And I think what's really clever about that, it is just all the backstories in there that you don't necessarily see the films, and it is really great. But also you just see how clever Jo was, planting all the things early in the books that are then really important later in the [inaudible 00:41:48]. To have thought that through and planned that through at the very beginning, I just think is really, really clever. I think they're equally enjoyable books to read as an adult and as a child. So it's maybe a bit obvious that I'd say Harry Potter, but I think that's the ones that I'm reading at the minute.Kelly Molson: I mean, maybe it is, but I'm really glad that you did, because I think they're wonderful books, and I love them dearly. So listeners, as ever, if you want to win a copy of... I think we'll give away a copy of the first Harry Potter book, where the journey started. So if you do want to win that book, then if you head over to our Twitter account and you retweet this episode announcement with the words, "I want Geoff's book..."Geoff Spooner: Don't call it Geoff's book.Kelly Molson: I mean, JK Rowling might have something to say about that. However, if you-Geoff Spooner: Her lawyers will go mad.Kelly Molson: For the purpose of this, if you want Geoff's book, then just retweet it, and then you'll be in with a chance of winning. Geoff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate it. I think that the pre-booking saga and topic is something that's going to continue long into 2021, and maybe we'll get you back on at the end of 2021 and see how that's all gone, and see what exciting plans that you've got for the tour.Geoff Spooner: Great. Really nice to speak to you. Thank you for having me.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

durée : 00:01:41 - Connecté France Bleu Mayenne - Découvrir le musée de Madame Tussauds en réalité virtuelle, ça vous dit ?

It was a great pleasure to chat with John face to face (before lockdown, I hasten to add) back in December of 2019. John is a well known FX artist who has since gone on to work at Tussauds and is a freelance artist. I think you will get a real kick out of hearing his take, a perfect attitude to how to feel when creating. We chat about what it means to sculpt, that internal dialogue we all have when creating something new, Fact checking bellend: In this, I mistakenly assign Constantin Brâncuși as the artist behind 'Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)' which of course it wasn't - it was Marcel Duchamp. Links to things we mentioned. The Barclays Bank commercial directed by Ridley Scott. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnVyANe0ZnE John Schoonraad Episode: https://battleswithbitsofrubber.com/14-scanners-schoonraads/ Neill Gorton Episode: https://battleswithbitsofrubber.com/51-neill-gorton/ Kris Costa: https://www.instagram.com/theantropus/ Olya Anufrieva: https://www.instagram.com/he77ga/ Follow John on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jcormican/ Johns website: https://johncormican.co.uk/ Some of John's work Nightbreed at Image Animation, Pinewood Studios. Vasty Moses sculpt in progress. The Judge Dredd wall panels for the movie. Many thanks. Don't forget you can get in touch by leaving us a voice message or email stuartandtodd@gmail.com. - Stuart & Todd

This week we are LIVE from Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Hollywood (#tussaudsla)! There have been many reports of this busy tourist attraction being haunted! So, of course, the first thing I wanted to do was to come here after the attraction was closed, hear all of the spooky ghost stories from the manager and the staff, some history on the location from Lisa Morton and then do a little late night investigation of our own!  And, Guess what?!?! You get join us!   Do these wax figures come to life at night or are they so lifelike that it just feels like it? What’s the history of the building did something horrific go down here in the past? What about the history of the museum itself…how did this come to be? What about Madame Tussaud, who was she and what inspired her to create these lifelike replicas? Or is it the area? Hollywood has a very seedy and mysterious past…we are going to be discussing all of these questions and more!  Madam Tussauds is a 3 story museum with 125 celebrity figures in display.  Our guest today is Helen Larimore, the marketing manager of the museum.  She is originally from Chicago and since she was a child she has been obsessed with all things bizarre and strange.  She has been at Madame Tussauds for 2 years now and she says working within the walls of the Wax Museum is a perfect fir for her.  Her proudest accomplishment was creating a horror themed room for the attraction that covers many classics from yesterday and today.  Like Bela Lugosi as Dracula and IT SET.   She says she has always had a bit of a 6th sense her entire life and working at the museum has sparked her 6th sense on several occasions. Ghost Magnet Facebook Group:  https://www.facebook.com/Ghost-Magnet-with-Bridget-Marquardt-2480154975336666/   Bridget Marquardt Bridget Marquardt is best known to television audiences and pop-culture connoisseurs as the sweet and brainy star of E! Networks’ wildly popular reality show “The Girls Next Door.” After moving out of the Playboy mansion in January 2009, Marquardt hosted “Bridget’s Sexiest Beaches,” a sixteen-episode series on The Travel Channel in which she traveled the globe searching for the world’s best surf, sand, and sun in countries including Croatia, Jamaica, Thailand, Spain, Australia, and the United States.    @BridgetMarquardt on Instagram @Bridget on Twitter @BridgetMarquardt on Facebook Lisa Morton - Ghost Reporter Everyday is Halloween to award winning horror author and Ghost Reporter Lisa Morton. She has published four novels, 150 short stories, and three books on the history of Halloween. Her most recent releases include the anthologies Haunted Nights (co-edited with Ellen Datlow) and Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense (co-edited with Leslie Klinger), both of which received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. She lives in the San Fernando Valley, and can be found online at www.lisamorton.com . Amazon Link:  https://www.amazon.com/Lisa-Morton/e/B001JRZ8NC%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Nyhetssändning från kulturredaktionen P1, med reportage, nyheter och recensioner.

In the week that saw the happy announcement that Spitting Image is returning to our screens, we are joined by one of the original crew (he made Rolf Harris). Wilfrid Wood is one of the pre-eminent sculptors (not the Rodin type) and modern artists working in Britain today. His work is unique, playful and often ironic, especially his 3D portraits of the likes of Macca, Wazza, Bojo and Greta. He is also known for his superb caricatures. Amongst lots of other things, we discuss what it means to be beautiful and the current craze for over-doing the old makeup. [Oh, and correction: It was Cheryl Cole whose waxwork was recently removed from Tussauds. Seaniebee would like to apologise unreservedly to Sheryl Crow (who is probably too classy to have ever had one in the first place)]. Links: Instagram: @wilfridwoodsculptor A Pint With Seaniebee Please subscribe to support the podcast: www.patreon.com/seaniebee Audible Feast list of Best Podcast Series of 2016 & 2017: https://tinyurl.com/ya5yj9vs 50 Best Podcast Episodes list 2016 &2017: https://tinyurl.com/y7ryajat Release date: September 30th 2019 Runtime: 30m Recorded: Kinsale

This week's' conversation is with Adrian Fisher. This is a man who believes in the power of the rough pencil sketch. He believes in having control, but not. My art form is parallel rows of things. -- Adrian FisherHe is a maze designer. I can't seem to get enough of interviews with people who design and construct mazes, so you'll indulge me? Thanks. I think there is a parallel between creating mazes and writing stories and almost got Adrian to go along with the idea, but not quite. He was helpful, though, when I told him about the time I had an anxiety attack while in a corn maze, offering the wise explanation that I am a modern person who expects everything to work like a computer. This is true. It's like playing chess with me except that I have to play all my moves in advance as the chess player, as the designer, and then I must lose. I must lose just before you've had enough. Because I'm here to entertain you. One thing to remember as you listen: This is a Skype, not a phone call. So it has the usual Skype blips and dropouts, which is why I don’t usually use Skype for podcasts. Adrian joined me on the call from his studio in Dorset, England, so Skype was the best way to go. Since 1979, Adrian and his company have designed and created more than 700 full-size mazes in the grounds of palaces, castles, stately homes, zoos, wildlife parks, amusement parks, children’s museums, science centers, malls, universities, schools, city centers, and farms. He has written six books about mazes. The Queen visited a maze he made to commemorate the Beatles.Adrian has also created rides and puzzles for iconic visitor attractions across the globe including Legoland, Tussauds and the London Dungeon. He has made the tallest maze in the world, up the side of a building, and some of the largest corn mazes.I want to make you the hero of your own story. Thanks for listening, Lee ---I'm preparing something new for this email, for subscribers only. I'm calling it cycles and it will come out on Wednesdays. I'm thinking of it as a workout for your creative self, helping you do better, deeper stuff. You’ll be able to be part of conversations with other subscribers. Still incubating, but it should arrive in your inboxes in a couple of months and cycle through the year. See you next week. Get full access to 500 Words at 500words.substack.com/subscribe

Wax on your podcast device but don't wax it off because it's time for a field trip with Madame Tussaud's Hollywood's very own Helen Larimore.  Join us as she discusses the laborious and somewhat disturbing process of creating each wax model and the even more disturbing experience of having to walk through the empty exhibits at the end of the night.

The display will open to the public on 19 May - the day of the royal wedding. Read more >> https://ift.tt/2K4CY6w

Hello there! We got a steamy episode of Geek Speak for you! Lauren, Alex, and Jo lament about lack of daddy Soldier 76 is porn, chat toys (not that kind!) and much more! This week we ramble about: Time-Waster of the Week: Master and Apprentice Overwatch, Pokémon dominated Pornhub's most popular game characters of 2017 Overwatch League is happening right now Snowpiercer TV adaptation officially given series order 2018 BAFTA Nominations announced and Golden Globes 2018 Black Widow standalone movie in development Zero Dark Thirty The Toys That Made Us Update on Alien Experience in Madame Tussauds

Hello there listeners, it's Geek Speak time again… YAY! Alex & Jo are joined by James from The Inner Circle Games Network, so they can talk games, TV and movies this week. Check us out this week and you shall hear the following topics: Time Waster of the Week: Real Life Lore. What Remains of Edith Finch. Jo visits Madame Tussauds in London. How and when did television get so good? King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – Spoilers (58:00 – 1:00:15).

Join Nick with Robert and other friends as they discuss Nick's first real trip to Disneyland Paris - and hear an audio diary from the park, also hear from Dominic McChesney as he, with Nick, discusses Derren Brown's Ghost Train: Rise of the Demon!  Finally hear from Ryan - who's a big fan of The Season Pass - as he shares his thoughts on Madame Tussauds in London.  It's a whirlwind of an episode!

Join James Burns on a special extended edition of the Star Wars Collectors Cast with his brother in the Force from Jedi News and RADIO 1138 – Mark Newbold; together they look back at 2016 and the last couple of months in the collecting world. This special show features two visits to Rancho Obi-Wan to catch up with Steve Sansweet - the first a couple of days after the Annual Gala in November, and again just before the holidays with a very special announcement about a tie-in wite Little Debbie. Go back to November at Madame Tussauds where Propel launched their Star Wars drones and James caught up with Leigh Francis (Keith Lemon), from Propel – director Carl England and CEO Darren Matloff. James also chats with Glen Abell, Vice President of Direct to Consumer, from LEGO about the opening of the largest LEGO Store in the world in the heart of London’s Leicester Square. Find out what Fangirls Going Rogue and Galactic Fashion co-host Teresa Delgado and Jedi News Social Media Guru and co-host of Take Cover Matt Booker thought of 2016 from a collecting point-of-view – along with an exclusive revelation from Matt. All this and more in a must listen edition of the Star Wars Collectors Cast! Note: much of this content was recorded before the tragic passing of Carrie Fisher. Also, be aware of Rogue One spoilers.

On today's episode we talk about xhsot, Brian Deegan, Derral Eves, Madame Tussauds YouTube Wax Figures, Periscope legalities, Facebook Freebooting, Xshot, Dove Campaign, Apple selfie sticks, Kentucky Derby, and Gleam Futures. All the tech, social media and blog headlines that Bloggers love, need and use everyday.

akb48, akihabara, asakusa, ginza, karaoke, mori tower, odaiba, onsen, roppongi, tokyo, tussauds, venus fort

Nicole Kidman baby watch begins, her labor music favorite is not Keith Urban, Keith Anderson's mother dies, Bon Jovi announces free NYC concert, Madame Tussauds to create Amy Winehouse figure, new movies come early this week