Subject:
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Re: Lego changes CEO after new losses
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego, lugnet.general
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Date:
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Fri, 22 Oct 2004 18:53:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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6044 times
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In lugnet.lego, David Eaton wrote:
> Is the article off-base, or just not specific? I mean, it sounds completely
> accurate to me.
I'd have to agree there.
> But my guess is also that the crowd it attracts is parents with small
> children who PLAY with Lego. If your kid isn't a Lego fan, they're not dying
> to go off to LegoLand, and unless as a parent you're trying to urge your
> child INTO playing with Lego, why take them to LegoLand versus some other
> park and/or museum?
That's possibly a big problem with their location. Firstly, they're in
California, one of the two biggest concentrations of amusement parks in the
nation, along with FloriDisney World. Secondly, they're not right next door to
any of the major theme parks. That hurts them twice right off the bat. If
you're an average person on a short vacation to California, you're probably
going to put Disneyland, Universal Studios: Hollywood, and SeaWorld at the top
of your theme park list, and they're all close enough that you could get a
single hotel room and visit each of them in three consecutive days. LEGOLAND is
far enough off the beaten path that you'll probably need to switch hotel rooms,
and unless you're doing both amusement parks and nature parks in the same trip,
and you want to stop by the Carlsbad Caverns, you'll probably skip it. Parents
with little kids might actually prefer it to Disneyland because it's probably
got a much slower pace and you won't have to be scouring the park for things to
do that don't involve standing next to a height gauge...but the vast majority of
kids are going to push for Disneyland before all else. Local residents can be
counted on to pick up annual passes, but that's because annual park passes are
usually killer deals, where a regular visitor is only paying a few bucks for
admission, plus receiving a number of free Guest Passes to hand out to visiting
friends/family, and when you're able to attend whenever you have a few free
hours, there's less incentive to stay and buy park-priced food.
> The downfall of LegoLand is just as the article claims-- it misses out on the
> demographics that matter most: older kids, teenagers, and adults without
> kids. Those are HUGE demographics.
Not only that, but they're often less spend-thrifty. Teens often have part-time
jobs and no bills to pay. All other things being equal, a childless couple will
have a lot more free spending cash than a similar couple with even a single
child, much less 2-3. And the more likely they are to do repeat visits.
Anyways, the part of this article that I found most interesting is that The LEGO
Company could very well end up selling off the LEGOLAND parks to the very same
family holding company that the Christiensen family set up to own them. In
other words, the parks would be spun off into an independant company that would
have to stand or fail on its own (and wouldn't be affecting the bottom line for
the main LEGO Company), but they'd still be part of the compined LEGO family.
That should be a lot more bearable for hard-core FOLs who don't want to see it
handed off to a company that doesn't care about the Brick very much, and might
turn the bulk of what people like about LEGOLAND into a backlot side attraction,
while filling the bulk of the park with rides that have nothing to do with LEGO
bricks.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Lego changes CEO after new losses
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| (...) Is the article off-base, or just not specific? I mean, it sounds completely accurate to me. Most kids who grew up in the 70's and 80's in the US (who are becoming parents now) had some experience with Lego. As a kid, almost everyone I knew had (...) (20 years ago, 22-Oct-04, to lugnet.lego, lugnet.general)
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