Legoland Contented to Build Slowly

The raciest ride at the Legoland California theme park being built atop a breezy bluff in Carlsbad will be the pint-sized Dragon roller coaster, with a top speed of 15 mph. The watercraft carrying visitors around the park will move even more slowly. And the gorillas and birds are nothing more than millions of skillfully assembled plastic blocks.

At a time when Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park hopes to erase its laid-back image by adding in-your-face attractions like the GhostRider wooden roller coaster, the 128-acre Legoland, which opens in March, envisions itself as a kinder, gentler, theme park. And while competitors like Disneyland boast that they have something for everyone, Legoland will focus its marketing on preteens and their parents.

Legoland will have to walk a fine line, observers say, if that marketing strategy is to work. Its $15-million ad campaign that begins next week must be edgy enough to stand out in the advertising blitz aimed at youngsters. But Legoland must also come across as substantive enough to lure parents who believe that playtime should also be entertaining.

And there’s always the risk that visitors won’t believe that the park’s attractions can’t already be found in a region top-heavy with top-flight theme parks.

“The bar in the theme park world is set much higher here than in Europe or anywhere else,” said Ray Braun, a senior vice president with Economics Research Associates, a Los Angeles-based consulting firm. “This is the homeland of the industry; it was invented in Anaheim. That means you have to be much more proactive in your marketing.”

Legoland has turned its advertising over to Asher & Partners, a Los Angeles-based agency that has handled campaigns for such new attractions as the New York, New York casino in Las Vegas and products such as a yogurt drink.

Barry Schoenfeld, a partner with Asher, maintains that it’s possible to reach preteens and parents without mixing up the message. “As long as you find some points of commonality, it isn’t that difficult,” Schoenfeld said. “If you dig deep enough, you can find strategic areas which are of interest to both audiences.”

Legoland has an obvious head start because the Lego name enjoys a stunning 85% recognition rate. But few Americans have seen a Legoland park, so teaser ads that begin next week, and the full campaign that breaks during the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl telecast, will “make parents aware that Lego now means more than a toy in a box,” said Legoland Marketing Director Marianne Flowers.

Denmark’s Lego Group opted against enlisting the same advertising and marketing used when sister parks opened in Bilund, Denmark (1968) and Windsor, England (1996). It instead stocked the park’s Carlsbad executive offices with managers who learned their craft at parks such as SeaWorld in San Diego, Disneyland in Anaheim and the Six Flags/Magic Mountain parks.

And the Carlsbad park will move at a lightning-fast pace compared with the European attractions, where visitors meander through artfully crafted grounds filled with painstakingly accurate models built with thousands of Lego’s interlocking bricks.

“Kids in the Southern California market are a little bit more jaded than anywhere else,” said Thor Degelmann, chief executive of Leisure Entertainment Development and Operations Inc., a Newport Beach-based consulting firm. “They’ve grown up with Disneyland, SeaWorld and Knott’s, so the trick is getting them interested in a relatively docile kind of attraction like Legoland.”

The Carlsbad park will still have plenty of miniaturized attractions such as the Statue of Liberty and the San Francisco skyline. Lego’s master builders in Denmark have used about 30 million of the bricks to build the attractions.

But the park also offers a driving school where kids earn a “license”; a water park; and a 30-foot tower where kids use gears and pulleys to propel themselves to the top.

The park will also serve as a living, breathing advertisement for Lego’s toy products--from the simple bricks introduced in 1958 to the new, high-tech Mindstorm line that incorporates programmable computer chips. And they’ll all be on sale at company-operated stores.

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Like its competitors, Legoland California will depend on state residents for more than half its business. Market research suggests that mothers of young children who live between San Diego and Los Angeles will pile into their minivans to visit the park.

The park hopes to build its daytime traffic by marketing itself to preschool and grade-school teachers, who will be admitted free with groups of 15 paying students.

Legoland will provide visiting teachers with resource guides that can be used to prepare lessons that dovetail with park programs.

But, as Schoenfeld noted, Asher is being “very careful to make sure this park isn’t communicated to kids as someplace where you learn, where you get educated. That’s what we call ‘broccoli’--something that’s supposed to be good for you. We want to sell fun.”

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While Disneyland drew more than 14 million visitors in 1997, Lego Group says it will be happy if its new park draws about 2 million during 1999. Though the park has plenty of room to expand--including space for a 750-room hotel--the privately held company is content to grow slowly.

Private ownership doesn’t insulate Legoland from the need to turn a profit. But observers say the family-owned business--its current president is the grandson of founder Ole Kirk Christiansen--can be patient.

“They’ve spent about $150 million, and they know what they need to justify that investment and return a profit,” one industry observer said. “They put a cap on capital spending, because spending a lot more would put them directly into competition with places like Knott’s. And that’s not something they want or need to be in competition with.”

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Piece Offering

Theme park industry observers say Legoland is wise to keep its admission fees under those charged by industry leader Walt Disney Co. A look at what some other Southern California attractions charge:

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Attraction Adult Child Universal Studios Hollywood $38 $33 Disneyland $38 $28 Knott’s Berry Farm $36 $26 Six Flags/Magic Mountain $36 $18 SeaWorld $35.95 $26.95 Legoland $32 $25 Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific $13.95 $6.95 California Science Center Free Free

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Source: Times research