Theme parks get ready for January

Visits to Cinderella Castle and a new comedy show at Magic Kingdom, two new stage shows at Busch Gardens, Mardi Gras at Universal Orlando and the Bud & BBQ music festival at SeaWorld highlight calendars for the theme parks in early 2007

The theme parks all have released their first-quarter calendars, and they're highlighted by new activities at Magic Kingdom and Busch Gardens-Tampa Bay in January.

Disney expects to open its "Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor Comedy Club," an interactive, robotic show, in a 400-seat theater in Tomorrowland to passholders in mid-January and the rest of the public soon afterward. The show already is running occasional, unscheduled "play tests" that some visitors might find if they arrive at the right time.

Also at Magic Kingdom, Disney will hold the first of its 13 Pirate & Princess Parties Jan. 22. The parties will take place after-hours and cost extra. Also in late January, Disney's Year of a Million Dreams campaign gets its signature event at Magic Kingdom, the opportunity for visitors to win the chance to spend the night in the Cinderella Castle Suite.

Busch Gardens is touting its new Mirage Canteen show for January, which it describes as evoking the feeling of a 1940s music and dance hall, with the songs, dance and dress of Hollywood's Golden Age. Busch also announced that its annual visit by the Irish Thunder dance troupe will be bringing a new show in January, called Emerald Beat.

SeaWorld's after-hours, extra-ticket show Bud & BBQ begins Jan. 27, and Universal's early 2007 schedule is highlighted by Mardi Gras, which begins Feb. 3.

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New Orlando marketing slogan revealed

Posted December 15, 2006, 1:43 PM EST

The Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau unveiled its new marketing campaign today, showing off the latest slogan about Orlando: "Built for families. Made for memories."

The catch phrase is part of a two-year multimillion-dollar ad blitz that includes national network television spots.

The marketing program is the result of anticipated increased revenue from a sixth cent added earlier this year to the Tourist Development Tax, which is levied on hotel rooms. In the first year, the new money is expected to reach about $26 million.

The windfall comes at a critical time for Orlando, which is seeing declines in hotel occupancy rates and the number of lucrative overseas visitors from the United Kingdom.

Snowbirds deliver real deal to area lots
Sales of live trees have been growing in recent years (11 December 2006)

Shoppers aren't camping out in front of stores or bidding exorbitant amounts on eBay to buy them. But they will easily outsell PlayStation 3, the Wii and TMX Elmo by the truckloads this holiday season.

They are Christmas trees, and before the month is out more than 30 million of them will be sold nationally.

"When you walk in a house you can smell a Christmas tree," said Gabriel Cortes, 30, who was tree shopping last week with his 1-year-old daughter at Crazy Vern's Trees on U.S. Highway 192 in Kissimmee. "The tree is the final step to knowing that you're ready for Christmas."

Roadside stands selling trees from Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and elsewhere started appearing throughout Central Florida last month, luring shoppers with fresh Fraser firs, blue spruce, Scotch pines and others varieties.

Some of the sellers, such as Indiana native Jack Garrison, are snowbirds, dividing their time between Florida and their Midwestern or Northern homes. Others, such as Ciro Poma, live here year-round.

For tree growers across the country, Florida represents a key market -- the populous state cannot possibly grow enough trees to meet its own demands.

Ron Hudler, a North Carolina grower and spokesman for the National Christmas Tree Association, ships 100,000 trees -- Fraser firs -- from his farm alone each year into the Sunshine State.

Along with the simple supply and demand equation, there is the matter of preference. Many Floridians are transplants from Northern states and tend to seek Christmas trees with a bit of familiarity.

"You always want what you had when you were a kid," Hudler said.

Nationwide, the industry has high hopes for the 2006 Christmas season, which already is showing signs of mirroring the successes of the past two years.

Live tree sales have shown significant gains since 2004, when Hudler's association launched a marketing campaign aimed at encouraging people to choose real over artificial.

"We decided to grow up and become a real industry," Hudler said.

But selling trees is neither easy business nor easy money. Aside from artificial trees, roadside sellers face competition from home improvement stores, supermarkets and other retailers selling fresh trees. Then there are labor, licensing and inspection costs. It can all add up.

So why do it?

Just ask these sellers . . .

Roots are deep

Ciro Poma's roots in the Christmas tree business go back decades, to the days of working on his father's tree farm in Michigan.

"As kids we kind of hated it," said Poma, 50, whose father started selling trees after he emigrated from Italy in the 1950s. "Up there it was 20 to 30 degrees and two feet of snow."

But the business stuck -- even after Poma and his wife, Giovanna, moved to Orlando in 1982. During his second year in the Sunshine State, Poma started bringing in truckloads of the trees from Michigan. Over 20 years later, he hasn't stopped.

"People don't really understand how much goes into these trees. They have to be harvested every year. From planting to spraying for bugs, it's a big process and then to get the trees down here. It's a lot of work." Poma said. "Then we have to get the lot, the tent, the power, inspection, an occupational license."
Poma owns other businesses, including two companies that provide video games and coin laundries to area hotels and resorts, but it's the trees -- which range in price from $25 to over $1,000 for a 19-footer -- that keep him busy this time of year. He still rents the same lot where he originally started on Sand Lake Road in Orlando, along with three others.

"In the beginning, I did it for the extra income and it's still nice to have that, but now it's more of a tradition," said Poma, whose wife and three grown sons help with the trees. "I remember how people would come with their kids, and now their kids are coming with their own kids. I don't know what I would do if we didn't sell Christmas trees, we've been doing it for so long."

Youth group fundraiser

The tent in the parking lot of the United Methodist Church in Clermont is a sure sign that Christmas is almost here. Easily seen from State Road 50, it welcomes customers with the fresh smell of trees -- and teenagers eager to sell them.

For the past 13 years, the church has bought trees from a wholesaler and sold them to raise money for the middle and high school youth groups.

"They [the youth] run the lot," said Candi Ogden, director of discipleship at the church. "They greet the people, help them select trees, haul the trees to people's cars, tie them down, get them from where they're stored, keep track of booking, hand in the money bag every night -- the kids run the park."

The more a teenager works, the more money he or she raises to go toward a youth group mission trip or community mission work the following year.

"I like it because you get to spend time with friends and meet people," said East Ridge freshman Emily Wells, who was working the lot recently.

Home-schooled John Nunn, 14, said he's happy just to have the chance to work a chain saw, a skill he hopes to repeat often by cutting the bottoms of trees for customers ready to take home their prize.

Pam Bonjorn is a member of the church and has been buying her Christmas tree from the youth group for as long as she can remember.

When asked if she has considered buying an artificial tree, she said she's thought about it, "but you've just got to have a real tree to make it more Christmas-y."

"Christmas is getting more and more commercialized, and so we try to do a lot of the traditional things," Bonjorn said.

Vacation from the cold

Indiana native Jack Garrison has a real work ethic.

Almost 60 years ago he quit school and started selling produce and flowers, a venture that started his entry into the Christmas tree business. From selling trees in Indiana, Garrison moved to driving truckloads of them to retailers in Florida, eventually opting to sell the trees here himself.

Garrison, 72, operates three lots in east Orlando, off Colonial Drive, with a crew from Indiana and his 71-year-old cousin, June, from Alabama. They stay in Central Florida for November and December and return in February for two months.

They see it as a vacation from the cold as much as a job opportunity.

"The weather's better. This is what we got used to," Garrison said.

The winter months are for selling trees, and the spring months are dedicated to various flowers -- specifically roses for Valentine's Day. He sells all his merchandise from the same lots.

Up in Indiana, Garrison owns and operates a nursery in his "spare" time. But despite success in such a business, the tree veteran has witnessed many ups and downs.

"Things have changed a lot," Garrison said. "More artificial trees are sold, and there's people that get older and don't buy trees anymore. Mostly sales have gone down. I pay more and sell for less."

That doesn't seem to stop Garrison, though he's at an age when many are already retired.

"If I don't have something to do, I would go nuts," he said. "As long as I can live, I'll stay in the business."

The house that green built

Florida lags in efforts to make homes eco-friendly

Nin-Hai Tseng | Sentinel Staff Writer 

Instead of granite countertops for the gourmet kitchen, Pamela and John Pare chose the kind made of recycled glass.

The Orlando couple opted for something different throughout the house. Bamboo flooring instead of regular hardwood for the bedroom. Low-flow water faucets for the bathroom. Nontoxic paint for the walls. Cork flooring for the guesthouse.

The Pares could have used materials widely familiar to mainstream builders, but they wanted to redo their Orlando home in a way that will conserve water, save energy and ultimately be environmentally friendly -- a task growing more urgent as a booming population increases pollution and strains Central Florida's natural resources.

But although green building is a popular option elsewhere around the country, Florida trails other states.

In places where green building has taken hold -- such as Seattle, Chicago and Portland, Ore. -- local governments have created incentives to encourage developers and homeowners to incorporate eco-friendly gadgets and materials. And some have gone as far as making green building the standard for government buildings.

Florida has not been nearly as aggressive.

But recently, green-building advocates applauded a partnership formed between the Florida Home Builders Association and the Florida Green Building Coalition, a nonprofit group that encourages environmentally friendly design and construction. The builders group agreed to use the same standards for green building as the ones set forth by the coalition, marking a more unified commitment from the building industry.

Green-building standards differ depending on whether buildings are government offices, commercial buildings or single-family homes. But they address a number of things ranging from whether the building has energy-efficient appliances, water-saving devices on toilets and showers, or high-quality insulation. A certification that a building is "green" saves certain levels of energy and water, keeps indoor-air quality clean and uses a certain amount of recycled materials, among other things.

However, in order to change the way builders have long constructed homes and offices, they need an extra push.

"Incentives, I think, are critical," said Roy Bonnell Jr., executive director of the Florida Green Building Coalition.

Few places in the state offer incentive programs. Perhaps the most progressive are Sarasota County and Gainesville, where local governments have agreed to issue building permits quicker and at a discount if the project is certified by the Florida Green Building Coalition.

"I don't think Central Florida is on that wavelength yet," said Pamela Pare, 36, a homemaker who plans to begin construction of her family's home later this summer.

To illustrate the point, the Pares walked into their project with high hopes but discovered building green was harder than they thought. The couple's home suffered damage from Hurricane Charley two years ago. They could have patched up the broken pieces but decided to rebuild instead.

"We thought it was the way to go, especially here in Florida where we use so much energy to keep our homes comfortable," Pamela Pare said. (Her husband, John, is a candidate for judge in the 9th Judicial Circuit; his opponent is Tim Shea.)

She said her first difficulty was finding an architect familiar with green standards. She couldn't locate the right one in Florida and ended up hiring one from Atlanta.

The next obstacle was locating materials. She found some locally but ended up paying shipping costs for many delivered from the West Coast.

The U.S. Green Building Council has certified hundreds of buildings across the nation as "green" through a rating system that evaluates efforts to use renewable materials, conserve energy and water and enhance indoor-air quality.

Since 2000, the nonprofit group has certified more than 500 buildings -- the bulk of them in California, with 70. In contrast, nine Florida buildings have won the stamp of approval. Nationwide, 4,213 buildings are in the process of certification -- 81 in the Sunshine State.

"I'd say we're a bit behind if you compare us to other states," said Michael Hess, president of the council's Central Florida chapter.

Hess said there is a misconception that building green costs more when it really just takes more planning. For instance, a builder can put less lighting in a room so that it gives off less heat. That way, the air-conditioning unit doesn't have to run as often.

Hess said the trend is growing nationwide, and he is optimistic Florida will catch up to other states within the next few years because of escalating energy costs.

Such savings can be significant. Andrew Brown, a land consultant who purchased a model green home in Orlando, said he saves about $150 a month on his energy bill compared with what friends with relatively the same size home pay.

Brown, 30, said he was drawn to the location near downtown. But after living in the home for the past two years, he realized the benefits of living in a green home. The 2,000-square-foot home, which was completed in 2003, has energy-efficient appliances, a metal roof to block the sun's heat and low-flow faucets. His yard is even adorned with plants that aren't so thirsty.

"It's a beautiful home, but the green aspect is sort of the kicker," Brown said.

Other green efforts are taking root in Central Florida. Last year, Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty announced the county will begin incorporating energy- and water-efficient features in newly constructed government buildings.

Lake County officials will seek U.S. Green Building Council certification on new public buildings, starting with a multimillion-dollar expansion of the judicial center.

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THEME PARK NEWS

Universal raising ticket prices

Theme park announces a host of ticket price changes this afternoon.

By Scott Powers | Sentinel Staff Writer

On the heels of Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando increased its basic, one-day, one-park adult ticket price to $67, starting Saturday.

Universal announced a host of ticket price changes this afternoon, keeping most of their prices in line with Disney's, which went up on Sunday. Previously, Universal's one-day ticket cost $63. Universal runs two theme parks, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure.

However, Universal spokesman Tom Schroder said his company is not changing the price on the ticket deal he said is the company's most popular: a two-day, two-park ticket available over the Internet that offers three free days, and allows children ages 9 and under to get in free. That ticket remains at $99.95.

Schroder said very few people buy one-day, one-park tickets anymore, because of all of the other options, particularly those available over the Internet.

He would not comment on whether Universal was trying to keep up with Disney, except to say that the new prices are "about remaining competitive in the marketplace."

"We've adjusted our basic pricing so that it stays in line with the marketplace," he said. "But at the same time, we've worked to provide great value for those people who represent the majority of our business: Florida residents and people who buy online, in advance and people who are looking for great multi-day values."

Universal's standard one-day, one-park price for Florida residents goes up to $60.30, from $56.70. However, Universal is offering a special promotion, selling such tickets over the Internet to Florida residents for $49.95.

Standard tickets for children also went up, as did most two-park tickets and most Internet deals. However, Universal is still offering a promotion in which people can buy a one-day, one-park ticket over the Internet for $63 and receive four free days.

Universal's price increases follow a historic trend in which Central Florida's theme parks all have raised their ticket prices at about the same time, to about the same levels. Universal last raised its prices in January, same as Disney. SeaWorld, which sells its basic ticket at $61.95, last raised its price in December, and has not given any indication that it intends to raise prices again anytime soon.

Unlike Disney World, Universal has struggled in recent times with attendance. On Wednesday, Disney reported a 7 percent increase in attendance at Disney World during the third quarter of 2006, which ended July 2. The resort also has reported steadily-increasing attendance in previous quarters, Universal second-quarter attendance figures, for the period ending July 2, are due out next week; but previous reports showed steadily declining attendance.

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AIRLINE TERROR PLOT: IMPACT ON TRAVELERS AND TOURISM

Local airports raise security
Fliers will see more rules, patrols

Tim Barker and Pedro Ruz Gutierrez | Sentinel Staff Writers


Passengers flying out of Orlando International, the state's busiest airport, found a new level of scrutiny awaiting them in the wake of Thursday's foiled terror plot.

Orlando police officials said they nearly doubled -- to 30 officers -- the uniformed presence at the airport while the Orange County Sheriff's Office sent out special threat-alert messages asking all officers to be extra vigilant.

"We've beefed-up our patrols," said Capt. Paul Rooney, commander of the Orlando Police Department's airport operations.

Airport workers were stationed at various entry points to make passengers aware of the new rules prohibiting them from taking any liquids, gels or pastes through the security checkpoint.

For frequent travelers, the airport's registered traveler program -- Clear -- continued as normal, with the same no-liquid restrictions faced by all passengers. "That program has not changed," said Carolyn Fennell, airport spokeswoman.

Security was also tight at Orlando Sanford International Airport, where TSA workers were doing extra screening of checked bags on arriving flights.

The clampdowns, launched in the wake of a series of arrests in Britain, put more emphasis on security in the nation's airports than at any time since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Even drinks purchased inside the security checkpoints were not allowed to be carried aboard a plane. Restrictions were more severe on flights from England to the United States -- no carry-on bags were allowed. Also prohibited were iPods and other handheld electronic devices.

Sheriff Kevin Beary, who teaches a terrorism class at Orlando's Florida Metropolitan University, said Thursday's events came as no surprise because of the ongoing terrorism threat in this country and abroad.

"We've put out a special alert to all our road troops, to report any suspicious activity," Beary said. "Especially as it relates to transportation hubs and airports."

But it won't be the terrorist plot itself that sticks in the minds of travelers.

Instead, it will be the inconveniences spawned by new travel restrictions. They'll forget about the plot itself, said Matthew Farr, senior homeland security analyst for consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

"What they'll remember is they can't take their iPods, food and water," Farr said. "That's going to be hugely annoying."

But highly unlikely, said Daniel Petree, dean of the school of business at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

While British flights may currently ban carry-on luggage, he said he does not expect to see such restrictions adopted in the United States.

"That would have tremendous backlash from passengers," Petree said.

A much more likely scenario, he said, is that government, airlines and airports will find a way to bring new devices -- the technology already is available -- into the screening process.

"The idea that airlines would ever eliminate carry-ons completely is frankly pretty far-fetched," Petree said.

Not surprisingly, money will be the biggest obstacle. Aviation and security experts say there is a wealth of technology available that could make airport checkpoints much tighter and more secure than they are today. But the cost would run into the billions of dollars.

"We're talking huge money," said Farr of Frost & Sullivan. "But look at how much we are spending on wars and border defense. We've got the money."

And Thursday's failed plot may very well provide the incentive needed, experts say.