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Paramount's Kings Dominion general manager makes fun and excitement his business

Virginia Business
October 2004

Paramount’s Kings Dominion is a major Virginia tourist attraction, drawing more than 2 million visitors a year to its Doswell location. The 400-acre park is a major employer in the commonwealth with more than 4,000 full- and part-time employees. The park is also one of the largest generator of sales tax revenue for Hanover County. Overseeing the Paramount theme park is General Manager Richard A. Zimmerman, a Kansas native and former chairman of the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

What was your first job out of college?
I started out at Ernst and Winney (now Ernst and Young) as a public accountant. It was a great training ground as I ended up working with Paramount and eventually took a full time position in its entertainment division.

How did you get started in the theme park business?
After joining Paramount I served in a variety of financial capacities. Eventually I moved over to Madison Square Garden in charge of strategic planning in the corporate office. In 1992 Paramount purchased a group of theme parks that were headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., I subsequently went down to Charlotte to help set up a structure for this new division to integrate itself into the Paramount organization. From there I went to other park locations to really learn the business. I spent time in Charlotte at Carowinds, in Cincinnati at Kings Island and finally ended up here at Kings Dominion as the general manager.

Who is your competition?
Our research tells us that our biggest competition is competing for our customer’s time. Consumers in the U.S. are stretched for leisure time and it is tough just getting their attention. Where a visit to a theme park like ours was once an impulse decision, there is so little free time nowadays that you really have to plan well in advance. With youth sports and organized activities all through the summer, we have become a much different society. Our mission is to offer an enjoyable and safe environment for family and friends that makes the trip worth the time investment.

How has business been for your industry?
If you look at our two largest competitors — Cedar Fair LP and the Six Flags theme park organization — they have both reported business to be flat to slightly down over the past year. However, our park is up 16 percent as of June, which is contrary to industry trends. Overall I think our industry has gotten back to pre-9/11 levels and will continue to grow modestly. Our business is very mature, and we won’t see the wild growth we saw in the early ’70s and ’80s, when many new parks were being built.

What indicators do you use to measure success?
We are dedicated to the guest experience and that is clear in our mission statement and how we do business. Our goal is to exceed the guest’s expectations with every visit, and we monitor our progress through extensive research and perform guest surveys every day the park is open. Getting satisfied customers to return is how we measure success.

What are some of the challenges of running a theme park?
We employ between 4,000 to 5,000 people every season and our recruitment efforts are enormous. Our HR department starts the process in late winter for the following season, and we go on more than 100 off-site recruitment missions each year. Our goal is to get as many of our employees to return each season. Just like with our guests, we want to exceed our employees’ expectations in the hope that they will return.

Many of our workers start when they are 16 and still in high school. We have an extensive orientation and training program they all go through, and they work their way up through a management-training program each year they return. Once they reach college, we do tend to lose a majority of them as they find summer work that augments their major. We like to think that many of the management and customer service skills they learn at the park will be appealing to their future employers.

What makes the Richmond market different?
Most market areas cannot support more than one theme park in their region. However, Richmond is truly unique because we have two major attractions, which are both “Top 30” theme parks within easy driving distance of one another — Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Our research tells us that between the two parks we share about 40 percent of our visitors, so there is a lot of support for both parks from the region. And we both attract visitors from within a 200-mile radius.

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