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The following article was used by permission from PCBDaily.com
The news is nothing new, the circus has left town, early. The tent
is gone, their business office is vacated and none of the circus’
phones are being answered. Actually, nobody is answering their phones.
Everything started in the spring of 2008 with all the hype of FSU’s
Flying High Circus coming to town. They have a great reputation and
have performed for 60 years with their main summer act being at Callaway Gardens in the summer since 1960. Don Hamrick wanted to change all that. Don
and his wife Brenda formed Flying High LLC, contracted with FSU to pay
them $120,000 for use of the name, Flying High Circus, and hired their
student circus staff for the summer paying the performers $10 an hour.
There was much support from the local community including a donation
of $30,000 cash from the Holiday Inn Sunspree. In addition, Sunspree
also purchased around 1,000 tickets up front. The performers were
accommodated at the Towne of Seahaven and their flyers were at many of
the big resorts up and down Panama City Beach. To top it all off, the
Bay County Tourist Development Council loaned them $100,000.
The circus was scheduled to run from June 13th to August 2nd but the
show was shut down early do to poor performance. Close to the end, I
was told by a performer that they had the capacity to seat 2,100
people, but the shows usually averaged around 200 to 250 in attendance.
The day camp did better than expected, but it wasn’t enough to make up
for the lost potential admission revenue.
I, for one, was excited to have something new to do with my family,
but when I found out about the price, I was turned off. That was their
first mistake. $24 for adults and $16 for kids? Lets do the math. I
have myself, my wife, and my three kids, the youngest of which would
have gotten in for free as she is under 4, that would have been $80
just for admission. Wow, I mean $80 just to get in? I saw bits and
pieces of the show and the performers are good (and this is in no way
meant to be negative toward the performers), but this wasn’t an $80
performance. Shoot, I took my whole family to Wet ‘N Wild in Texas for
a whole day for $80. Wet ‘N Wild! The price was too high, and it was
admitted when they started offering a hardly publisized “locals”
discount halfway through the summer, $18 for adults and $10 for kids.
Better, but not good enough, and a little late.
Just for the record, admission into Callaway Gardens is $13 per
adult and $6.50 per kid, and that not only includes all the fun things
you can do at Callaway Gardens, but also the regular performances of
the circus. Why would someone pay so much to see the circus in Panama
City Beach? They wouldn’t, nor did they.
The second thing they did wrong was their media and ad placement. I
saw virtually no advertisement. They received free media coverage when
they first opened, not only from myself, but all the local news
outlets, but I never heard once an ad on the radio, saw an ad on any of
the local web sites that tourists regularly look at (not only my site,
but PanamaCityBeach.com and others), or saw any tv spots. They
purchased one billboard on Thomas Drive (the north/south portion) and
it was facing the cars driving away from the beach, and they put flyers
all over town including in the windows of local businesses and around
Pier Park. I was never approached to have an ad on my site and I don’t
think any of the other local sites were approached either. How did they
expect to fill those seats?
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