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New Epcot Space Ride May Spur Tourism Boost

Posted on: Tuesday, 29 July 2003, 06:00 CDT

Jul. 27--It isn't often that a Central Florida theme-park giant adds a ride that boosts a neighboring attraction, but Orlando's Atlantic Coast neighbors say Epcot Center's new Mission: SPACE may whet people's appetite for the real thing and launch visitors their way if not now, maybe next time.

And with tourism in eastern Central Florida still suffering from the drop-off caused by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a soft economy and the influx of fewer international visitors, any new body is likely to be seen as a blessing.

"Anytime that Disney World, Sea World, any of them adds a new ride, a new attraction, it has a benefit for us," said Bonnie King, assistant director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism.

That's because some visitors head for the Space Coast, its beaches and the Kennedy Space Center.

"That attraction has our name -- space -- written all over it," King said. "We think they will want to see the real thing, the real hardware."

That "real hardware" is housed at the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex. With its collection of rockets, rovers and firing rooms, its life-size mock-up of the shuttle and a real Apollo moon rocket -- not to mention its famed backstage bus tours that take visitors almost within a golf shot of the launch pads -- the center markets reality.

"Our hallmark is authenticity; we are the real deal," NASA Visitor Center Marketing Director Rick Hensler said.

The center drew about 1.5 million people in 2002, but with no shuttle launches since the destruction of the shuttle Columbia in February, the Visitor Center has missed those occasional bumps when crowds flocked to the center on or near launch days.

"As interest in the space program expands, it has got to be good for us," Hensler said of the new Disney ride. "And from that standpoint, I wish Disney all the luck in the world."

The new ride comes at a good time, says the owner of one of the Space Coast's best-known seafood restaurants, Dixie Crossroads, in Titusville.

Business "has been very flat," said Rodney Thompson, who hoped the summer would bring more tourists. "The bounce hasn't been there." King estimates that Brevard County got about 4 million visitors in 2002 and that about 1.8 million of them spent at least a night in a local motel or hotel.

Overall, though, the tourism business on the Space Coast is down 8 to 9 percent since 2000 and about 2.5 percent since last year, said Rob Varley, executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism.

"We're slowly climbing out of the hole," he said.

Florida had 75.6 million visitors in 2002, compared with 69.5 million in 2001 and 72.8 million a year before, according to state figures. Orlando-Orange County Convention and Visitor Bureau records show 42.9 million area visitors in 2002, up 5.4 percent from the year before but below the 43.5 million of 2000.

The heart of Mission: SPACE is a motion simulator that takes "astronaut candidates" on a busy mission to Mars in the year 2030.

The deep-space shuttle, built on a centrifuge, pins people in their seats at liftoff, fills their eyes with views from space, jinks them through an asteroid belt and rockets them through the canyons of Mars.

In a business marriage of sorts, NASA technical experts helped Disney make the ride as authentic as possible. Part of the ride's mission is to stimulate interest in space.

"One of the roles of the attraction is to make sure people know what it is like and how significant the space program has been for the country," Epcot Vice President Brad Rex said.

"It would be wonderful," he added, "if they want to pursue it further and go over to Kennedy Space Center or just follow the space program more intently." King said Disney and Brevard tourism leaders were exploring ways that the two could help promote each other's interests.

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(c) 2003, The Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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