Showbiz at the End of april, it is 19 years since The theme park Plopsaland de Panne, the doors opened. Studio 100-founder Gert Verhulst (51) remembers that day, however still very good. “I had stress because the park is not yet finished. I wanted to be in a very deep pit to crawl when”, he told Alex Agnew in his podcast. “But now I’m superfier on.”
Gert remembers how the guests on the first day on a train, sat down… after a few meters, caused havoc. “I wanted to be in a very deep pit to crawl then,” he laughs at Alex Agnew at the table. That shame was also partly due to the high expectations. “People thought that we have a new kind of Disneyland in Flanders had made, but that could of course not”, says the businessman. “The first three years was a very difficult affair, for it was also a business that we didn’t know. But if I run out, it gives satisfaction. I’m superfier on.”
For people who like an amusement park would operate, Gert Verhulst is a golden tip: buy one. According to the ceo, it is nearly impossible at this time to be out of nothing, even an amusement park to build. “For one attraction to have, you are already so much lost money that you put almost no more can be sealed. We have a park taken over that heavy was in trouble. Then you start with something. What you’ll pay, a fraction of what that actually material and working hours worth. You pay the economic value of something, not the actual value.”
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