Mountaintop park turns to Poma again for transportation system
AT: Tim Baldwin
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. — There’s nothing like the problem of being too successful. Such is the case of Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, a theme park built on top of a mountain in the Rockies.
The idea started out small. Steve Beckley convinced his wife to buy Glenwood Caverns and begin cave tours in the mountains of Colorado in 1999. Bussing passengers to the top became limiting. To help accommodate more guests, Beckley purchased a cable car tram system from Lietner-Poma and installed it in 2003. This helped increase the capacity of customers that could visit the park. For a while.
Over the years, Beckley invested in unique attractions, many of which took advantage of the setting and the view that comes from being on the top of a mountain. The first alpine coaster in the U.S. (Weigand) arrived in 2005. The first Soaring Eagle zipline was installed to take advantage of the spectacular views, as was the dining deck of the Lookout Grille. Other rides such as a wagon-themed Ferris wheel and a swing ride offer scenic panoramas, and some even accentuate the fear factor by being placed at the edge of mountainous cliffs. Most rides fit in with a western town motif, none more so than the recent drop ride, the Haunted Mine Drop from Soaring Eagle. This attraction features dark ride-style theming in its storyline and plunges riders 110 feet into an underground tunnel in Iron Mountain. A storyline of ghostly miners adds to the fun, and the innovative attraction just recently took a marketing Brass Ring at the IAAPA Attractions Expo.
With all this fun, attendance naturally grew. Beckley noticed that even with the aerial tram, long lines were developing at the bottom just for people to purchase tickets and ride up. Something needed to change, and the decision to replace the tram was made.
“In perfect conditions without wind, the tram handles about 300 people an hour. In the summertime we can have an hour-and-a-half wait just to get to our cash windows,” Beckley said. “People come in and don’t want to wait. This new tram system will accommodate about a thousand people an hour.”
Beckley feels they will be able to accommodate close to four times as many people on the new tram currently being installed. The new tram will work hand in hand with safety as it can withstand stronger winds, has a higher capacity and doesn’t have lightning issues.
Music on the Mountain is an event that can bring a thousand people to the top. Busses had to be utilized to alleviate the two-hour wait to get down the mountain. Beckley comments the bus rides are not for the faint of heart heading down the 3.5-mile mountainous road.
“There was nothing up here [when we bought the park] but a bunch of junk cars and they were storing computers in the cave. I told my wife we were going to buy it and do cave tours, and she was all for it,” Beckley told Amusement Today. “The first day we opened, 500 people showed up, and then we needed to get more buses. Four years later we put the tram in and we kept going from there.”
The supplier of both the new and previous tram is Lietner-Poma. Beckley reported that the older tram has been sold and will be used elsewhere. In order to install the new tram, utilities had to be moved. All the water and natural gas lines had to be eliminated for the beefier new tram system; new lines were placed six feet below ground running a mile and a half up a 1,400-foot elevation gain. Beckley estimates the total investment in redoing the tram system to be around $8 million, the park’s biggest to date.
According to management, about 75 percent of the attendees purchase a ride wristband, but there are visitors who come up only for cave tours and a small amount of people who just ride up for the view.
Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park operates daily through the end of October. Weekend operation typically begins for Winter on the Mountain where a million lights are in place for a different experience. This winter, the park is temporarily closed (beginning the end of October) while the new tram is installed. During the traditional winter months, festive decorations (through February) are the usual main draw, but a handful of rides are still in operation.
Even in slower months, Beckley finds the continuous operation beneficial. “Glenwood-Aspen-Vail is a high rent district. We have a one percent unemployment rate here. We do everything we can to keep good employees,” he said. “Even when we lose money in the winter months, having those employees in March — which is a huge month — we just have to have that staff because we’re busy.”
Even with the park in shutdown for the tram installation, Beckley says all staff are retained and will be doing maintenance and cleaning work.
The new tram will sport 44 cars compared to the previous 18. Also, the new cars will detach allowing for continual flow. With the previous system, the cars had to stop when a cluster at the bottom were being loaded and unloaded. The new tramway can also operate in stronger winds. With the retired system, the wind speed limit was 35 mph.
The park is expected to reopen March 15.
This article appears in the JANUARY 2019 issue of Amusement Today.
