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Have you been to the circus and thought that the flying trapeze would be fun to try? I have and yesterday I fulfilled my dream to fly at the Trapeze School New York.
While you might thing that this is a strange “thing to do” as a NY tourist, it was definitely one of the top highlights of my trip. A special thanks to the wonderful lady who help me capture my experience on video!
Video #1: Here’s a video of my second try on the flying trapeze where I swing and hang upside down. (My first attempt wasn’t captured on film unfortunately).
Video #2: Here’s a video of my first successful back flip after swinging and hanging upside down.
Video #3: Here’s a video of my first catch, which I did on the first try! Woo-hoo!!
PR Notes: The Trapeze School New York is a perfect example of successful public relations. Not only do they have a long list of media placements, but they also have some rather unique and very strategic placements that lead me to sign up for my first class.
I first saw the school in action on an episode of Sex in the City, where Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Carrie Bradshaw is taking a class at the school for research for an article that she’s working on. My first reaction was “OMG, they have a trapeze school in the middle of New York City! I want to do that.” Shortly afterwards, I forgot about it. Then a few weeks ago, I find the school listed on a tourist guidebook I bought and the light bulb flashed in my head and I said to myself, “I have to try this out when I go to NY!” Soon after, I signed up for their Saturday morning class and the rest is on YouTube.
It has been confirmed. I’ll be heading to New York City in early April on official company business to attend the BlogHer Business 2008 Conference.
Wow. I really feel lucky to be paid to travel, learn more about blogging & social media for businesses and meet fellow bloggers. FYI: BlogHer is a very large and influential network of women bloggers. Since 2005, this organization has hosted an annual blogging conference. This is the first year that they will be hosting a conference especially for companies looking to learn more about applying blogging and social media to their businesses.
While I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this is how it is when you work in-house (it really depends on your company and their PR budget and initiatives), it does dispel any myths that “you don’t have any opportunities to learn anything new” because you are supposedly doing the same thing everyday.
That being said, I’ll be blogging about the conference in a few weeks. Stay tuned.
The Mystery Spot
Having grown up relatively local to the Santa Cruz area, I estimate that I have been to the Mystery Spotabout four times through out my life. Today, I made visit #5 with a couple of friends who have never been. For me, this place was entertaining the first time around and if you space your visits over several years, it can still be entertaining. Nevertheless, it’s one big fat tourist trap (and an extremely successful one at that!).While my friends ooh’ed and ahh’ed throughout the whole tour, I was a bit cynical as many of my high school science teachers made a point to drill that into my head its just an illusion. To help explain and with a little help of Google, I was able to dig up these simple-to-read explanations:
- “Santa Cruz ‘Mystery Spot’ Explained”, Berkelyan, 1998 - Psychological theory that explains the optical illusions at The Mystery Spot.
- “Mystery Spot” by Illusion Works, LLC - Nice summary explanation for all the crazy Mystery Spot happenings that the tour guides explain.
One thing that I was glad to see is that the price of admission and parking has not become outrageous, still just $5 for 1 ticket and $5 to park. When I go to other tourist traps and amusement parks these days, I almost feel faint when I see how much the price has jumped…..Disneyland being one big example. Nice to know that you can still find “attractions” that don’t completely rip you off.
Marketing the Mystery Spot
If you grew up and lived in Northern California, it’s hard to have not seen the “iconic” Mystery Spot bumper sticker on at least one car on the highway. In looking for a photo of this bumper sticker, I was amused to find so many discussion about these stickers on-line:
As one reviewer pointed out on Yelp, it’s an ingenious marketing plan. For some reason, some people feel more than willing to stick a free bumper sticker on their car. It’s a quirky low-cost marketing gimmick, on the part of the Mystery Spot, that’s obviously helped spark the interest and curiosity of many, many tourists to visit. The tour guide claimed that they can receive up to 800-900 visitors a day during the summer. That’s a lot of suckers, uhm….I mean visitors (myself included).
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
After the Mystery Spot, we headed over to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, yet another piece of my childhood. It’s hard to believe that this oceanfront amusement park is over 100 years old. According to Wikipedia, it first opened in 1907 and has survived to be California’s oldest amusement park. Fancy that.I accompanied my friend on one of the roller coaster type pendulum ride. While these types of rides don’t usually scare me too much (but I’ll admit that I’ll scream once I am up in the air and falling down), I shouldn’t have drank that blended ice chai beforehand. About half way through the ride, I felt sick and couldn’t look because the dizziness was making me so nauseous. Meanwhile, my friend was freaking out. Afterwards, we decided to stick to the kiddie rides and games like bumper cars and the haunted house. I guess its a sign that my time of youthful fearlessness is passing or that my self-proclaimed casted iron stomach isn’t as strong as it used to be.
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