The biggest amusement park in Holland is called The Efteling and is well known for its lovely presentation of fairy tales. Beside these moving statues of gnomes, dragons and princesses they got a zillion rollercoasters and other wonderful attractions. Anyway, it’s like Disneyworld or Universal Studios, but without Mickey Mouse and Jurassic Park.
HItting the nail on the head there. Ever heard of Disney on Ice? Or Jurassic Park Live? Where Donald Duck is doing tricks on skates? Where an orchestra plays Dinosaur?
It was pretty successful and that’s what got the attention of the guys at the Efteling as well, I guess. Therefore you can now book your tickets to see “The Efteling In Concert”! If you turn amusement parks into liveshows, what’s next? Wallmart Live? IKEA the Musical?

To be honest, I’ve tried to put the ‘live’ word on quite a few ideas… There were two movies called “New Kids” and “New Kids Nitro”. A huge success, over a million tickets sold per movie. The characters, actors and films gained mythical status. That was when we thought: let’s get them to do a live show. Bring in some acts that feature in the film, like 2 Unlimited and Vengaboys. We had some great ideas about exploding cars & lots of fireworks. We booked the GelreDome in Arnhem, a 33 000 capacity venue. Even put a success option on hold there. We did a great press conference, even making it to the eight o’clock news. We did the biggest TV show in The Netherlands, with over 1.5 million viewers!
Now, I still don’t think there was anything wrong with the concept. The artwork was great, the trailers went viral, we had all the press, we had all the acts. Two days later the onsale started. First day sales were 1300, with over 30 000 tickets still to be sold. Everyone knows that’s a disaster and will never get you to two shows. Not even half a show! A couple of weeks later we had to pull the plug. Still don’t know what went wrong there. But I still think twice about putting the word ‘Live’ on a concept.