Wednesday, Mar. 02, 2011

On the ropes in Myrtle Beach

Strand will have 3 courses for adventure

Ropes courses may be scary, but they can also be fun.

That's according to one 8-year-old after 30 minutes of climbing on Broadway at the Beach's Soar and Explore ropes course.

"They say it looks scary, but I'm happy to let him conquer his fears," father Doug Colescott said, while watching his three sons climb the three-story beamed structure. His 8-year-old managed to climb to the second level before coming down.

WonderWorks, the museum company that operates the course, is one of three Grand Strand businesses banking on this brand of scary fun taking off. The area will go from no ropes courses two years ago to three by 2011. North Myrtle Beach's Coastal Adventure opened a course in 2008, Soar and Explore opened last month, and Radical Ropes Adventure Course plans to open next spring on the south end of Myrtle Beach.

The Strand ropes attractions reflect the growing number of entertainment-oriented courses, often known as pay-to-play or adventure parks, that have taken hold in the United States during the past five years, said Erik Marter, chairman of the trade group Association for Challenge Course Technology.

"It's been growing faster since then. It seems to be growing exponentially," Marter said. "This whole adventure park is kind of a European thing."

Traditional courses in the United States were often part of summer camps and focused on team-building by requiring everyone on a course to work together to accomplish a goal. By contrast, the pay-to-play adventure parks are like amusement parks, Marter said, where individuals can pay a flat fee and can choose which features of the park to use.

"You can kind of build your own challenge and push your limits," Marter said.

Pay-to-play, like the Broadway at the Beach course, is also much faster, he said. People will often spend less than an hour on pay-to-play as opposed to three hours on a team-building course.

Coastal Adventures decided to start its course after operations manager Cameron Sebastian visited a pay-to-play park in Charleston County, he said.

"Basically we just did it down in Charleston and my kids loved it and had a blast, so we thought it would be a good idea," Sebastian said.

The company has operated fishing and diving tours since 1993, and a ropes course fit with the adventure theme, he said. Unlike Broadway's pay-to-play scheme, the Coastal Adventure course also does some of the traditional team-building activities. Once a year, a group of about 100 Horry-Georgetown Technical College students take over the course for team building, Sebastian said.

The ropes course is still a "minuscule" part of Coastal Adventures' operations with a couple of dozen people using the course each day in peak season, he said. Coastal Adventure has not advertised much for the course, Sebastian said. Broadway's Soar and Explore should have an easier time getting the word out, he said.

"It should do real well. The thing is they have the big traffic area and they'll have a zip line, and those are big draws for the adrenaline rush," Sebastian said.

Soar and Explore's zip line is set to open sometime next week.

Business at the Broadway course has already begun to take off, general manager Robert Spinnett said. Last week, a group of 40 students traveled from Wilmington, N.C., to fill the course in the early afternoon. Traffic on the course will increase as the season progresses, and Spinnett said he expects it to be especially busy at night once people come off the beach.

The ropes course appeals to the family-oriented tourists who come to the Strand, Spinnett said.

"You'll have parents come and say, 'I'm going to help my child through,' and you see the child up on the third floor and the parent down on the first floor," he said.

Other parents such as Colescott see the course as a place to let their kids loose while they relax on the sidelines.

A third ropes attraction, Radical Ropes Adventure Park, will try to carve its own niche next year by building a larger course in natural woods off 19th Avenue South in Myrtle Beach, said Buddy Lindsay, who plans to build the park and is one of the owners of the oceanfront Hampton Inn and Suites. The ropes course, which will include six zip lines, is slated to open in time for summer 2011.

"You get the feel of going from one tree to the next tree," Lindsay said. "It fits into the whole green movement. Instead of cutting the trees down, we're going to keep them."

Contact JAKE SPRING at 626-0310.

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