IAAPA Expo 2021

IAAPA Expo 2021 - Day 3

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originally posted on 11/18/2021

Day Three of IAAPA has come and gone. You won't find the feverish pace of Day One, but you also won't find the quieter pace of Day Four. It's truly somewhere in between, and that's what makes it special.

Lots of familiar faces were able to break away from their own booths to visit the ACE booth.

Photo: ACE Collection. View full-sized image.

Scott Fais from IAAPA and Leah Koch from Holiday World both stopped by. Earlier in the week, they presented an EDUTalk about Thunderbird. EDUTalks last 15 minutes and thus provide quick bursts of valuable information to IAAPA attendees. In this case, it was a bookend follow-up to an article in FUNWORLD magazine celebrating Splashin’ Safari.

Rick Knoebel made an appearance. After a very successful Coaster Con 43, he asked for additional copies of RollerCoaster! magazine to share the awesome experience had by one and all. ACE was, of course, more than happy to oblige.

Steve Thomas from the new Traders Village park opening next March in Grand Prairie, Texas, said hello. He shared how the challenges of rebuilding the Scandia Screamer as the Prairie Screamer are balanced with the satisfaction of preserving a piece of history.

Today ACE was honored to present the National Roller Coaster Museum and Archives with a donation of $150,000 to be spread out over three years with the final $50,000 to be presented in June 2022. We continue to see great progress in the development of the museum and look forward to the day that visitors will regularly walk through the doors to experience this amazing historical preservation project.

Photo: ACE Collection. View full-sized image.

There's always something out of the ordinary to be found on the Expo floor, and this year there was no need to look farther than our friends from Give Kids The World (GKTW). They partnered with Ripley's Entertainment, which in turn partnered with Steven Blocker Warden, of Blockers Studio, who in turn partnered with Guinness World Records on a unique fundraiser called "Ripley's Shave the Beard & Make it Weird!"

Front and center in their booth was Hoss Hairball — a 3-foot tall, 9-foot around ball made of 100 percent human hair. Steven Blocker Warden was offering haircuts to provide freshly cut locks of hair to be glued on Hoss then and there. Participants could then to donate to GKTW with Ripley's pledge to match donations up to $10,000. Guinness World Records will be determining if Hoss is the largest human hairball in the world.

Photo: ACE Collection. View full-sized image.

ACE was honored to bring viewers another day of interviews from the floor, including Preston Perkes from S&S, Tom Rebbie and Janine Matscherz from Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters, Inc. and Chuck Bingham from Martin & Vleminckx.

At the end of the day, volunteering for ACE at IAAPA mirrors what makes ACE so great — friends, fun and smiling just a little bit more.