Work Text:
A Letter from "Redacted" To Claire Dearing, Director of Park Operations
The word I'm hoping you can take away from this proposal is "Options". We have options, multiple options moving forward. While you and Mr. Masrani seem very intent on unveiling this new attraction at the Park, some of us in the marketing departments are worried about long term strength of the brand, post unveil of Project: "Blanco". The honest truth is that the Diabolus Rex is not testing well. The name isn't very catchy and test groups feel it's overall appearance is "creepy" and "soulless". Now I know that's what you and Dr. Wu were going for but we want you consider alternative ideas.
First, the name "Indominus Rex" is testing very, very well with focus groups.
Second, post Project Blanco, our ad group pitched an idea of opening a new park focused on mammalian attractions and an easier, much more accessible location for American and Canadian customers. We've already work-shopped some basic outlines and we think you'll love it!
Overview of Working Title Project: "Periwinkle"
While we're still in the fact finding stages, our project already has an basic site in mind for our main campus. In 2003, In-Gen purchased Calliope Island, Alaska (Map included on page four of this document) as a potential site for our new high security anti-viral research facility. Ultimately, corporate decided to simply update the current facility in Nevada but we maintained ownership of the island. Most of the same factors that led to selection of the Isla Nublar site are also present in the Calliope Island site. It is remote (it's on the Southern Tip of the Aleutian Islands), lacks easy ingress and egress, it is climate appropriate for the planned attractions, and it's located in fiscally appropriate locale (Alaska is a non-union, right to work state and all Park Employees would be considered "At-Will"). Alaska has a very lenient attitude towards genetic modification and genetic manipulation. Preliminary discussions with Alaskan officials have been very positive and they would be very willing to allow on site production of new attractions (no out-of-state production like the defunct San Diego project from the late 90s). We also own the site, as opposed to the Isla Sorna-Site B fiasco, and can easily regulate who comes in and out. No trespassers looking for lost kids this time.
Attractions:
The Icebound Lodge- The weakness we found with the original park is that it lacks attractions not immediately related to dinosaurs and thus limits it's potential customer base. Your current hotel and spa facility, while impressive, haven't had an update in nine years. We feel that by expanding to utilize all potential cold weather vacation possibilities, we'll be able to better diversify our customer base. Icebound Lodge is designed to be a vacation by itself! With five star restaurants, a full ski resort, health spa, work out facilities, adventure hikes, extreme sports, and, of course, shopping at a luxurious retail mall. Initial discussions and negotiations with Westfield Malls fell through last year, but our representatives have also taken a bid from the Mall of America corporation on potential retail outlets. Those talks have been very positive and our projects see a potential 25 million dollar net profit in the first year of operations of a future park's retail potential (numbers for projected retail sales profits are on page twelve).
Mammoth Fields- This is our planned Free Range Exhibit taking full advantage of our Gyrosphere technology. Mammoths fields would replicate the Gallimimus Valley and Sauropod Paddock encounters from the original park but on a much larger scale. The Proposed Aleutians site, has 310 square miles of snowy mountains and tundra like plains. The site already has several gorgeous, scenic valleys that could be used as open encounters with larger animals. Obviously Alaska's climate makes the open air experiences from Gallimimus Valley a bit difficult but our engineers are fairly confident that the "glass roof half track" design (found Page two in the attached documents) would simulate the "Wow Factor" from the original encounters.
Megafauna Ranch- Like the Gentle Giants Attraction but larger, this Prehistoric petting zoo offers educational tours and close encounters with small or juvenile Pleistocene mammals. Our projections show that, of course, baby animals are very popular and since mammals are easier to train, we won't have "Triceratops Headbutt Issue" the Gentle Giants zoo had during it's first days of operation.
Predator Valley- No matter what your marketing experts have told you, the Cretaceous and Jurassic eras were not the only age for massive killer beasts. Predator Valley will feature the most fearsome monsters of the Pleistocene, including the deadly and awe inspiring Short Faced Bear, the mighty Dire Wolf, and the Tyrant Polar Bear.
Prehistoric Encounters- Obviously we don't simply have to limit our exhibits to Ice Age Mammals. By broadening our horizons, we can deliver guest experiences from all through out prehistory. Prehistoric Encounters would be designed as an indoor exhbit space showcasing animals from warmer climates such as the gruesome Megalania, awe inspiring Paraceratherium, the amazing Gorgonopsiad, the cute Eohippus, the strange Scutosaurus, and the deadly Andrewsarchus. We're particularly excited about Andrewsarchus, we think it has the potential to be a future big hit. Planned as a massive exhibit space, Prehistoric Encounters will be five times the size of Epcot and twice as astounding.
Glacier Bay- Considering how incredibly popular Jurassic World's aquatic encounters have become, we thought that rather than wait to gradually introduce these attractions to the public, we would insist on having large scale aquatic exhibits on the first day. Several species from the Miocene and Pleistocene would bring exactly the kind of wide eyed amazement that only a fantastic water show can deliver. Our centerpieces of the proposed exhibit space would be Basilosaurus, the mighty protowhale of the Eocene Oceans, and Megalodon, an extinct breed of super shark that could swallow a full sized man in one bite. Obviously the same twenty thousand pound titanium sea walls from the original park will be replicated here since Megalodon would be a highly dangerous escapee. We've surveyed the island and after some careful consideration, we believe that they island's natural cove/lagoon will provide an adequate exhibit space.
Giants in the Forest- Just like the Cretaceous Cruise, the Giants of the Forest exhibit will allow Giant Marsupials, Giant Sloths, Entlodonts, and of course, the real life King Kong, Gigantopithecus blacki. Giants of the Forests is an indoor/outdoor, attraction space that showcases a real, live (predator free) Pleistocene forest. Our site lacks a large river and we're not confident we can replicate the Cretaceous Cruise exactly but we feel a slow moving monorail might provide a similar appeal. Indoor spaces will modeled on similar attractions at the San Diego Park Zoo and Jungle World at the Bronx Zoo, allowing close encounters with large scale attractions.
Sabertooth Ridge- The crown jewel of our proposal is an exhibit space devoted entirely towards early felines in all their varied forms. Scimitar cats, American Cave Lions, North American Cheetahs and other prehistoric cats, including our number one attraction: Smilodon. We are VERY excited about this project, we feel Smilodon is the new T-Rex and has enormous marketing potential. We've mocked up some logos using the Smilodon skull symbol (Page Three) Obviously we'll be working with the larger and more impressive Smilodon Populator or perhaps a hybrid between the better known North American Smilodon Fatalis and the larger South American Populator. We prefer to follow your explicit instructions about bigger being better and our initial discussions with Dr. Wu have been very well received by the rest of the board. Per the Board's interest, we moved forward with the testing phase on the Smilodon attraction and have bred out a prototype named "Leonidas" who has moved far beyond our initial projections in size and ferocity.
Our Prototype
Currently being stored in our California facility, our specimen is male (for size) but sterilized. Nicknamed Leonidas after the semi-mythical King of Sparta, our big boy is 177.8 Cm/70 inches (nearly 6 Feet) tall from paw to shoulder and he's somewhere in the neighbor hood of 850-860 pounds (He won't hold still long enough to weigh him). To put that in perspective, the largest feline on earth is a liger specimen at a theme park in Florida and that animal is 900 pounds and 72 inches tall, so we actually have room to go bigger if we want. Leonidas was designed to be lion brown but apparently there was some sort of unforeseen mix up at the lab and our specimen is now completely melanistic (extremely dark brown/black). Our consultants tell us that this panther like coloration is not normal for most cats but that the gene for melanism is present in big cats so there aren't any expected health defects associated with this genetic build. We're confident that future specimens will be the appropriate, focus approved coloration moving forward but the "black panther" look on the prototype is striking.
Our one negative issue with Leonidas is intelligence, apparently the specimen is slightly smarter than anticipated and has shown extreme behaviors when our trainers attempt to interact with it. The other issue with Leonidas is aggression, we were not anticipating how aggressive these animals could be. Obviously that's merely a small impasse but there have been physical costs associated with this issue. The specimen regularly stalks our keepers through the bars of his enclosure and at one point attempted to maul an executive touring the facility. One animal trainer quit after claiming, and I'm quoting, "Sabertooth cats interacted with modern humans and probably hunted us for food and that thing knows he's at the top of our food chain. It's like he wants to hunt us." Obviously, this is superstitious nonsense but moving forward we'll need to mitigate the risks.
Summation
So in closing, please look over our proposal and consider the enormous marketing possibilities in opening a "Pleistocene World" or Mega-fauna heavy exhibit. We're confident that you'll come to the same possibility that we have: that our options, in this field, are limitless.