![]() ![]() According to the patent, the sport would be played on rectangular “trampoline-like channels” connected by cables, with padding on the edges. Sky Zone was patented first as a competitive sport in 1997 by inventor Karin-Maria K. It all started, however, with a professional sport you’ve never heard of. The story of today’s modern trampoline parks follows a path familiar to many industries - a family stumbles upon an innovative idea, grows it into a successful business that spawns a field of competitors, faces internal strife and then, eventually, gets swallowed up by a big private equity-backed firm. The liabilities were just so bad that they went away.” ![]() “There were just too many injuries,” Dennis Speigel, chief executive of global leisure consulting firm International Theme Park Services, said of the industry slump. As injury reports piled up - including word that a San Diego high school athlete died after incurring a trampoline-related neck injury - the industry slumped.īy August 1960, a Times headline proclaimed “Trampoline Bouncing to Oblivion.” The accompanying article noted that trampoline centers were “quietly limping toward the graveyard of fads.” health department was investigating trampoline centers due to complaints about health and safety violations, leading to calls for more regulation. Rayner’s father shut down his trampoline center around 1960, after just two years of operations. “The way my dad would tell it is that’s when he developed his ulcers,” Rayner said. ![]() Rayner recalls chipped teeth and other injuries, which weighed on her father. Customers sipped martinis before they got brave on the trampolines. Huge spotlights shone at night to catch the attention of passersby. He had an entrepreneurial mindset and was always looking for new revenue-generating opportunities, she said. Melissa Rayner, president of office furniture store Trader Boys in the Sawtelle area of L.A., remembers when her father opened a trampoline center on vacant lots on Pico Boulevard, next door to his furniture store. Meet overlanding, the love child of off-roading and #vanlifeĮager to escape claustrophobic pandemic life and take advantage of newly remote jobs, increasing numbers of Americans are taking to remote places in rugged vehicles that are also homes. These were not the wall-to-wall patchwork of trampolines and inflatable obstacle courses seen at today’s parks, but trampolines stretched over pits in the ground.īy March 1960, there were more than 125 in Los Angeles and Orange counties, leading The Times to declare trampolining the “heir to the hula hoops.” He gave it a test run at a YMCA summer swimming camp, and when “nobody wanted to go swimming,” he knew he was onto something, Nissen once told Reuters.īy 1959, trampolines were a craze and Southern California was a hot spot for indoor and outdoor trampoline attractions. The modern trampoline dates to 1934, when then-University of Iowa athlete George Nissen helped craft one out of strips of inner-tube rubber - an improvement on an earlier prototype devised from canvas and junkyard scraps. “We seek out things that make us feel a little happier and exhilarated in a safe way,” said Natasha Cabrera, professor of human development at the University of Maryland in College Park. It’s why babies love bopping around in hanging jumpers and why pools have diving boards. You might be afraid to jump, but when you land safely, you want to do it again. Science tells us we crave that pleasurable feeling when fear is replaced by relief. “Change and adaptation, those are our constants.” of Trampoline Parks, told a small audience at the trade group’s annual convention in September in Las Vegas. “Nobody could have anticipated what we went through the last 18 months,” Steve Yeffa, vice chair of the International Assn. ![]() At the same time, they must navigate the boom-and-bust cycle of children’s entertainment, in which companies such as Discovery Zone have quickly gone from hot fads to bankruptcy. Those that survived must figure out how to bring back old customers and attract new ones while managing evolving health and safety expectations of a public scarred by COVID-19. The pandemic whittled down the ranks of trampoline parks by more than 100 locations in the U.S. But the family fun center and its well-known musical rodent have so far managed to weather changing playtime trends, gaming advancements and a pandemic that turned its arcades into ghost towns.īut the industry now faces a new reality. How do you make a 44-year-old animatronic rodent appeal to today’s kids?Ĭhuck E. ![]()
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