THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 18, 1995 TAG: 9504180041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANK ROBERTS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
IF YOU PUT Mikey in the shower fully clothed and turned the cold water on high, he'd cry, yell, fuss and give you a look you wouldn't believe.
Take Mikey to Nickelodeon Splat City at Paramount's Kings Dominion. He will make a mad dash for the Green Slime Zone, a maze-like area where cold water pours at him from all directions.
Mikey will run out, sh-sh-shivering and complaining about being soaked - then run right back in.
Splat City, an attraction opening this year at Paramount theme parks in California and Ohio, plus Kings Dominion, is TV's Nickelodeon live. The main ingredients are Green Slime and GAK, which is anything ooky that is not slime.
A major attraction is Mega Mess-a-Mania, featuring outrageously messy games. The messier the better, as far as the kid participants are concerned.
The all-in-good-fun Splat City, which opened for a sneak preview last week, is on a three-acre site near the theme park's Eiffel Tower.
Played in a ``theater'' called the Green Slime Bowl, it is a 30-minute audience participation show that psychiatrists and other killjoys might call humiliating. Kids get slime poured all over them, thick chocolate syrup and whipped cream doused on them, pies pushed in their cute faces.
Eager youngsters are picked out of the audience to become members of teams, competing as the emcee and her helpers, yelling like banshees, keep the games going at a hyper pace.
Dad and Mom will be viewers at Splat City. It is a kid's thing.
Thomas Jones of Stonebridge Landing in Chesapeake was happy with the concept.
``This is quite impressive. It's a big mess and the kids love it,'' he said.
Confirmed. His daughter, Brianna, a Western Branch Intermediate School student, echoed the general feeling of her peers: ``Getting wet is fun.''
Nicole Speight of Suffolk urged her friend Christy Stokely of Hertford, N.C., into the Zone's gigantic shower, later exiting from the mini-Niagaras properly soaked and complaining of needing new socks.
A gift shop next door just happens to sell them - towels, too.
Coincidence or brilliant marketing?
``Splat City is about kids and parents having fun, learning about each other while having a good time,'' said Scott Davis, general manager of the Nickelodeon Studios.
He seems to have the right idea. The children were messy, wet and very happy.
Splat City is their place. They are in the slimelight. ILLUSTRATION: PARAMOUNT'S KINGS DOMINION
Getting a cream pie in the face is just one of the laugh-getters for
young competitors at Nickelodeon Splat City at Paramount's Kings
Dominion in Doswell.
by CNB