FantasticLand

by Mike Bockoven

  That silence, man. That silence was something. It was … deep. That’s the best word I can come up with. No one in my room said anything, no one in the other rooms was saying anything. It was just dead. After having that alarm blare for however long, everyone was listening hard to hear what came next. Then we hear this clicking noise, and the manager of the hotel starts talking through the speakers of every phone in the place and through the intercom.

  Author’s note: Here is the transcript of Mighty Maiden General Manager Matt Krenk’s words to the hotel in the early morning of September 15, as verified by multiple sources.

  “Hello, guests of the Mighty Maiden, FantasticLand’s premier family resort. I am Matt Krenk, the general manager of the hotel. The alarm you just heard was a test we are required to run by park security. As you likely know, Hurricane Sadie is off the coast of Miami right now, and we are required to test this alarm in case she takes a turn in our direction, which is very unlikely. We apologize for waking most of you. We will be providing our free ‘Fantastic Breakfast’ as a way of making it up to you—it can be redeemed starting at 6:00 a.m. Again, we are sorry to have disturbed you and hope you enjoy your time at FantasticLand, the place where fun is guaranteed.”

  At least I got my free breakfast.

  I had turned my phone off because sometimes it boops and beeps at me in the middle of the night, even if I set it to silent, and the weather app is throwing alert after alert at me. I turn on the TV, and the stations are all on the same channel and it’s this woman going on about the hurricane. That’s enough to put Suzanne into a fit. She’s saying things like, “We’ve got to get out of here” and “This isn’t worth dying over,” and … that … that made me mad. I’m not going to lie, I was seeing red. We had such a good time the day before. Seriously, I was never 100 percent onboard with this trip, but that last day in the Pirate section, that’s everything I had wanted. The kids were happy, Suzanne was so happy she ate an ice cream bar. I haven’t seen her eat ice cream since Keinan’s birthday last year. She and I were holding hands, and the kids were laughing. I guess I didn’t think it was going to be like that. So I may have put down a “my way or the highway” sort of attitude. I told her, “We paid for this, and the kids had such a good time, and we’re so far north this thing isn’t going to hit us,” and I really laid it on thick. I convinced her, in the middle of the night, 1,500 miles away from home, to at least wait until the free breakfast and see how things looked then. Turns out, most of the hotel decided to get the hell out of Dodge after that first alarm. We … we should have done that. It would have saved us a lot of trouble.

  There were about one hundred people there for breakfast, and I think seating was something like 350. It was awesome food, I’ve got to hand it to them. I don’t think I had a bad meal while the park was running. The sausage was just spicy enough, and the eggs were fluffy; it was a good breakfast. That guy on the intercom, he was there making sure everyone was OK. When he came to our table, he asked Keinan if she was going to see the fairies today. She was wearing a T-shirt that said BELIEVE IN FAIRIES, so he zeroed in on that. Suzanne asked if the park was still open today because of the hurricane, and he said, “Oh yeah, it’s open. If they haven’t told us it’s closed, it’s going full steam, and we have the best weathermen in the country” and this and that and the other. That was enough for her, but I noticed the whole time his phone was beeping and throwing alerts at him, just like mine was. I wish I could tell you I had a bad feeling in my stomach or something, but I really didn’t. I wanted to get into the park. It just made sense. We had spent all that money to get there.

  We finished our breakfast and went and got on the buses that take you to the park, and right off the bat there’s not a lot of traffic going into the park. There’s a ton going away from it but not a lot going toward it, which was the opposite of the day before. Suzanne looked nervous, so I got on my phone and was going to show her what the weather was doing when I saw which way the storms were headed. The night before it had been threatening to hit Palm and Martin counties, but the alerts were getting further north and further inland, and soon they were putting notices that Okeechobee and Cecelia counties were in the path of this thing. The kids, they didn’t notice, but I went up to the driver to show him my phone, and he was very concerned, too. He said we were going to pull up to the gates, and if there were instructions, we’d get them there. It’s a twenty-minute ride to the front gates of FantasticLand, and in that twenty minutes, things had gone from “it might get bad” to “it’s going to get bad.” The clouds were dark, and the wind picked up, and Suzanne and I were ready to get on the nearest bus the hell out of Florida.

  Once we pull up, there’s a crowd of people waiting to get on the bus. There are some employees and some early birds and some maintenance folks. It was all kinds. The word had gone out: we’re going to get hit, we’re closing the park. Get out if you can. There was a woman there in a security outfit reading off who had a spot on the bus and who had to wait for the next one. She had this big, booming voice and was yelling, “If you need medication, if you are over sixty years old, if your family has already evacuated” and stuff like that. No one was listening. Every square inch of that bus was prime real estate at that point. The bus driver throws open the doors and I hear Suzanne yell “Kendall” and he’s off the bus a split second before all the people desperate to get on start pushing their way in. I see him get knocked down and at that point instinct took over. I look at Suzanne and I say, “I’ve got him,” and I go into beast mode. I’m pushing and shoving and using my legs to pry people apart. I take an elbow to the eye, and I swear someone grabbed my stomach and just twisted as hard as they could. I had a bruise, and it looks more like a kick, but it felt like someone was twisting my skin, but I didn’t care. I got in a few good shots, too. I used to play sports in high school so I can dish it out if I need to, but it had been a while. So I fight and I fight, and it takes me a couple minutes to get to him, and when I do, it’s already started to rain. So here’s me, fighting this crowd trying to get on, and when I find Kendall he’s wet and crying and saying, “I want to go see the pirates again,” between sobs. I hadn’t heard him cry like that since he had night terrors when he was three, just gulping and gulping for air.

  Then, out of nowhere, this guy shows up. He’s tall, and he’s got this weird beard and mustache thing going, and I recognize that he’s one of the pirates from yesterday that took his picture with Kendall. I recognize him and he sees me recognize him and he sort of comes up behind and puts his hand on Kendall’s shoulder and says, “Ahoy, there, little man,” in his pirate voice. Kendall looks up, and it takes him a second but he recognized the guy too, and the pirate says, I’ll never forget it, “We’ve got some rough seas ahead, boy-o. A pirate can be scared, but a pirate don’t quit. Got it?” Kendall, God love him, stops crying, or starts crying less, anyway, and says, “A pirate doesn’t quit.” Then Kendall asks, “Where’s your costume?” and the guy, without missing a beat, says, “I had to leave it in Davy Jones’ locker,” and then he keeps walking to wherever it was he was going, like it wasn’t a big thing. But it was a big thing. I don’t know who that guy was, but if I ever meet him, I’m going to shake his hand. Hell, I might give him a hug. If I ever meet the guy who allowed buses to go to the park until ten that morning, I’m going to kick him in the fucking nuts.

  I quickly text Suzanne because the bus was long gone at that point, and I tell her we’re OK and to let me know where she’s going so Kendall and I can get there too. Keep in mind, there’s this giant wave of people and other folks in security outfits yelling instructions no one can hear over the rain and the wind, which started coming up. I tell Kendall to hang on to me, and we muscle our way to the front where I explain to the lady in the security outfit what happened, and she said, “You’re on the next bus. Don’t let anyone tell you different,” which pissed off some guy a row back who started screaming, “You fucking bitch,” at her as loud as he could. I told Ke
ndall to cover his ears and I laid into the guy right back, calling him a selfish asshole, and how dare he swear in front of my kid and that kind of thing. My Irish was already up after fighting my way off the bus, so I wasn’t going to hold back. Not with an asshole like that. The security lady kind of smiled at me, which made me feel good and made me feel like we were sure going to get a seat on the bus. Other people from the crowd kind of calmed everything down, and it was OK until the buses showed up. Then I knew we were in trouble.

  There was this fleet of buses. I stopped counting at thirty-five. They just kept coming in a straight line. The thing that I noticed was they weren’t all, like, luxury coaches. There was every kind of vehicle you can think of that can hold more than eight people. There were big vans and trams, and I think I even saw a limo in there. It was obvious what was happening. It was an evacuation. The sight of all those vehicles calmed everyone right down, and they just started packing on. We got on the next bus, just like the lady said. Kendall was sort of jabbering the whole time, but he was OK and it wasn’t until our bus was pulling out that I noticed how many people were behind us. There were thousands of people covering the entire parking lot and going all the way back into the park. The good news was there were thousands of seats. I didn’t think, “Oh, there are way too few buses,” or anything like that. It seemed to me like everyone was going to get a seat.

  Once we get on the road and things calm down a little bit, I realize something. Kendall is singing, and it takes me a minute, but he’s singing this song they have in the park about pirates. And he’s singing kind of softly and then a little louder and soon it’s totally quiet in the bus. It’s just the rain hitting the windows and wet people breathing and this kid singing. Then the guy next to us, not the pirate guy that talked to Kendall but another guy, he starts singing too, and since we’re on a bus filled mostly with employees and visitors, pretty soon the whole bus was singing. What are the words? It’s … just a second …

  Fire off the cannon

  Blow my boat to bits

  I’ll swim with all my might ’cause

  A pirate never quits

  I use my ruthless cunning

  My learnin’ and my wits

  To be the best companion

  ’cause a pirate never quits

  I was once to be married

  My bride, up there she sits

  But I ran back to my mateys

  ’cause a pirate never quits

  A pirate gets what he wants

  and what he wants he gets

  He’s dependable and manly

  And a pirate never quits

  I’m not sentimental, but I’m going to remember that moment as long as I live because it changed the entire mood of the bus. Before we were kind of panicky and tired, you know? Everyone was thinking, “This is an emergency,” and I was thinking, “I’m going to do whatever is necessary to get back to Suzanne and Keinan and protect my son,” but as soon as he started singing, you could feel the mood get better. Even the driver joined in, and he was getting increasingly bad reports over his radio and his phone. I heard one guy say the road was starting to flood, and his voice was not calm.

  But we got out. We got out fine. The buses took us to this conference center about thirty miles west where the rain wasn’t so bad. We had no trouble finding Suzanne and Keinan. I told you I’m not sentimental, but man, finding her and holding her again. It’s strange, but our marriage has been better since then. I’m less … kind of … resentful, I guess. We feel stronger. We screw all the time. [Laughing] She’s going to kill me for saying that.

  The problem after we found each other was getting back to Kansas City. We were in a small town, I forget the name, and we didn’t have a lot of options. It had a small airport, but any rental car was long gone, so I got the bright idea to find someone who looked respectable and pay them $1,000 to drive us home. Screw our luggage, screw the souvenirs, my kids needed their own beds, and I needed everyone to feel safe again. We found this guy whose name was Paul. He worked on a road construction crew and said they had canceled things for a couple days so he was basically free, so we all pile in to his Windstar and drive straight through. The kids slept most of the way, which was good. We paid for gas, I gave him $1,500 and told him to watch his back. We were asleep in our own beds a few hours later.

  From what I hear went down, we were lucky.

  INTERVIEW 4: PHIL MUELLER

  Head of Park Personnel at FantasticLand.

  The first thing I would like you to know is that I very much respect Ritchie Fresno and his company. I worked with some great men and women keeping the park in shape, and we kept it tip-top, I’ll tell you. It was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had and one of the most rewarding, which makes the fact that I’m the only one willing to talk to you just a downright shame.

  I did know Johnny Fresno, now that you ask. He was a special guy. Ritchie, he’s got some of that pizzazz, but not the way his old man had it. Johnny Fresno made you feel good and you wanted to please him in return, which is how I ended up working at the park in the first place. I remember, I was a teacher at a community college in Central Florida, had been for about five years at that point, and Johnny showed up out of the clear blue sky one day. No idea he was coming. He comes in and says, “You must be Phil. I’m told you’re the guy to talk to around here,” and he shook my hand, and by the time we were done talking, he had me convinced to go work for him. I was thinking teaching was a pretty sweet racket and I might sit there until I retired, but in forty-five minutes, he convinced me to stop whatever I was doing and go work at an amusement park with fairies and robots. [Laughing] My wife was not pleased when I told her. I introduced her to Johnny, and she came around.

  How’d he do it? I guess it was a mix of being very specific about what he wanted me to do and convincing me I was the only one that could do it. I taught construction management at the college, basically how to be a crew chief or head up a large-scale site. I had some experience in that area and had sort of made my money in the business. I took the teaching job because I was good at it, but also because it was more time with the missus. Running a site, it’s a mix of pointing workers in the right direction and making sure they have what they need once they get there, that’s what I always told people who asked about it. Johnny Fresno, he told me he needed someone like me, that he’d pay me a good wage, which he did, and that I would be doing something … something not just special, but magical. Man, I can’t pull it off, but when it came out of his mouth, I’ll tell you. You believed it because he believed it.

  I was there when the park opened, yes sir. Started as a security manager, if you can believe it, and worked my way up to head of personnel. It’s not HR, thank God, but I had a seat at the big boy table along with the park’s operations manager and a bunch of other folks. And with Mr. Fresno. I was there when he died in 1999, too. His funeral was one of the saddest but also one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. They held it in the center of the park because all the employees wanted to attend. They weren’t told to. The wanted to. At the end, everyone held up an Exclamation Point balloon over their head and let it go. It was amazing seeing them all go up at once. It changed what the sky looked like for about ten minutes. Johnny would have liked that, his final tribute doing something like changing the way the damn sky looked.

  I’m off on a story. I’m sorry. I know why you’re here.

  Part of being the Head of Park Personnel was, like I said, pointing your workers in the right direction. It was a little more than that, though, because instead of making sure they had bricks to put down or drywall to put up, I had to make sure of three things. I had to make sure they were trained, I had to make sure they knew the safety protocol, and—and this is one of Mr. Fresno’s things—I had to make sure they wanted to be there. Believe it or not, we got requests to work at FantasticLand from all over the world, and Terrance, he was my main interview guy, he had to make sure they “had the spirit,” so they said. Had to
make sure they were there to serve and to make sure everyone left there better than they came in. To be honest, I don’t know what questions they asked to make sure they were the kind of folks who would work in the park. All I know is when I got them, they were ready and eager to get out there.

  Yeah, it was mainly kids who worked in the park. A lot of older folks like myself worked behind the scenes, but the ride operators and the food vendors and the store sales force and the actors on the rides and the people in the mascot suits, they were by and large under twenty-five years old. Part of that was due to the program we had where we wouldn’t just do a job fair, we’d find kids who fit a certain profile and send someone to talk to them. It was the personal attention that got them. We had some old fogies like me pushing brooms and taking out the trash, and even they had to “have the spirit.” Mr. Fresno’s orders. He checked on you, too. He had this Fisherman’s Wharf cap that hid his kind of bushy hair, so if you didn’t look close, you wouldn’t recognize him, and he would walk up and down the park at least once every day or so and make sure things were going the way he wanted them to be going. I’m proud to say, usually, they were.

  The safety protocol was the hard part for some of these kids. There was a lot to memorize, and then Trolly, he was the CFO and one of the only guys who could get important business stuff through to Mr. Fresno, he made sure they applied it. He was a hard-ass on these things, and to hear him tell it, he had to be because no one else was doing the job. I don’t want to get into that, especially not that nasty episode between Trolly and Mr. Fresno that was so popular around the office, but what it meant was anyone who worked at FantasticLand, anyone and everyone, they knew the protocol. We always joked that it was a fun place to work but we all knew the emergency exits and how to work them. We all knew where the first aid kits were and if someone collapsed in the heat, they had water within ninety seconds. A few years ago, we installed a system-wide RAD program that stood for “Response and Directives,” which was basically a smartphone that let us talk to all the employees at once or one employee in any part of the park. It was an innovative thing, and it lessened the need to memorize all the safety protocols. After a while and after getting to know Trolly, I was proud of what we had. Again, point the workers in the right direction and make sure they have the tools to do the job when they get there.