Sabrina's Brochure Spotlight: Freestyle Music Park 2009

A couple weeks ago, I dispatched a crack reporting team (otherwise known as my parents) to Myrtle Beach on a top secret brochure-gathering conquest. They executed their mission with guts and gusto, and the fruits of their labors arrived in my mailbox this week. The crown jewel was this, our very first look at what the new owners of the former Hard Rock Park can do with a few flaps of paper. Did they earn the Sabrina seal of approval? Let's find out.

Covers are important. Good ones grab your attention. Great ones grab your attention and give you an instant visual synopsis of what the featured park is all about.

Score one for Freestyle Music Park. Right off the top, they hit us with a catchy new slogan and an accompanying photo that capture the mission of the new management team: This is a family-friendly park with a musical flair. And just for good measure--or perhaps as a blatant act of overcompensation for the marketing shortcomings of the previous owners--they have super-sized this brochure! This baby's so tall, it's sure to stand out amongst the other brochures in the rack.

So far, so good.

Freestyle Music Park is so much fun, they had to use a DOUBLE exclamation point! I heart double exclamation points!! (This is starting to sound like a Seinfeld episode!!!!)

The inside of this brochure is consistent with the cover in terms of the message it is trying to convey. There's no sign of any hard-core thrill rides yet; it's all about the children. They've also managed to inject all sorts of musical language into this intro paragraph. It's catchy and creative. Score two.

Now we get into the meat of this brochure. This page highlights all the shows and attractions that are new for 2009. Or as this brochure states it, "for for 2009". Huh? Haste may make waste (as the aforementioned crack reporting team used to tell me), but in this case I think it's a small miracle that they were able to get a brochure out at all. It seems like new announcements have been coming out of Freestyle Music Park practically on a daily basis over the past couple months, and they didn't have a lot of time to turn this park over to begin with! So let's give 'em a break and forgive the typo, eh?

But going back to the matter at hand, y'all know how I feel about details, and this brochure's got a LOT of them. I'm a fan. Score three.

Oh dear...not this again. It's the return of the cheesy coaster rider wearing the even cheesier park t-shirt! Not only that, but in this case the park logo has been very obviously Photoshopped onto that otherwise plain black tee. [And if it wasn't, I'll eat this brochure.] That's two strikes on one page! And they were doing so well!!

Well, nobody's perfect. There is a photo of people eating ice cream on this page, and I like ice cream. So that sort of makes up for it. But the level of cheesiness attained in the Time Machine (a.k.a. Led Zeppelin) photo prevents me from awarding a point here. I simply can't do it.

In case you've long since lost track of all the name changes at this park (as I have), this map provides a good summary. Oh, to have an identity crisis at the ripe old age of one...

This map definitely merits some points though. It's colorful, well organized, and very detailed. And when I say detailed, note that it actually includes pictures of the food items featured at each of the dining locations! Now I know precisely where ice cream products can be procured at this fine establishment. Thank you, Freestyle Music Park! Bonus score.

Legacies, like old habits, die hard. Take, for instance, the directions to Freestyle Music Park: "...Turn left on Hard Rock Parkway. Follow signs to Freestyle Music Park." Ouch! Or maybe in this case, "shhh" would be more appropriate--There may be intellectual property rights tied up with that street name! Horrors!!!

In conclusion, the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this post is a resounding "Yes!". In what little time was allotted to them, I think the folks at Freestyle Music Park have done a great job with this brochure. I'd like to see a bit more in the thrill rides department, but I think they have their primary target audience--families--pretty well covered. Here's hoping that the park has a successful season so we can analyze many more of their brochures in the years to come!