SEAWORLD SAN DIEGO HIRES NEW PRESIDENT
Jim Lake comes from Disney, is marine park’s 4th president in six years
SeaWorld San Diego has hired a new president from Disneyland, as it prepares to debut in March a longawaited dive coaster, as well as a new Sesame Place theme park.
Jim Lake, who will be the marine park’s fourth president in six years, arrives at a crucial time for SeaWorld, which not only is still recovering from the year-long pandemic shutdown of its rides and attractions, but is also two months away from opening a new theme park. Its water park, Aquatica in Chula Vista, is being transformed into Sesame Place, which is themed around the popular children’s show, Sesame Street.
While Lake was appointed president of both SeaWorld and Sesame Place in November, when now-departed president John Dunlap was still leading both parks, his appointment was not announced until Thursday. SeaWorld spokeswoman Tracy Spahr said “we wanted to give him some time to settle in” before making the announcement. Dunlap, who at one time was an executive with the San Diego Zoo and joined SeaWorld in May of last year, left SeaWorld for personal reasons and has since relocated to the East Coast, Spahr said.
On the same day that SeaWorld announced Lake’s appointment, it also released an opening date of March 12 for Emperor, billed as the tallest, fastest, and longest dive coaster in California. While the major new attraction was originally scheduled to make its debut in the summer of 2020, its opening date was pushed back a few times because of the pandemic and the need to cut costs amid COVID-19 closures.
The coaster, which will reach a height of 153 feet, will feature inversions, a barrel roll, Immelmann loop (a roll-off-the-top), hammerhead turn (a cartwheel-style spin) and flat spins along the nearly 2,500 feet of track.
Meanwhile, Sesame Place, which will be the first one on the West Coast, is set to open in March, although SeaWorld leadership has not yet announced a specific date.
The new park will retain all of Aquatica’s water rides, although they’ve been re-themed in keeping with the Sesame Street branding, Lake said. In all, 900 people will be hired to staff the park — 300 more
than Aquatica. That includes singers, dancers and other performers for the theatrical elements of Sesame Place.
Lake, who has considerable experience in the theme park arena, has spent most of his career with Disney, beginning in 1989 through the Walt Disney World College Program. Following a decade working at multiple Disney parks, he left to join leisure park operator Palace Entertainment as director of operations in 2003. He returned to Disneyland three years later, eventually working his way up to a general manager where he was responsible for day-to-day park operations.
SeaWorld, Lake said, has always had a special appeal for him, and to be able to lead the park following a 30year tenure at Disney marks an important turning point in his career within the hospitality industry.
“I do really like the animal aspect of this park, you can’t really get that anywhere else, and I also like the theme park element of it as well so it’s a combination of those two things,” said Lake, 55. “It’s a place where there’s really something for everyone to experience, which makes it’s a special place.”
He noted that the biggest challenges in completing the makeover of Aquatica are
similar to what so many others are facing — labor shortages and delays in getting parts and construction materials due to supply chain bottlenecks.
More recently, hiring has gotten a little easier, and Lake said he doesn’t foresee that labor issues will delay a March opening of Sesame Place.
In the years preceding the pandemic, SeaWorld had struggled at times to rebuild its attendance following persistent criticism of how it treated its killer whales, an issue spawned by
the 2013 release of the anticaptivity documentary “Blackfish.”
Then the pandemic hit, and the marine park, like all other theme parks, had to survive a prolonged shutdown that decimated revenues for its parent company, SeaWorld Entertainment, which has a portfolio of 12 parks.
Lake said that visitation has been strong and appears to be on par with numbers seen before the pandemic. Monthly revenues to the city of San Diego for SeaWorld’s leased site on Mission Bay
bear that out.
For June and July of last year during what would normally be the park’s busy season, the park paid the city more than $3.2 million for its lease, which is tied to admissions and in-park purchases. During those two same months in 2019, the revenue to the city was about $100,000 less.
One of Lake’s goals, he said, is to eventually make SeaWorld the “employer of choice” in San Diego County, although he didn’t offer specifics on how that will be accomplished.
“I really want our employees to love working here. I walk the park every day and I know we have opportunities to make it a great experience,” he said. “Wages and benefits are important to everyone but it’s also important for us to be a team that cares and is out with them every day, and I’ve seen that work previously in my career and hope to foster that environment here.”
He noted that like many other theme parks, SeaWorld hosts a number of events throughout the year to draw even more visitors and in February plans to debut a new one tied to Mardi Gras. A key draw, he hopes, will be the culinary offerings.
“it will be a great opportunity to showcase some great food and beverage items,” he said of the celebration, which will take place on the weekends. “We want to get to a point where the guests come just to try our food because it’s so good, so this will be one of our first efforts to showcase some food and beverage. There’s a po’ boy sandwich the team put together with shrimp that’s delicious.”
Lake, who also is employed as an adjunct professor in hospitality and tourism management at California State University, Fullerton, plans to relocate from Orange County to San Diego in the next few months.