Mr. Mack, how bad was the fire for you?
That's like someone dies in the family. Being close to it and seeing a great deal of your life's work go up in flames within an hour is a new life experience and something you can not understand from one hour to the next. Although we do everything for safety and often rehearse the emergency, but you still would not even imagine this.
Did the fire scare away guests?
How we dealt with such a situation has awakened the guests' incredible confidence, as I have seen online. I am grateful that the rescue and fire-fighting measures worked like a clockwork - right now, at the worst possible time for such a thing. We are currently building a second park and a new hotel, as well as rebuilding the rollercoaster in the French village.
Does the accident delay other projects?
Not at all. For the last few weeks, I've been working to prevent that from happening. We were able to reintroduce the affected attractions to Batavia relatively quickly. For Batavia, we have built a team of architects, engineers and planners that is independent of the other projects.
And what is the team doing now?
At the moment we assume that we will rebuild the original of Batavia, also triggered by the voices in the net. I could never have imagined such heartrending comments. A little boy recently wrote me a letter saying he sacrificed his piggy bank. He already knew that 50 euros would not be enough to rebuild Batavia, but at least I could spend some ice cream for the people who helped on the bad luck day.
What does the damage cost?
There is no concrete number yet. It is clear that the damage costs a million, but I can not figure it out.
Are there any substitute offers?
If a facility fails, we make sure that other attractions are available to visitors. That's why we started the High Diving Show six weeks earlier, so that the program remains on par with the previous offer.
Now is the high season, are there long lines?
The holidays are already the stronger days. But I wonder how well the park is also visited outside the holiday months. We do not have as many peaks and troughs in visitor numbers as we used to. The difference between weekends and working days is no longer as uphill and downhill as it used to be.
