The IPM story

InPark Magazine celebrates its 20th anniversary

by Gabrielle Russon

Two decades ago, Martin Palicki, a young theme park professional from Chicago, had an idea. After years of working in and enjoying theme parks, he wanted to create his own business that supported and reflected the industry he loved. After a couple of years of planning and bouncing ideas off colleagues and friends, Palicki settled on a publication, and InPark Magazine was born.

“I was inspired by the experience of guests inside the park and wanted to represent that to the vendor and operator community,” Palicki explains. When Universal Orlando Resort offered InPark media credentials in early fall of 2004 to cover their Halloween Horror Nights event, Palicki knew the time had come to start publishing, and InPark Magazine had its first cover story.

The newly launched publication took some time to get its footing. Palicki relied on friends to write the first stories and design the magazine. “At the very beginning, I would invite folks over to my apartment and provide pizza and beer while we hand- labeled and sorted magazines for mailing,” says Palicki. “There was something fun about doing that as a group, and it reminds me how lucky I’ve been to be surrounded by supportive friends and family.”

Palicki forged on. The stories evolved. So did the magazine. Instead of just focusing on theme parks, InPark grew to report on everything from museums to manufacturers, from world’s fairs to technology innovators. Much of that expansion was thanks to longtime business partner, Judith Rubin, who brought both a deep rolodex and wisdom of the market, and senior correspondent Joe Kleiman, a writer and industry professional with decades of experience in both the giant screen film and animal attractions sectors.

Now, 20 years later, InPark Magazine is celebrating its milestone anniversary. The respected trade publication is printing its 104th edition in time for the annual IAAPA Expo, with additional copies mailed around the globe.

Origin stories

InPark’s backstory starts in the Midwest where a young boy found escapism and joy in amusement parks. Palicki grew up near Chicago as the only child of educators who encouraged him to follow his dreams. In addition to playing the piano, ice skating, bowling and swimming, Palicki enjoyed the family’s annual trips to Santa’s Village Amusement & Water Park in East Dundee, Illinois, and Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois. “Unlike many people in the industry who first fell in love with Disneyland, I really grew up with the regional parks,” Palicki explains. Family road trips frequently included parks like Cedar Point, Kings Island and Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

His parents also took him to museums, and Palicki developed a particular love for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago with its highly themed Yesterday’s Main Street, Coal Mine experience and a long-gone dark ride about petroleum. “I think my upbringing helped me to see the breadth of the industry and the early stages of experiential storytelling outside of the Orlando and California parks,” he says.

But there was also something to be said for a good old fashioned roller coaster. Palicki and his dad joined the American Coaster Enthusiasts (ACE) club, and Martin consumed every piece of media he could find about parks and coasters. One PBS documentary in the ‘90s featured Arrow Dynamic’s Ron Toomer, a celebrated roller coaster designer. Inspired, Palicki wrote a letter to Toomer and confided he wanted to design roller coasters someday too.

Toomer kindly wrote back. The master offered advice: get a mechanical engineering degree and work hard at math. “That pretty much squashed that dream for me,” Palicki says when he realized the educational commitment required for his dream job. “Even though my dad was a math teacher and I always scored well in those classes, my passion was really more with words and writing.”

Palicki attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, majoring in English and minoring in Business, though the value of those choices for InPark wasn’t known to him at the time. “I still wasn’t totally sure what I wanted to do,” confesses Palicki. “I think I still wanted to design theme parks!” In fact, Palicki convinced a professor to allow his Senior Honors project to be a design and story treatment for a theme park attraction. “Lumberjack Lou’s Logging Adventure is the greatest flume ride that never was,” laughs Palicki.

Throughout college, Palicki worked at Six Flags Great America outside Chicago – first as an intern, and then as a ride training supervisor. For Palicki, there was something magical about working in that environment. “I loved walking out at the end of the night when the park was empty, and you could really take in the details of the theming, lighting and music,” he says.

It was also there that he realized one of the core elements that would later inform InPark. “The people that work at theme parks are unique and I love being around that energy,” Palicki says. “I realized that most park workers are there because they want to be there, and so many of the professionals in our industry are actually fans at heart. I try to make sure some of that enthusiasm gets into every issue of InPark.”

Building the brand; building the team

After college, several seasons at Six Flags, and a few years managing a family entertainment center, Palicki felt something was missing. “I loved the parks, but I had this sense that if I was going to be working nights and weekends and holidays, I wanted to do it for myself,” he says. That feeling led to the creation of the magazine.

Palicki relied on the support of his parents (Len and Rosemary Palicki), his partner at the time (Bill St. Yves), a close network of friends, and the Small Business Administration to help craft the business. “I found a job with very supportive and entrepreneurially-focused bosses at a technology consulting company (US Microdyne) that played a big role in the development of InPark,” he says. “It was all those people together that influenced the beginning of the magazine.”

In the fall of 2003, Palicki traveled to the IAAPA Expo with a stack of papers announcing the imminent launch of InPark. The following year, the first-ever InPark Magazine edition was printed and distributed at IAAPA Expo. That copy, with Halloween Horror Nights on the cover, still hangs framed above Palicki’s desk today.

Trade show distribution became a key part of the magazine’s growth with IAAPA Expos, TEA conferences, WWA Show and other industry events.

“I understood that themed entertainment is a global industry and soon started focusing on attending events around the world,” Palicki said, who realized he himself was becoming part of the brand associated with his B2B magazine. “I really attribute that to taking the magazine to the next level. You have to get out there to see and talk to people, and that’s how business gets done.”

His longtime collaborator, Judith Rubin, said Palicki has a way of making friends with his easy-going personality. Palicki met Rubin, a veteran publicist with long ties to TEA, around 2006. That encounter changed InPark’s trajectory. Rubin gave Palicki a crash course on how themed entertainment extended beyond theme parks. She encouraged him to focus on vendors’ and the manufacturers’ point of view too. Later on, InPark expanded its coverage to zoos, museums and any place where theming plays a big role.

That meant gaining new advertisers for InPark, more trade shows for Palicki to network at and different editorial opportunities.

InPark’s stories “take people behind the scenes,” said Kleiman, the senior correspondent. “It’s a good way to introduce people that are designers or fabricators or vendors within the industry. It’s a good way to showcase what they do and introduce them to potential clients.”

Kleiman counted more than 300 stories he’s worked on since his InPark career began in 2011. That means over the years, Kleiman has interviewed a long and diverse list of experts in the themed entertainment industry, from composers, creators and fabricators to architects, lighting, sound and costume designers, and more.

“It really is a community,” Kleiman said. “These attractions are not put on by just one individual. It really takes people with expertise in different areas to have a successful operation.”

Rubin said she is proud of InPark’s high standards for stories.

“I think with a business magazine, you don’t need to pretend that you’re The New Yorker and that you have a division between editorial and advertising. You have to understand that you’re always working in that gray area,” Rubin said. “I think what makes us unique is that we see what the real story is, and we can tell it with real editorial integrity, but we can also promote and show off the subject of that article to great advantage while also telling the truth. We don’t have hot air.”

Setting it apart from its competitors and online industry bloggers, InPark prints a physical product, something you can hold in your hand and read on the airplane or wherever you go. “It’s a testament to InPark’s commitment to the industry that we are one of the few trade publications still offering print subscriptions,” said Jordan Zauha, InPark’s managing editor.

Zauha points to a story where the College Football Hall of Fame is using AI to place guests in historic football moments. “Stories like this are significant because InPark isn’t just focusing on the major attractions but the smaller venues that are often the testing ground for technology and new ideas,” he said.

“These small, mid-sized venues are almost more important, because they’re the practice ground for innovative technology so that they can then be distributed en masse at the larger venues,” Zauha said.

What can readers and clients expect from InPark in the future? Undoubtedly there will be more stories to tell as InPark’s team covers major theme park openings, groundbreaking technology launches, and global shifts in market share.

“We’re still growing and evolving as the industry grows and evolves, and so I honestly don’t know where we’re going to be five years from now,” Palicki said. “What I do know is that I’m incredibly appreciative of all the people that helped make the magazine what it is today,” Palicki said. “I certainly couldn’t have done it alone. It’s a team behind InPark – it always has been and always will be.” •

Playing favorites

Ask the InPark team their favorite story, and you hear about a different memory.

Zauha recalls the thrill of covering the opening of Icebreaker at SeaWorld Orlando.

Palicki thinks back to one story he wrote after visiting with Shandong Huaxia Cultural Tourism Group’s chairman Xia Chunting and witnessing firsthand his vision for themed attractions in Weihai, China.

Rubin is proud of writing about technology and shining the light on companies doing innovative work that too often goes under the radar.

Kleiman, who grew up going to SeaWorld San Diego, traveled to Abu Dhabi last year to report on the company’s breathtaking new park. But he was equally proud of a story about his hometown zoo’s expansion and how it will impact Sacramento, a local story at its finest.