Attractions Expert Q&A: Keith James

By Kendall Wolf

After working with Jack Rouse at Kings Island in Cincinnati, James joined his friend, mentor, and former college professor at JRA in 1992 and collaborated with him until taking over the company in 2008. JRA’s prestigious clients over the decades include Warner Bros., Universal Studios, Six Flags, Lego Group, and Ferrari World, as well as museums, visitors’ centers, sports teams, and cruise lines.

In 2021, JRA was purchased by RWS Entertainment Group (now RWS Global), and James continues to offer his experience and creativity.

What theme park souvenir might we be surprised to find on your shelf, and what’s the story behind it?

I have a souvenir that’s kind of unusual. It’s a window from the King Kong Ride at Universal Studios, and it’s hanging on my wall. It was sent to me when they tore out King Kong and put in The Mummy by one of the project managers I worked with at the time.

All of a sudden, this great big crate arrived at my office – because the window is 30 x 40. It’s got a big wood frame like it could go in a house. It’s legitimate scenery. And it’s got my name on it. In the King Kong ride, a lot of the windows were dedicated to people who worked on the park. And when they took out the ride, they tore out this window and sent it to me, and now it hangs in my office. 

What theme park have you always wanted to visit that you have never been to?

Believe it or not, I have never been to Tokyo Disneyland. I’ve been to DisneySea, but not Tokyo Disneyland, and I would like to see that someday because I’ve heard so much about it. 

I’ve been to the other Disney parks multiple times: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Paris, and obviously, Florida and Los Angeles. DisneySea is a spectacular park, and I went there, but we just didn’t have enough time to go to Tokyo Disneyland as well. 

Was there a theme park or attraction that made you want to be in this industry, and how did it inspire you? 

I had no idea this industry existed. I got into the industry because I needed a summer job to pay my tuition for college.  I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater. I was trained as a producer, project manager, or stage manager, and I expected to go to New York or Los Angeles to either work in the movies or theater.

This theme park called Kings Island was being built about 25 minutes north of where I lived, and my university professor at the time, a fellow by the name of Jack Rouse, was hired to produce the shows for Kings Island, and I needed a job, so I worked as a stage manager in a theater in that park. And that’s how I got involved in the business and how I met my wife, Patti (she was a dancer in the theater at the park).

Jack Rouse was my university professor, and even crazier, my mother was Jack’s secretary. So Jack and I got to be very good friends, and they were forming a theater program at the University of Cincinnati and needed a guinea pig student in the technical department, so I was their guinea pig. That’s how I got into this game. I had been to Disneyland, but I was there on a motorcycle trip the year I graduated from high school when I went around the United States on a bike. We stopped in Anaheim, and I went to Disneyland and rode Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion and walked around the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. But never in a million years did I dream I would be in this business. 

What was your favorite rider attraction as a child, and why?

I went to Coney Island every summer, and I suppose The Shooting Star was probably my favorite ride, a wooden roller coaster, which opened in 1947 and closed in 1971.

Was there a ride that frightened you as a child? 

The Shooting Star. The first time I rode it, I was ten, probably because that’s when I was tall enough. Back then, when you looked at huge coasters, part of the reason you wanted to ride them was because they looked dangerous. But they were fun, and as you get older, you come to find out they’re the safest things in the world. But I loved it. It was red, white, and blue, and everybody screamed, and it was just something you did every summer in Cincinnati. 

What was your oddest or coolest job in a theme park?

Probably every one I’ve ever had. I’d love to say there was a reason for all of it, but like I said, I went to Kings Island as a stage manager. And the day the park opened, there were two guys who directed the entertainment department – one quit because he wanted to stay in classical music, and Jack and his wife, Moe, went on vacation to Acapulco. And I was left to run the whole department. I was 20 years old and a sophomore in college.

In those days, we probably had over a  hundred people in the entertainment department at Kings Island. That was back in the days of the big shows at Opryland in Nashville, and the shows were a big deal. I ended up heading up the department, and a couple of months later, we learned that the people who built King’s Island wanted to build another park, King’s Dominion, in Richmond, Virginia. So they formed a design group, and I ended up being the Assistant Director.

What ride or attraction do you think everyone needs to experience and why? 

I think everybody in the world needs to ride It’s a Small World. And the reasons are fairly obvious. Wouldn’t it be nice if the world really worked that way? I’ve always loved it. It’s fun. Every time you go on it, you see something different. It’s so simple. And I don’t mind the song; it’s a statement. Our industry doesn’t often make statements, and that was put together probably to make a statement for when it was at the World’s Fair. But Disney’s kept it alive and built it multiple times, and good for them. You can’t go wrong when you talk about Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, or Pirates of the Caribbean, but I think the Rolly Crump masterpiece, It’s Small World, is right up there. 

You’re tasked with creating a new theme park food; what would it be?

I’ve watched the entire evolution of theme park food from back in the early ’70s when it was burgers, pizza, hot dogs, ice cream, cotton candy, and popcorn, and it was all fairly mediocre. Nowadays, you can find pretty much everything, and it’s really gotten to be quite good. I don’t have a favorite. I’m an ice cream buff, so maybe some other exotic flavor. (Can you pick one?) No, I’m not going to pick any weird ones. I like strawberry.

You’re a walk-around character for a day; who do you choose?

Well, I was lucky enough to be Yogi Bear, so that was fun. I suppose everybody would want to be Mickey Mouse because he’s everyone’s favorite. But I really liked being Yogi Bear because in the park I grew up in, Yogi was a big deal.

Kings Island owned Hanna-Barbera, so we had Yogi and Booboo, Scooby-Doo, Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, and The Banana Splits. We were all employees of the same company, so I really enjoyed being Yogi. But that was back in the days before you had handlers walking with you, who are really there to protect you. So guests were much more aggressive than they are now. These days, you’ve got hosts and hostesses watching out for you. Back then, you didn’t. Scooby-Doo had a tail, and it was attached by a harness that was in a very precarious place. And if Scooby’s tail got pulled, then Scooby would be very uncomfortable for a while. 

What types of attractions would you like to see more of and why? 

I love the fact that our business is for the whole family, and I think we need more family stuff. The big ones, the Universals, and the Disneys, they do family things. They’re fine. But the Six Flags and the Cedar Fairs and that range of parks, for so long, all they did was put in stuff for the teenagers. And granted, it was a good business move.

One of my favorite parks in the world is Canada’s Wonderland, and that’s because I was there when we built it. But today, I’m reading articles that there are fights inside the park. I know they have a chaperone policy at all these parks now where 16-year-olds or anybody younger has to be there with an adult. And that’s not why we did this. We did this for families, and it’s one of the few remaining things a family really can do together. And I just wish there was more stuff for the family to do together, and people would stop being stupid.

Do you have any interesting theme park pandemic stories?

I was in Los Angeles on Friday, March 13 of 2020. I was there for a big IAAPA event, and the last two days of the event were at Disneyland and Universal Studios. On Saturday the 14th, I flew home from Los Angeles, but then on Monday the 16th, I had to close my office for a year and a half. So I was at crowded theme parks, then literally flew home on Saturday, went to work on Sunday, then bought everybody the equipment they needed so they could operate at home the very next day.

We reopened our offices on Tuesday, the day after Labor Day in September of 2021. So it was almost exactly 18 months to the day. During the pandemic, it was just craziness and walking around downtown. I went into the city, to my office, five times in a year and a half, and nobody was there. Things were literally the way they were the day we closed. Same stuff on desks, everything. You could have fired a cannon down the streets in the city and not hit anything. It was just eerie. It was like a movie.

Can you talk about what you’re working on these days? 

Not so much. I mean, I think there’s been some public stuff. We’re doing some cruise line work with MSC Cruises. It’s one of the big cruise industries, and that’s a new thing for JRA. Because the company that bought us, Ryan Stana and his company RWS Global, have been heavily involved in the cruise industry for quite some time.

We’re very busy producing a lot of their entertainment. And obviously, as the cruise ships become floating amusement parks or theme parks, we’re doing quite well in that industry. There are a couple of other things I can’t really talk about. We’re in China, the Middle East, so it’s the usual suspects; it’s the people you expect. And obviously, we’re still very successful in children’s and science museums, businesses we’ve been in for decades.

You’re going to your favorite theme park; which people in our industry (dead or alive) are you taking with you? 

Most of the legends I know are still alive, and I like them, but nowadays, the people I would like to take would probably be my grandchildren. They’re 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, and 1½, and it’s incredible just to watch their eyes. 

One of my grandsons is four, but he can recite the Harry Potter films, and we took him to Orlando, which is amazing; he went to the two Universal parks and rode the Hogwarts Express. And if it’s possible to make a four-year-old speechless, we did. He knew everything, far more than I did, and he recognized it all, loved every part of the experience, and was wide-eyed the whole time. So if you ever get a chance to take a child, all of a sudden, you remember why we do it. My wife Patti and I met in a theme park, so for me, it’s probably a family affair because everybody I love is from this industry.

Kendall Wolf is a long-time consultant in the themed entertainment industry. She has worked with designers, producers, and fabricators to help developers create unique and successful projects around the world. In 2017, she introduced Merlin Entertainments to a development group in Sichuan province for the first Legoland park in China. Kendall continues to consult for the developer to open more themed resorts in China.