Advertising Credited With Boosting Silverwood Numbers

Silverwood Theme Park set an attendance record this year. More than 346,000 visitors poured through the gates to the amusement park near Athol, Idaho.

Park officials expected a 13 percent drop in attendance from 1999, when Silverwood unveiled its new wooden roller coaster, Tremors. Instead, attendance numbers were up by 1,000 visitors, Nancy DiGiammarco, Silverwood’s marketing director, said in November.

DiGiammarco credited advertising and promotional programs from Montana to Seattle for the attendance gains.

The Puget Sound area market is particularly attractive to Silverwood because of its large population base and lack of a competing theme park, she said. There’s not another park with large roller coasters within driving distance of Seattle.

Silverwood started a promotional program with Burger King and Pepsi in 1999 that has been successful in the Puget Sound region, she said. The park also worked with tourism officials in Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls to run television advertisements in the Tri-Cities and Wenatchee markets.

In addition, more than 17,000 children received free passes to Silverwood through a reading incentive program.