KidZania is Growing

Children love KidZania

In Cuicuilco, a southern suburb of Mexico City, is a new twist on the KidZania concept: an outdoor park, more than triple the size of the existing, eponymous indoor facilities, on a 150,000 square foot site in the early 2012.And that’s just the beginning. The privately held KidZania Inc. currently operates eight parks and is on schedule to double that over the next two years. Altogether about a dozen new KidZanias are in various stages of development around the world, including two in the US. Mark Snell is now Chief Experience Officer, and Philip Sandhaus is Vice President Global Business.

As Chief Experience Officer, Mark Snell, based at the company headquarters in Mexico, leads KidZania’s “Ministry of Culture,” focused on creating superior guest experiences through entertaining and engaging content, themes, architecture, programming, and operations. He was first exposed to KidZania about 11 years ago when he was with Jack Rouse Associates, and CEO Xavier López Ancona invited a JRA team to visit the flagship facility.

The new property in Cuicuilco will reflect an expanded concept as well as a larger facility and the first outdoor KidZania. “It is the “next evolution of the KidZania experience,” says Snell. Laid out as a scaled-down city complete with a downtown, suburbs, landscaping and architectural landmarks, and looped by a roadway for driving education, its activities revolve around the themes of driving safety, community, health, civics and the environment. “We are taking our motto of ‘Get Ready for a Better World’ and putting it into practice through the medium of leisure entertainment,”says Snell.

Get Ready for a Better World 

The backstory of the “Better World” motto is that KidZania was formed by kids who wanted to experiment with running the world and see how they could improve things. They even have their own currency: the “kidZo.”

By empowering children to try on a variety of activities and roles, KidZania seeks to build skills, nurture creativity and develop values in ways that will positively affect the real future of their young visitors and where they live. “If we can encourage this experimentation and flexibility in kids now, when they become adults imagine how they might do things better than we currently do,” explains Snell.

The outdoor setting of the Cuicuilco park accommodates an extensive driving course and fulfills an important KidZanian goal: to train better drivers for Mexico’s streets. “This will emphasize the importance of driver’s education to the kids,” explains Snell.

 “To really understand how a city works you have to have all the roles: police officers, dentists, bus drivers, cooks, clerks, judges, trash collectors, teachers, radio announcers and so forth,” says Snell. “Additionally, national, state and international curriculum standards are being built into the activities; we have strong relationships with top universities in Mexico and are building similar relationships with other US and global institutions centered on early childhood education.”

That’s heavy stuff, but it’s still “Entertainment first,” says Snell, whose professional background includes an education in theatre, the creation of attractions for SeaWorld, LEGOLAND and other major theme parks and the design of online educational experiences for school curricula. “It has to deliver a fun and engaging mix of entertainment along with the educational/ socialization component for kids and their parents to be motivated to visit and return. KidZania isn’t a school, although we host many school groups: It’s a place for kids to come and have fun, and the supervisors role-play right along with the kids.”

Snell works with a creative team of about 50 people in Mexico City covering the full range of disciplines for designing and producing themed environments. Once a site is established, it’s a rapid process: “We can turn out a park in about 18months,”he says. That is a amazing process.

From the conversation of Mark Snell , we can find KidZania is growing increasingly stronger over years .And their target “Get ready for a Better World ” has been achieved step by step , we are looking forward to a better world for children .

 watch KidZania: http://www.youtube.com/user/kidzania?feature=results_main