Transcription
1991. Mexico City. Entrepreneur Luis Javier Laresgoiti starts a toy distribution company. The name? Amazing Toys. Not Juguetes Increíbles. Amazing Toys, in English. That’s because the toys are imported from the United States. Sea monkeys. Venus fly traps. Novelty stuff. Amazing!
And it was, until December 1994, when the Mexican currency crisis hit. The peso was devalued by 50%, and the international novelty toy trade went down with it. Amazing Toys faced bankruptcy, and Laresgoiti was forced to dream a different dream. If not toy distribution, perhaps toy manufacturing.
Laresgoiti had two children, and they loved playing with his office equipment. He bought them toy phones, but they were far more interested in the real thing. Maybe he could manufacture better toys. Or maybe, he could create the real thing.
Laresgoiti approached his childhood best friend, Xavier Lopez Ancona, with a new idea. Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona had met in the second grade, and both had dreamed of working in entertainment. Laresgoiti wanted to open his own fair, and Lopez Ancona wanted to be a magician. Both had instead found success in more traditional business ventures. Laresgoiti at Amazing Toys and Lopez Ancona as the Director of Venture Capital at General Electric. But Laresgoiti’s bold concept could foray them both into the world of entertainment.
Laresgoiti described his idea as a nursery based on role-playing. He later explained, “What for us may be everyday and boring reality, for children is a fantasy; I remember that I loved being taken to the bank, I saw it as something wonderful, but I couldn't reach the counters.” Laresgoiti’s pitch was a unique, simulated experience with elaborate theming and complex operations. The concept would answer the need he saw in his children. The ability to take on mature responsibilities, perform grown-up tasks, and try their hand at adult professions, but on a scale accessible to them. A city where the children were in charge.
Laresgoiti’s idea for a children’s city was intriguing, but the venture came with much uncertainty. At this point in the late 1990s, themed entertainment startups aimed at regional audiences were a common sight in malls and entertainment districts. Successful concepts enjoyed a steady stream of local families, mall-goers, and birthday parties. At the same time, many regional entertainment concepts went as quickly as they came, and by the turn of the millennium, the fun center fad appeared to be on its way out, with many large corporations with established brands struggling to succeed in the competitive space.
Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona were also at a unique disadvantage, as Mexico was still struggling to recover from the economic crisis that had destroyed Amazing Toys. For Lopez Ancona, this uncertainty was juxtaposed against his comfortable venture capital job, so he rejected Laresgoiti’s concept of a children’s role-playing city. However, Laresgoiti was insistent, and he eventually convinced his friend to enter into business with him. Lopez Ancona quit his job, and the two began planning their children’s city.
The initial plan called for a modest venue of 500 square meters, or around 5000 square feet. This space would allow small groups of children to act out jobs in miniature recreations of common city structures, such as a fire station and a bank. The list of role-playing activities grew as the concept was fleshed out, and as a result, the two realized that they needed a much larger space–six times larger than their initial estimate. The two decided that Mexico City’s Centro Santa Fe, the largest shopping mall in all of Mexico, would be the ideal site for their concept. They would lease a space of 6000 square meters, or 20,000 square feet. This venue would allow them to build a much larger small city, with more space and opportunities for children to role-play.
As the thematic ambitions and required space grew, so did the budget. Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona exhausted their savings, investing into the project, and they eventually had to approach additional investors, including Lopez Ancona’s brother Esteban. Still, this was not enough. Strapped for cash and already deep in the project, the team brainstormed a new way to raise the necessary funds. The initial plan was to brand the miniature city’s businesses and public services with either generic names or none at all. The small role-playing buildings within the city would be labeled simply, such as Beauty Salon or Pizza. However, the team recognized this as an area to raise funds. They could invite real-world companies to sponsor their equivalent businesses within the small-scale city.
Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona began knocking on doors, hoping that some business would believe in their concept and be generous enough to support them. In the end, a few businesses agreed to support the children’s city, including Coca-Cola, American Airlines, Burger King, Nestle, General Motors, Domino’s Pizza, Johnson and Johnson, and Wal-Mart. 42 sponsors signed on to the unproven concept. Of the 7 million dollars required to construct the park, 55% came from these corporate partnerships.
Construction on the project was completed in the summer of 1999, and on August 19, Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona’s dream park, named La Ciudad De Los Niños, or the City of Children, had its inaugural ceremony. To enter the new attraction, families visiting the Santa Fe Shopping Center approached a storefront that resembled an airport terminal with official American Airlines branding. Here, guests paid their travel fare to gain entry to the City of Children. Tickets cost 90 pesos per child and 60 pesos per adult, or around $9.50 and $6 respectively. Along with their plane fare, children were given a bank check for 300 pesitos, or little pesos, the official currency of the City of Children.
Families walked through security, where children were given a tracking device in the form of a wristband. This piece of technology allowed children to roam freely throughout the complex while parents could relax with the peace of mind that their children could not leave the premises without them and could be easily found via the bracelets. The first action for kids to perform after entering the City of Children was cashing the check they were given at the gate. To do this, children needed to visit the bank, open an account, and receive an ATM card that they could use throughout their visit.
From there, children began their fake lives in earnest, with two main categories of activity: spending and earning. Children could spend pesitos on activities such as General Motors bumper cars or on food such as Burger King fries. They could even drive their General Motors bumper cars to the Burger King drive through, assuming they had enough Pemex gas to get there. Children could also spend their pesitos to take a simulated trip on an American Airlines flight or to take out a mini pizza from Dominos.
To earn pesitos, kids needed to pick up a job. The city of children offered a wide variety of employment opportunities. Some of these, such as rappeller or race car driver, were standard amusement attractions with set dressing to make them appear as jobs. Other roles were completely unique themed experiences devised just for La Ciudad De Los Niños. Child firefighters dropped down a fire pole or slid down a slide when an emergency called. The mini heroes suited up, climbed onto an operating firetruck, and were driven to the scene of a fire. After arriving, it was up to the kids to put out the fake flames with real water hoses. Construction workers laid brick walls while a large concrete truck spun its mixing tank on the job site. Children could be anything from a doctor to a manicurist, a reporter to an archaeologist. Each activity was unique, engaging, and impressively themed. Each job lasted between 15 and 45 minutes and was designed for children between the ages of 4 and 13 years old. Kids could perform multiple jobs during their visit, and it was impossible to do all of the roles in a single day.
While children worked on the first floor, adults could relax in a lounge above and watch over the activity of the bustling city below. Also located on the second floor was an area filled with playplaces and kiddie rides for children 3 and under.
La Ciudad De Los Niños was an ambitious and risky project, but it was executed incredibly. The attraction was an immediate success, with the miniature city often hitting its capacity of 1500 guests. In the first year, around 750,000 people visited the City of Children, exceeding Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona’s wildest expectations. Operations would soon have to be split on certain days into two separate 5-hour blocks in order to manage crowds.
The uniqueness of La Ciudad De Los Niños concept gave it a distinct advantage over other regional themed entertainment centers. Since the premise of the city was to allow children to role-play adult professions, many of the activities were educational in nature. This meant that the children’s city could act as a field trip destination for nearby schools, while still attracting the typical fun center crowd of families and birthday parties. Plus, repeat visits were encouraged in the game design, as children could earn money for their ATM card and come back on a different day with money already in the bank that they earned from a previous visit.
The impressive attendance and positive reception kick-started talks of expansion, and within months of opening, the City of Children had bold plans for their future. Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona partnered with amusement park operator Grupo Magico to expand La Ciudad De Los Niños worldwide. The partnership bred a new company, Kids City International, which hoped to build 200 kid cities within five years. The first locations considered were Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Munich, and Tokyo. The group would start by building a new location in Monterrey, which was expected to open as early as late 2000.
However, it was at this point that Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona began to disagree about the future of the company. Laresgoiti appeared to side with Grupo Magico’s proposal of expansion, while Lopez Ancona and his brother wanted to go in a different direction. Behind closed doors, tensions rose, and Laresgoiti and Lopez Ancona decided that something needed to change with their business partnership. Unfortunately, neither wanted to cash out of La Ciudad De Los Niños, and both seemed interested in expansion.
In August of 2001, just two years after the City of Children opened, it was decided that Laresgoiti would leave the company. As part of the agreement, Laresgoiti would receive a payout from La Ciudad De Los Niños, as well as the rights to build his own children's cities in specified territories. Lopez Ancona would retain the rights to expand La Ciudad De Los Niños throughout Mexico, California, and Spain, while Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico could build the concept in Miami and parts of South America. It was also agreed that for every location that Laresgoiti built, Lopez Ancona would receive 0.25% of the revenue for the first five years of operation. In return, Laresgoiti would be given access to the existing La Ciudad De Los Niños in Mexico City to showcase the concept to potential investors.
With the divorce finalized, the group split, each looking to conquer their respective territories and populate the Americas with more kid cities. Lopez Ancona’s initial plans for an expansion to Monterey, Mexico continued, but an unexpected complication arose. In 2001, it was announced that a new theme park was to be built in Monterrey named Mundo de Adeveras, or World of Reality. The new park would be a role-playing theme park with a very similar premise to La Ciudad De Los Niños, with the two main differences being its larger scale and outdoor setting. Reports speculated that Lopez Ancona was planning a plagiarism suit against Mundo de Adeveras to block it from its opening. Despite this, plans for a La Ciudad De Los Niños in Monterrey continued, but it appeared that Lopez Ancona and company were prioritizing a location in the United States over everything else.
Plans for a City of Children in Los Angeles and New York were put into development, despite the latter location not being specified in the parting agreement. The Los Angeles location was being planned as part of a brand new mall project, while the New York location was to lease a space in the Palisades Center shopping mall, located in Clarkstown, New York. Lopez-Ancona and company pitted two mall developers against one another, pursuing the Los Angeles location and New York location at the same time. Unfortunately, both projects ran into issues. The Los Angeles mall project struggled during its development, and the Palisades location had to be put up to a public vote due to a covenant between the mall owners and the local community. On top of this, the Monterrey location, which had its opening postponed to 2002, was delayed indefinitely.
On November 5th, 2002, the City of Children planned for the Palisades Center was rejected by local voters. This was due to the community’s poor relationship with the mall and its owners, and the fact that the City of Children had been labeled a theme park, which many feared would bring in additional issues to the area, such as traffic. Three days after this vote, a City of Children announced that it had received approval to move forward, but it would not be any of Lopez Ancona’s. Instead, it would be Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico that would strike first, announcing that their children’s city concept would be built in South Florida, under the new name: Wannado City.
Laresgoiti’s new Kids City venture was to include everything that made La Ciudad De Los Niños a success, but on an even grander scale. The new project would cost an estimated $40 million to construct and it would be more than double the size of the original City of Children. Wannado City would be located just outside of Miami in Sunrise, Florida. Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico would lease a large space in the Sawgrass Mills shopping mall. This space was previously the home decor superstore Waccamaw’s HomePlace. Wannado City would be the size of three football fields, around 140,000 square feet. Sawgrass Mills was one of the largest shopping centers in the United States and a well-established tourist destination. The mall was the second largest in the country in terms of shopping traffic. The Mills Corporation, the owner and operator of Sawgrass Mills, would also invest in the Wannado project, believing that the concept would cement Sawgrass Mills as South Florida’s premiere tourist attraction as well as encourage children’s retailers to lease space in the mall.
Laresgoiti hoped to sign as many as 70 corporate sponsors to brand the various city buildings around Wannado City as had been done at La Ciudad De Los Niños, estimating that each sponsorship would be worth around $250,000. The concept art for Wannado City showcased its many similarities to La Ciudad De Los Niños, including the entrance themed to a plane terminal, with a real out-of-commission DC-9 being brought into Wannado City to serve as the park’s icon. Although many parts of the concept appeared identical to the original City of Children, Wannado City’s expansive scale promised several original and ambitious experiences. Concept art showcased a second entrance, in which families could travel to the city via a large cruise ship. Initial reports also touted more role-playing areas than La Ciudad De Los Niños, with over 60 venues, as well as additional careers for children to try out, as many as 250. Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico had high hopes for the project, hoping that between 800,000 and one million guests would enter Wannado City annually. This estimate was based primarily on the success that La Ciudad De Los Niños was experiencing. Wannado would focus its attractions on children ages 4 through 12, and would charge between 15 and 30 dollars for children and around 10 dollars for adults. Construction would begin in 2003 with opening targeted for early 2004.
During initial announcements, Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico made it clear that the Florida location would be just the beginning of the Wannado franchise, with a second location already under development in the Mills Corporation’s new shopping mall, the Meadowlands Xanadu complex in New Jersey, which was set to break ground in 2004. After this, Wannado City would expand further, with Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and Toronto all under consideration for the new locations.
Within weeks of Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico’s announcement of Wannado City, Lopez-Ancona contacted Laresgoiti informing him of Wannado City’s possible intellectual property infringement. It is unclear what these initial concerns were, or how Laresgoiti and Wannado City violated the terms of the La Ciudad De Los Niños parting agreement. But within just a few months, Lopez Ancona filed a lawsuit against his former business partner and friend, as well as Grupo Magico. Lopez Ancona and company reportedly demanded 6 million dollars from Laresgoiti and his investors, which was swiftly denied. The Wannado City group offered to advance Lopez Ancona’s 0.25% of Wannado’s revenue over the first five years of operation, which they would calculate based on their projections, but Lopez Ancona rejected this offer.
Deliberation was held in May of 2003, as Wannado City was well under construction. At one point, it was reported that Grupo Magico had offered Lopez Ancona and company 2 million dollars and an additional one million dollars for each of the first eight Wannado Cities that Grupo Magico would open, for a maximum potential settlement amount of 10 million dollars. However, this proposal was also rejected, and the lawsuits continued.
In early 2004, Wannado City delayed its original April opening to July. With construction almost complete and employee training already underway, Lopez Ancona and company filed another suit against the project, this time in Fort Lauderdale federal court, in an attempt to block the opening of Wannado City. The opening was delayed once more, now slated for August. Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico refused to allow Lopez Ancona to prevent Wannado City from opening. Fortunately for Laresgoiti, the court denied the immediate request to block the park’s operation. With several lawsuits still pending and no settlement reached, Wannado City officially opened its doors on August 13, 2004 and handed over city operations to the children of South Florida.
[It’s the fantastic, all-new Wannado City, the very first Wannado City in America! We train ‘em, we gear ‘em up, then they do the coolest jobs in the world!] Wannado City claimed to be the first indoor role-playing theme park in the United States, with advertising encouraging visitors to tap into “your child’s inner adult.” While the majority of those visiting Wannado City were greeted with an experience unlike any other, those familiar with La Ciudad De Los Niños would notice even more similarities than originally advertised. Wannado City used almost identical role-playing experiences, thematic elements, and game design. The city featured a similar adult lounge on the second floor in the same watchtower configuration, with Wannado City’s being dubbed the Eagle’s Nest. The city even used the same wristband security technology of La Ciudad De Los Niños to ensure a safe experience for parents and kids.
As promised, the expansive space allowed for additional venues of a larger scale, such as a big top circus and ancient ruins. These massive areas resulted in a capacity nearly double that of the original City of Children, with 2700 kids able to visit Wannado City at one time. To handle these crowds, 400 employees were hired to operate the city. The original promise of over 250 unique job experiences was reduced to just over 100 when the park opened. Many of these jobs shared the same venues and worked closely with other positions. Wannado jobs included firefighter, police officer, lawyer, jury member, journalist, newspaper editor, airplane pilot, chef, baker, pizzeria employee, dentist, anesthesiologist, surgeon, emergency medical technician, pathologist, maternity ward nurse, musician, manicurist, hair stylist, fashion photographer, runway model, interior decorator, theater actor, theater director, film actor, film director, radio station host, television news anchor, DJ, clown, juggler, crime scene investigator, bail bondsman, librarian, archaeologist, rock climber, miner, jeweler, nightclub manager, and grocery store clerk.
As with La Ciudad De Los Niños, the citizens of Wannado City, known as kidizens, would be handed their first check when they entered, which was worth 150 units of the city’s unique currency, known as Wongas. Kidizens could earn Wongas by performing jobs, and spend Wongas on activities around the city. Children could buy a ticket to the circus or a theater show, cookies from the bakery, a manicure, a pedicure, a hair styling, or a rock climbing experience. Wannado City also had multiple items that could be bought, not with Wongas, but real US dollars. With a parent’s approval (and money), kids working at the television news station could take home a DVD of themselves on the air for 10 real dollars. Children working in the maternity ward could pay to adopt a baby doll to take home with them. Some jobs cost real money to perform, such as the pizzeria employee, which parents would need to pay for beforehand so that their child could eat the pizza at the end of the activity.
Wannado City had a similar continuity to La Ciudad De Los Niños, with certain jobs intersecting with one another. For instance, a child buying a ticket to the theater would see a show with the group of children that, at that point in the day, were role-playing as actors. Despite these few synergetic elements, the activities in Wannado City were mostly isolated and the progression of events would reset multiple times throughout the day. Wannado City also featured event space for birthdays and other party groups. Laresgoiti and the developers worked with local educators to meet state educational standards so that the complex could act as a field trip destination, with special discounts given to school groups.
[Interviewee] “To investigate a story, put it on paper, and see it printed out, can never match an assignment in a classroom.” Wannado City even opened up at night for adults-only events such as corporate parties, so that they could get drunk and pretend to be giants.
Attendance at Wannado City was strong right out of the gate. The experience appeared to be as big of a hit as La Ciudad De Los Niños, with the potential to grow into something even bigger. Plans for the Wannado City expansion were put into motion after opening, with Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico hoping for nine additional locations. However, the multiple lawsuits from Lopez Ancona threatened to slow these ambitions.
By this point, the exact allegations of the lawsuit were more clear, as were Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico’s defenses. Lopez-Ancona claimed that Laresgoiti had stolen La Ciudad De Los Niños’ intellectual property rights. Laresgoiti maintained that the parting agreement gave him the rights to the concept in the agreed-upon territories. Lopez-Ancona and company asserted that the parting agreement only allowed Laresgoiti to build a child role-playing theme park and that he and Grupo Magico had not been given the rights to the exact architectural plans and gameplay. Furthermore, Laresgoiti was claiming both in the media and to investors that he was the originator of the concept.
[Laresgoiti] “I came up with the idea of Wannado City, uh, looking at my kids.” While Laresgoiti had personally come up with the idea, from a legal perspective, the originator of the concept and the owner of the intellectual property was La Ciudad De Los Niños, and by extension, Lopez-Ancona and his investors.
At one point during the discussions, Grupo Magico offered to buy the concept and the original La Ciudad De Los Niños from Lopez-Ancona, with Lopez-Ancona setting the price at 27 million dollars. Apparently, this number differed so greatly from the evaluation at the time of Laresgoiti’s payout that Laresgoiti believed there to be a case of accounting fraud, launching a criminal complaint against La Ciudad De Los Niños.
As Wannado was under construction and neared opening, Laresgoiti continued to claim that he was the originator of the concept, further fueling the lawsuit against him. Lopez-Ancona also claimed that the section of the parting agreement that allowed Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico to build a new location had lapsed. Laresgoiti added a new defense, at least in the press, that no one could own the copyright of children pretending to do adult jobs because this was a universal experience of childhood. However, Lopez-Ancona and company were insistent that they were the legal originators of the concept, and decided to pursue a lawsuit against the Mills Corporation as well for leasing space to and investing in a venue that they saw as an infringement on their intellectual property.
Then, Laresgoiti added an additional defense, that the concept of children’s role-playing was not only not unique, but that there were already 120 similar venues to La Ciudad De Los Niños and Wannado City in existence.
Since the relatively recent invention of childhood, role-playing has been a favored activity of the youth. In the early 20th century, children would often act out fantasies of their very gendered futures, with boys playing with toys resembling trains and farming equipment and girls nursing baby dolls to sharpen their maternal instincts. This was a common experience among American children, mainly those born after the 1920s, as before this, children were often too busy working their real jobs to fantasize about working fake ones. Once it was a common idea in the US that children were innocent beings in need of protection, and not just tiny adults whose hands can reach that part of the machine that I can’t, venues were constructed specifically for their enjoyment. Amusement parks, originally designed for local perverts, drunks, and picnickers, were transitioning to attractions made exclusively for children, relegating parents to park benches to merely observe their children’s joy. As Kiddielands and similar children’s amusement parks sprout up, so did alternative entertainment and educational centers designed for little ones.
In 1899, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum opened, offering unique exhibits tailor-made for children to interact with. This concept slowly spread throughout the United States during the 20th century, and by 1975, 38 children’s museums had opened across the country. These concepts originally focused on science and local history, but eventually, economic exhibits allowed children to role-play various jobs in small mock-ups of consumer spaces, such as banks or grocery stores. By 2004, when Wannado City opened, the number of children’s museums had grown to 220, with an additional 80 planned or under construction.
Children’s science museums were not the only source of educational role-playing for kids. In 1930, an Ohio-based children’s writer named Mildred Roberts wrote a book called Safety Town Stories, intended to help children navigate the new and dangerous world of automobiles. A Mansfield, Ohio Police officer named Frend C. Boals was inspired to take the lessons found in Roberts’ book and put them into practice. Boals created a program in which children could role-play various traffic scenarios to learn the best practices for both drivers and pedestrians. Using pedal cars and bikes, children steered around mock roadways and simple building sets that composed Boals’ Safety Town. The initial program was transient and moved from school to school in the nearby area, but its effectiveness and popularity in Ohio resulted in the concept being adapted in other states, many with permanent and elaborate Safety Towns that school groups would travel to visit. According to the National Safety Town Center, by 2019, 3500 Safety Towns existed in 23 different countries around the world.
"We learned about looking left and right before we cross the street." "So you don't li-, die."
While children’s science museums and safety towns were primarily designed for younger elementary school children, similar concepts with more complexity were created for a slightly older crowd. In January of 1981, a new educational center opened in Kansas City, under the name Exchange City. Exchange City was an ambitious new teaching tool that allowed children to spend a day role-playing in a miniature city in order to learn the basic principles of commerce. The children’s visit was preceded by a four-week curriculum designed to teach the basic principles of economics and prepare kids for their visit to Exchange City. The scale of the town was much smaller than the indoor kid city theme parks that would be built decades later. Exchange City encompassed a mere 8,500 square feet and was built with a $100,000 grant from Hallmark Cards. Local businesses would donate a combined $140,000 annually to cover operational costs. For maximum irony, the city designed to prepare children for economic success was built inside of an abandoned warehouse in downtown Kansas City.
Exchange City was specifically designed for fifth graders. Founder and executive director Janies Kreamer said the experience was designed for this age group because “this is the time when many youngsters get their first jobs babysitting, shoveling snow, or mowing lawns.” In Exchange City and with its accompanying curriculum, children would learn simple economic concepts such as supply and demand, as well as run mock elections to determine Exchange City’s government officials, including mayor. Depending on the school, the election campaigns leading up to the Exchange City visit could be extensive, with children creating campaign posters and placing them throughout the hallways of their elementary school. This also served to excite the younger children, building their anticipation for the fifth grade and their trip to Exchange City. However, this was not true for every child, as despite seeing these posters for my entire elementary school experience, the year I was in fifth grade my school did not go to Exchange City for some reason despite going every year prior, which means that I was not able to run for mayor, despite the fact that I had been preparing my campaign and policy since the age of 5 years old- Title Card: Kevin Is Not Mad
Exchange City’s daily operation was fully continuous. While there were around 90 jobs that children could perform, students would only hold a single job for the entire day, and all activities affected one another. Professions included bank president, postmaster, waitress, journalist, arcade owner, factory worker, and radio DJ, but Exchange City’s gameplay focused primarily on the role of business owner. When these tiny entrepreneurs arrived to the city, rather than being handed a set amount of money in Exchange City's unique currency, business owners would need to take out a loan to receive their starting funds. They were then sent to a miniature warehouse, which was stocked full of materials with which they could start their business. Materials included games, posters, jewelry, lemonade, and popcorn. Business owners had to pay their loan back with interest by the end of the day, and they also had to pay taxes on their income. If they wanted to advertise their business, they had to purchase commercial airtime from Exchange City’s radio. Citizens spent their time off work using their funds to purchase products from business owners, and they could also pay for song dedications on the local radio.
[Kid Reporter] “And how much money do you make?” [Interviewee] “$4.50” “And how much have you spent of it?” “$5.50”
In some versions of the gameplay, business owners were given the option to purchase insurance, and throughout the day, fake emergencies would strike Exchange City’s businesses. Owners that had purchased the insurance would need to file a claim, while those that declined coverage were absolutely screwed. At the end of the day, the citizens debriefed with the educators on their experience and the economic lessons that they learned. When school was out during the summer, Exchange City ran a one-week camp for students to extend the role-playing over several days.
In the mid-1980s, Florida superintendent Howard Hinesley visited Kansas City and observed Exchange City, recognizing the value in the concept and hoping to build a similar program for his own school district. After convincing local entrepreneur Gus Stravos to invest in the project, Enterprise Village was constructed for the children of the Tampa Bay area, opening in 1990. That same year, another educational center resembling Exchange City opened in Denver, named Young AmeriTowne. In 1998, Enterprise Village was expanded to include Finance Park, a similar but slightly more mature version of the concept for middle schoolers. This simulator was more complex and focused more on family-budgeting than career role-playing. Children would be given a set of circumstances that they would have to develop a budget around, including deciding which house to purchase and what kind of car to buy. Throughout the day, children would be given a life circumstance card, referred to as a “Bad Luck” card, that would impact their financial outlook and force them to rebudget. Bad luck events in Finance Park and equivalent family-budgeting curriculums included sudden unemployment, a car breaking down, a water heater leaking, the sudden death of a relative, the sudden hospitalization of a relative, a bridge collapsing causing the sudden death of several relatives, an unexpected child, imprisonment due to public intoxication, and a terrorist attack.
The year after Finance Park opened, Junior Achievement, a non-profit specializing in children’s financial education, approached both Exchange City and Enterprise Village about the prospect of expanding their operations into a franchise of locations. Throughout the early 2000s, Junior Achievement would construct and operate 20 additional Exchange Cities throughout the United States, and they would also expand the Finance Park curriculum to middle schoolers across the country. During this period, additional educational role-playing centers and children’s museums were being constructed, and by the time Wannado City opened in 2004, kid cities were already a cornerstone of American childhood. However, since the space was not dominated by a singular national chain, most children in the United States were unaware of how common the formative Kid City visit was to their generation.
The presence of children’s museums, safety towns, and educational kid cities seemed to bolster Wannado City’s defense against the lawsuits brought about by Lopez-Ancona and company. Despite the heavily publicized conflict, it is unclear exactly when and how a resolution was reached. Reports indicate that sometime shortly after Wannado City’s opening in August of 2004, the two parties reached a settlement in which Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of money to Lopez-Ancona and company to drop the suits. The only other reported condition was that Laresgoiti could not open any Wannado City locations in Mexico.
Just a few weeks after opening, Wannado City announced their plans to open their first international location in Japan. They also reiterated their intention to build a second US location with the Mills Corporation within their new Xanadu Meadowlands complex in New Jersey, which would include a 30-story Ferris wheel, an indoor ski slope, and a thrilling roller coaster. The Xanadu Meadowlands broke ground just six weeks after Wannado City opened. Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico hoped for 10 Wannado locations, and their collaboration with the Mills Corporation was key to this expansion. Rene Aziz, CEO of Wannado Entertainment, said, “We expect to grow with the Mills Corp.” Two additional Wannado Citys were planned, one for the existing Gurnee Mills shopping center in Gurnee, Illinois and another for Mills’ Block 37 project, which was under development in Downtown Chicago.
Lopez-Ancona was skeptical of Wannado City’s future. According to Forbes Magazine, Lopez-Ancona expressed his belief that Wannado City was too big, pointing out that the park was nearly three times the size of the original City of Children, despite being located in an area with a much smaller population. He also made it clear that he was still in the process of expanding La Ciudad De Los Niños to the United States, but he seemed to be far behind Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico.
Complicating expansion further, Mundo de Adeveras, the outdoor children’s city that was dubbed a knock-off of La Ciudad De Los Niños, opened in early 2005. This 25 million dollar park offered similar attractions but on a scale that only an outdoor space could allow, with operable excavators, drivable streets, and a sheep dressed like an astronaut hanging out with a water droplet wearing a cowboy hat. Contrary to initial reports, Lopez-Ancona and company did not sue Mundo de Adeveras over the park’s similarities to the City of Children, and the group continued to pursue their Monterrey expansion plans despite the presence of the similar park.
The success of both of these expansions would be largely determined by the reaction of those visiting, and as the prevalence of Kid Cities grew throughout the 2000s, more children, parents, and educators were able to judge the value of spending a day in a miniature metropolis. The reviews from the kidizens of La Ciudad De Los Niños and Wannado City were overwhelmingly positive. Six-year-old Yvette Sierra, while employed as a grocery store clerk at the City of Children’s grocery store, exclaimed, “I love working here. It’s fun.” This response was expected for a venue primarily designed for entertainment.
However, the reviews of the “junior capitalists” of Exchange City - yes that’s what they called them - were more mixed. At their core, the City of Children and Wannado City were indoor theme parks with educational components, while Exchange City, Enterprise Village, and the other financial role-playing centers were more geared toward education and preparation for the real world of capital. This greatly affected the children’s enjoyment and stress levels during their role-playing. Some were able to find simple satisfaction in their jobs. Sixth-grade DJ Brian Burnett said, “I’m just putting out things that sound good.” Newspaper editor Blake Jones said, “I liked working in Exchange City because it was very educational. I bought a slinky from the Sports Shop.” Student Jeff Davenport said, “Being mayor of Exchange City was exciting.” Yeah, I bet it was.
Some children found their jobs stressful and the pressures of the free-market overwhelming. 10-year-old Keith Jacobs struggled with his jewelry business, lamenting, “Business is pretty lousy. We’re lowering prices, and I guess we’re going to have to do some advertising on the radio. I’m worried about the bank loan.” Others proved to be surprisingly good at the gameplay. 10-year-old Todd Flagler’s T-shirt business was so successful that he was raising the price of T-shirts while kids were in line to buy them. In Enterprise Village, 11-year-old Steven Malla hosted the Home Shopping Network, where he proved to be a natural born salesman. Malla hawked his products, raving, “These little cards are great. Simply great. You want these. You do. You need these cards. There are only two left. Send ‘em to your mom. They can be used for any occasion. And for all you girls out there, we have key chains with pictures of MEN in them. These men are handsome and they’re in our key chains. Men. Or you could put your boyfriend’s picture in there. Whatever. Either way, they’re only $1.50.” When a Florida Today reporter asked Malla what he would be when he grew up, he responded incorrectly: baseball player.
The cutthroat nature of these economy simulators was encouraged by the teachers and program staff. One of Exchange City’s program directors Ellen Pittman explained, “It’s sink or swim. Some of the kids make a profit and can repay the bank loan with which they start the day. Other kids go broke.”
[Reporter] “You’ve got a busy job!” [Kid] “Yeah.” Are you having fun? “The post office got shut down because no one was in here working.” Are you having fun? [Reporter] “Business good?” [Kid] Yeah business is good so far. We sold to one person so far.” He’s having fun.
A Kansas City Times report on the summer camp version of Exchange City reported that on one of the days of the week-long camp, students were required to eat their bagged lunch inside of Exchange City, but were not allowed to bring drinks. An Exchange City director explained that as a result “thirsty consumers will pay premium prices in the Exchange City Snack Shop.”
[Kid Reporter] “And do you like working? [Interviewee] “No, it’s a mess.” Elementary school principal Mark Grant said that the most important lesson that his children learned was the drudgery of mundane work, adding, “They all want to be managers.” Eleven-year-old Jason of Enterprise Village agreed, saying that someday he hoped to own his own McDonald’s because, “It seems fun. You can check up on your workers and see if they are doing a good job.”
Staring down the barrel of monotony and being confronted with a future of mundane labor was an experience that some children had at the fun-oriented Wannado City. Nine-year-old Malcolm, who was employed at a Publix supermarket, was interviewed while stocking shelves. He explained that he wanted to be a soccer player, but, “If it doesn’t work out, then I’ll probably have to work in a supermarket.” He also said, “It’s nice to have a lot of money, I feel rich. I’m not putting anything in the bank, I want to feel the money in my pocket.”
At Finance Park, middle schoolers were faced with an even harsher reality as they planned their budget. Reporter Adam Hughes overheard one interaction between a real adult and a child role-playing as an adult when the real adult scolded the child, “Mallory! You have a such a boring life on paper! Do something!” to which the eighth grader responded “I can’t afford to!” “Students are learning to do pretty much what I do every day.”
Beyond financial education, kid cities imparted various other lessons in careers and civil service. Wannado City’s hospital was elaborate and realistic, and the surgery performed in Wannado’s OR was shockingly graphic. Many children reported being grossed out by the task of slicing open the fake human body, and the images of the children doing this are as repulsing as they are adorable. These children are operating on a dummy, but if you are sensitive to imagery of bloody lacerations, I would recommend skipping to this timecode, stat. Ok, here we go. Reporter Peter Hossli observed birthday girl Bianca and her friends attempting to remove a kidney stone that was ailing a fake patient. To do this, they needed to make a small incision in the skin near the kidney. The girls scrubbed up and prepared to perform the surgery, but soon after slicing into the skin, one of Bianca’s party guests became sickened by the sight and had to leave the tiny OR. Bianca simply shook her head in annoyed disappointment, quietly concluding, “She’ll never become a doctor,” before continuing on with the surgery. “I didn’t think that the actual detail of what I see on a daily basis could be found in an environment like this.”
The Wannado City EMTs had to respond to fake emergencies, with one of the children playing the part of an injured kidizen in need of help. The EMTs would find the child, move them onto a gurney, and then push them into a tiny ambulance. There were also plenty of options for children wanting to participate in the justice system. The kid cities did an excellent job of taking the playground game of cops and robbers and augmenting it into a complex experience that occurred throughout the city’s streets. There was some effort made to reduce the typical stakes that come with real-world law and order. For instance, the courts in Wannado City would typically take on imaginary cases based on fairy tales, such as, should Goldilocks go to jail? However, depending on the staff, Wannado City and La Ciudad De Los Niños would sometimes have the courts prosecute child criminals who had been arrested by the child police. One report read, “This place is also not free of troublemakers and disputes, which is why there is a children’s prison, and it holds little ones who try to abuse or fight with each other.”
The most common crimes in kid cities were running, spitting, littering, and cursing, but other cited infractions were more intense. Due to the high-pressure nature of Exchange City’s business operations, children found it rewarding to write bad checks, which would inevitably bounce when a child bank teller discovered the scheme. Program director Ellen Pittman recounted, “We had two kids go in and rob the bank last week. That really stirred things up.” Some children were more extreme in their law enforcement role-playing. At both the City of Children and Wannado City, children could make up any excuse to imprison another child, as the bars of the cells were made of rubber and were fun to escape from. Some of the false narratives created to justify their arrests were alarming, to say the least. 10-year-old cop Jorge tackled 11-year-old Luna, taking a shot at his jaw before placing him under arrest for possession, explaining to a nearby AP reporter, “I found coc--e on him. Plus, he resisted arrest.” Some detainees were less innocent. During one exciting day in Wannado City, kid criminals reportedly broke into the maternity ward and began kidnapping babies.
Some children working in Exchange City’s law enforcement found the power of their position intoxicating, believing that their assigned profession should come with a limitless, unwavering respect and admiration from their fellow citizens. This belief was systematically supported throughout the justice system. One student judge snapped at a citizen that was talking back to a police officer, threatening them with additional fines, saying, “If you want to argue you can have another one.” If the accused did make it into mock court, they often got off scot free thanks to a brilliant defense council. At Wannado City, a journal was kept in which all of the child lawyers wrote about their experiences and passed advice to future attorneys. A Wannado City visitor recalled reading a takeaway from one of the former lawyers, who claimed to have cracked the code to the courtroom, writing in the journal, “This job is so easy, all you say is ‘Can you prove it?’”
Wannado City seemed to be off to a fantastic start. The lawsuits were gone, the reviews were positive, and the attendance was great. Unfortunately, this streak of success was short-lived. Just over a year after opening, in October of 2005, Hurricane Wilma made landfall in Florida, causing major destruction throughout the Miami metropolitan area. The Southern Florida tourism market was severely impacted by the storm, and Sawgrass Mills saw a decrease in visitors over multiple weeks. On top of this, the disruption forced many local schools to cancel their field trips to Wannado City. Representatives for Wannado Entertainment claimed that the storm resulted in a huge financial hit and the loss of nearly six weeks worth of revenue.
Coincidentally, around this same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating the Mills Corporation for accounting errors. The probe uncovered that the company’s annual profit was $200 million less than initially reported. In 2006, the Xanadu mall development was sold to Colony Capital, and just a few months after this, Mills was on the verge of bankruptcy. The Simon Property Group and Farralon Capital Management would purchase the corporation for $1.64 billion. The Mills Corporation was dead, and with it, Wannado City’s primary partner in expansion.
Wannado Entertainment was not giving up on opening additional cities, but the lack of assistance from the Mills Corporation was just the beginning of the setbacks. Just over a year after opening, it was uncovered that Wannado City was not meeting its attendance projections. Laresgoiti and Grupo Magico had hoped for between 800,000 to one million guests per year, with a resulting $30 million in expected revenue. While throughout 2005, claims were made that Wannado had achieved or even surpassed these targets, in 2006, reports revealed that these goals were far from met. As a result, Wannado City fell behind on tax payments, and after being threatened with an account freeze from the Department of Revenue, Wannado Entertainment paid the $200,000 in missing taxes. Additionally, three vendors would bring a lawsuit against Wannado City, claiming they were not paid for their services. In spite of this, Wannado Entertainment was adamant that expansion was imminent, but this opinion was not shared throughout the entire organization. Rodrigo Gonzalez, Vice Chairman of Grupo Magico’s parent company CIE, clarified that expansion plans would not move forward until the company was “completely comfortable.”
“with the level of performance of the unit that we have opened.”
Gonzalez also expressed the belief that the existing Wannado City was too big, claiming that it was “larger than the attendance it currently supports.” In an attempt to right the course, Wannado City brought in a consulting firm to suggest operational changes. The most common feedback that they received was from parents, who felt that it was odd that they had to pay admission to the park since they could not participate in any of the activities.
Anat Moyal, a parent visiting Wannado City, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, “It’s truly ridiculous to pay for a parent just to sit here, and you cannot leave your kids to go shopping. They’re not a babysitter,” adding, “It’s not Disney World. You’re here for three or four hours, not all day. There are limited activities. There are no shows. At Disney, they’re putting a lot of money into entertainment for the adults too.” Parents also felt that the ticket prices for children were too high.
As a result of the feedback, Wannado City stopped charging admission for parents and discounted admission for children, with prices dropping to as low as $20. While this change would address the common criticism, charging less would result in a loss of revenue. To offset this, Wannado’s WannaFinder security bracelet system became a premium $2 add-on. For a $6 upcharge, parents could receive a short massage in a spa while their children worked in the city. To save on costs, Wannado City closed on Mondays and Tuesdays during the school year.
While Wannado City was addressing its issues, Lopez-Ancona and company were moving forward with their expansion. In 2006, the second City of Children finally opened in Monterrey, Mexico under the new brand KidZania. The name would allow for a recognizable brand that could expand far beyond Mexico, and a new backstory was created to explain the formation of kid cities. The Ztory reads that children felt that “governments operated inefficiently, societies were becoming inequitable, valuable resources were routinely squandered, and values were seemingly more and more negotiable.” “Too much already. Something had to be done. And kids would be the ones to do it.” As a result, the children created KidZania, which the ztory claims roughly translates to “Land of Kool Kids.”
Just a few months after the second city opened, the first international location, and the first to be franchised, would open in Japan as KidZania Tokyo. The new KidZania brand was immediately effective, and the franchise model proved to be a successful expansion strategy, with another location in Indonesia, named KidZania Jakarta, opening in November of 2007. Plans for additional KidZania locations were swiftly put into motion, with interest shown in markets all around the world.
While KidZania was on the rise, Wannado City remained stagnant. Even after operational changes, Wannado City was struggling, and they were experiencing a consistent obstacle that KidZania was not. The elementary school explanation of economics is that in order to succeed, a business needs to sell their products for more than they cost to produce. However, in the complex economy of the real world, there are many businesses that are able to profit even with a lack of direct revenue from their customer base. The most common method to do this is through advertising, especially with businesses that require significant start-up costs.
For example, if the cost of constructing and operating a new baseball stadium was entirely put on the spectators, then the ticket prices would likely be higher than most are willing to pay, which would in turn result in less revenue, as most fans would decide to not attend. Pricing tickets in a range that fans were comfortable with would result in stronger attendance, but the reduced price might not be enough to cover the stadium’s construction costs in a reasonable timeframe. So to make up for this gap in revenue, the organization turns to other companies, signing multi-million dollar contracts for advertising on physical and digital signs throughout the stadium, on the player’s jerseys, and the most expensive: the naming rights to the stadium itself.
Offsetting costs with advertising is a common practice in many businesses, especially those in which the product requires attendance and/or attention. When these savings are passed along to the consumer, some services, such as newspapers, cable television, and streaming services, are sold at a significant discount thanks to the advertising contained within. Some services are even “free” thanks to advertising, such as radio, broadcast television, and YouTube videos. Advertising has long been a way to offset the high cost of constructing a theme park. Disney relied heavily on advertising to construct Disneyland in the mid-1950s,and only became more reliant on them in the following decades. Recently, the Disney Parks have required less advertising revenue, as they have found that a large portion of their customer base is willing to pay for tickets at a high enough price to offset most costs. This is not normal, and many themed entertainment venues are dependent on income from advertisers to continue operating.
The benefit of the advertising revenue to the business is obvious, but what is the benefit to the advertiser? In the case of a baseball stadium, the advertising can increase brand awareness and recognition, while also creating a positive association between their brand and the sports team, psychologically implying to potential customers that the brand is part of the team. In the case of Disney parks, sponsored attractions also increase brand awareness and recognition, and since most often the theme of the attraction relates to the brand’s business activity, a positive association is formed. For example, AT&T was once the sponsor of EPCOT Center’s Spaceship Earth, a ride about the history and future of communication. Therefore, the sponsorship psychologically cues riders to think about AT&T when they think about communication and the future.
In family entertainment venues, the advertising is primarily directed at the adults of the group, as they are the ones with the money and the power to purchase the product. Children’s advertising is a huge industry, but the products are mostly limited to things that children want to consume, such as foods, toys, and entertainment. When United Technologies agreed to sponsor the Living Seas at EPCOT Center, one would assume that they saw revenue potential from the adults in the crowd, and they were not performing some long-game psy-op on eight-year-olds hoping that the positive association would stick and in 30 to 40 years they would choose the Otis Elevator Company as their building’s escalator provider. But what about an entertainment venue that is designed solely for kids, in which the adults are sent to a boring lounge to read a book while their children experience the product, and its advertisers, alone. What would the motive for the advertisers be in that scenario?
As proved during the development of La Ciudad De Los Niños, mega-corporations have a consistent, almost suspicious, enthusiasm for funding kid city projects. The original sponsors of the City of Children were some of the largest companies in the world. These partnerships were, in part, a result of Lopez-Ancona's business contacts from his time in finance, but even with this advantage, major corporations clearly saw something in Kid Cities worth investing in. At the time of its construction, it was reported that Wannado City had a harder time securing sponsors than the City of Children had, and as a result, the project relied on many regional partnerships relevant to Florida, such as Plantation General Hospital, the Miami Herald, and Publix grocery stores. However, Wannado City still received money from a few well-known brands, such as State Farm Insurance, Cartoon Network, Spirit Airlines, CNN, and Johnny Rockets. Soon after opening, Coca-Cola was added to the lineup, sponsoring a bottling factory and a drink delivery vehicle.
Exchange City and Enterprise Village were smaller venues, designed primarily for education and built for a fraction of the cost, and yet, they still had sponsorships from major corporations. Enterprise Village had a McDonald’s where kids could actually serve food. When Finance Park was being developed years later, brands such as AutoNation and Outback Steakhouse were so emphatic about being part of the project that a waiting list was created for the potential sponsors. Children’s Museums, which were even smaller in scope and directed at children younger in age, also had partnerships from corporations such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
There are a few innocuous reasons for why these Fortune 500 companies gave money to these unproven small-scale regional theme centers. For one, these corporations could simply be investing in these communities and in their children’s futures. Another reason for these corporations' involvement was simply realism. When developing Wannado City, Laresgoiti pointed out that “a city without corporate names ‘doesn’t look like a real city.’” Anna Martinez, a mom visiting Wannado City with her son, agreed, explaining, “It’s reality, what they’re familiar with, what they’re comfortable with.”
These justifications did not stop critics from voicing their opinions on the product placement. Speaking on Wannado City, Harvard psychologist Susan Linn argued that, “It’s one more step that corporations are taking to insinuate themselves into the fabric of our lives.” University of Florida professor Paul George critiqued Enterprise Village’s sponsor model, saying, “I’m not convinced that reading, writing, and retailing are the three R’s,” further assessing that, “It sounds to me like a giant commercial aimed at students who have no choice and who are incredibly impressionable. I feel like I’m constantly having to protect my own children from avaricious retailers as it is. The idea that we’re going to install them in the curriculum and make it mandatory is just mind-boggling.”
Incredibly, the advertisers stated motivations sided more with the perspective of these critics, as one could argue that some seemed a bit too excited about the collaboration. When State Farm was initially contacted about a partnership, representatives of Wannado Entertainment proposed that the insurance company could sponsor the city’s tiny fire department, as State Farm was well known for selling fire insurance policies. However, upon hearing that Wannado City had a bank, State Farm asked if they could sponsor this venue instead. State Farm’s sponsorship manager Bobby Wilkinson explained, “A lot of people don’t know about [State Farm’s] bank. That’s what made Wannado a great marketing opportunity. How awesome to have a 3- or 4-year-old with their first bank account and debit card from State Farm. We can introduce that brand early to kids and bring some awareness to parents that we have a State Farm Bank. And if we can introduce this brand early to these kids, then the potential that these could be lifelong customers just increases.”
Laresgoiti agreed, claiming Wannado employed “quality advertising rather than quantity advertising. It leaves a deep mark in very little time. The half-hour the child plays with something will stay with them for their entire life. It’s something they’ll never forget.” Adam Cotumaccio, an executive at the firm hired to recruit Wannado City’s sponsors, explained that children would “live the brand at Wannado City, leaving a lasting impression that companies will translate into parents’ dollars for them.” Rich Engwall, Vice President of the foundation that operated Enterprise Village and Finance Park, clarified, "The sponsors believe, wholeheartedly, in the value of public education……. But there's no denying that when the kids walk out of here and open their first bank account, they're thinking first of Bank of America because that's where they had their first checking account."
The advertising theory was just as effective in practice. One example could be found in La Ciudad De Los Niños, which featured a pastry factory sponsored by Mexican snack company Marinela. At the factory, 8-year-old Regina was learning how to create the popular Gansito treat when she experienced a lucrative shift in perspective. She explained, “It’s neat because we get to find out how Gansitos are made. I always gave them away to my brothers, but maybe now I’ll start to like them.” Spirit Airlines hoped for a similar outcome with their Wannado City sponsorship. Lynn Koreman, senior director of marketing and communications for Spirit, hoped that the Wannado City flight simulator would make “all the kids think good things about Spirit. When they’re sitting around home planning the family vacation, we hope everyone will be saying, ‘We’re flying Spirit, right?’”
Despite the abject terror that is learning that your child has been Spirit-pilled without your consent, most parents had a more optimistic view of the kid cities, believing that it was a good way for their children to learn financial responsibility. Moreover, many saw no difference between kid city’s sponsorship model and other children’s entertainment spaces, which either featured similar brand partnerships or were directly operated by mega-corporations. After all, not every children’s role-playing space can be as wholesome and brandless as a Safety Town, wait is that a McDonald’s?
When building Wannado City, Laresgoiti employed all of the same strategies that he had with the City of Children, but the project was proving to be too ambitious given the amount of support. Unlike La Ciudad De Los Niños, which had relied mostly on its sponsors to cover construction costs, Wannado Entertainment had taken out a $10 million loan. This needed to be paid off, but operations had already found the maximum most guests were willing to pay for the experience. To close this gap, Wannado Entertainment continued to add attractions to entice visitors and recruited more advertisers to cover costs.
A veterinary clinic sponsored by animal pharmaceutical manufacturer Merial was added. Here, children could diagnose and treat fake pets, some of which were animatronics that “look so real that kids ask if they’re ok when the dogs go motionless.” A new experience for older children was added, which focused on work in STEM-related fields. This experience, sponsored by Motorola, allowed children to operate a virtual submarine. Nestle would join the project as well, sponsoring an elaborate Wonka Factory where children could learn to be Oompa Loompas. Nestle, who also sponsored La Ciudad De Los Niños, was a perfect fit for the kid city, because they have a long history of relying on children to make their chocolate. The new attractions and sponsorships received positive reviews and significant press. Wannado City appeared to be making positive changes, and the future of the company seemed bright.
In late 2007, it was revealed that real adults working real jobs messed up the real economy so badly that the world entered the Great Recession. The global downturn negatively affected both real cities and miniature fake ones. Schools cut back on field trips, and families reduced their leisure spending. As a result, attendance fell at both kid city theme parks and educational centers. “If we don’t have enough money, we would need to get a stimulus.”
Throughout this period, Junior Achievement was in the midst of transitioning many Exchange Cities into an updated version of the concept with the new branding, JA BizTown. While this was occurring, the recession forced many Exchange Cities to reduce staff and cut costs. One location in New Hampshire closed their doors due to financial difficulties. The original location in Kansas City was in the process of moving from its downtown location to the Kansas City Underground when the recession hit.
Meanwhile, the recession served as another in the long list of setbacks for Wannado City. In 2008, Laresgoiti exited Wannado Entertainment. No specific reasons were given for his departure, but by this point, Wannado City’s expansion plans had almost certainly been abandoned. Around the same time as Laresgoiti’s exit, Wannado City designed an extensive overlay to boost attendance at the park. Dinosaurs were added to nearly every corner of the city, adding new experiences and a new job as a paleontologist. Multiple other professions were affected by the prehistoric invasion. The cooking had dinosaurs, the modeling had dinosaurs, the theater had dinosaurs. CNN was rebranded to the Caveman News Network. There were dinosaurs placed all throughout the city, and the city bus was re-themed to allow children to take a guided tour of the featured creatures. The following year, when most of the dinosaur theming was removed, this vehicle became a Broward County Transit bus as part of a 13-month $50,000 sponsorship with the Florida Department of Transportation.
In August of 2009, the recession, along with the H1N1 Influenza pandemic, resulted in Mundo de Adeveras closing its gates. The park was left abandoned, and many urban explorers have documented the park in recent years. The derelict attraction still has much of its original signage and theming. The factory is still intact, as are many of the building facades. The park is now overrun with miniature graffiti, tiny debris, and child-sized collapsing infrastructure. Mundo de Adeveras would not be the only kid city to fall post-recession, as only a year later, on November 18, 2010, it was announced that Wannado City would close for good.
Few were surprised by the news, as attendance had remained a significant issue for Wannado City. Management had failed to properly address it, despite the addition of new attractions such as the Flavor Makers Taste Emporium in which children could take on the role of a taste tester and try multiple snow cone flavors, and a new show in Wannado City’s theater, named Help!, which was described as “a psychedelic puppet show tribute to the Beatles.” Meanwhile, some aspects of the Wannado City experience had become worse. Admission was increased to $40 per child, which many parents felt was outrageous. Some believed that the experience itself had deteriorated, with some attractions closing during slow periods. When a busy day did occur, queues for the city’s jobs could be long, leading many children to spend a significant portion of their day waiting. Other issues were not new. While Wannado City had clearly learned that charging parents admission was a major deterrent to visiting families, the park was still charging a $10 entry fee for parents in 2010. Even with new sponsorships throughout its life, lack of partnerships was still cited as one of the main reasons for its closure. When contacted, a spokesperson for Wannado City stated that the park had no statement on its closure.
Wannado City was planned to close on January 12, but just a few weeks after this announcement, the date was moved up. Wannado City would officially close its doors on January 2, 2011. 314 employees were laid off, and many of the park’s props, structures, and rides were put up for auction, including the Boeing 727 airplane. The airplane was purchased for $20,000 by a man named Joe Axline, who planned to turn it into his house. Axline’s lifelong dream was to live inside of an airplane, a dream he was finally able to achieve after the closing of Wannado City, as well as his divorce. Axline dubbed his airplane homestead “Project Freedom” in a reference to his divorce. There’s something poetic about the Wannado City plane, which allowed children to live out their dreams of becoming pilots, now being used to help an adult to achieve their childhood dream of living inside of an airplane.
While the closure upset many of Wannado City’s frequent visitors, a group that did not seem disappointed was the management of Sawgrass Mills, who seemed eager to fill the void that the city would leave behind. The large space used by Wannado City would be gutted and transformed into a new shopping area where multiple luxury retailers would set up shop. The new section, named Fashion Row, opened in 2013.
While Wannado City was falling, KidZania was rising. A second location in Japan was constructed, along with new parks in Portugal, Dubai, and South Korea, bringing the total number of KidZanias to eight. Luis Javier Laresgoiti had left both La Ciudad De Los Niños and Wannado City behind, but he could not stay away from kid cities for good. Throughout 2011, Laresgoiti developed a new role-playing theme center under the new brand Kandu. Kandu was significantly smaller and cheaper than Wannado City, costing just $5 million to construct. According to Laresgoiti, the most notable difference between this new project and his previous ventures was that in Kandu, parents could participate in the fun. Laresgoiti acknowledged that the sidelining of parents and guardians was the most common complaint in both the City of Children and Wannado City, and he believed that Kandu would find more success in including everyone in the city’s activities. Kandu was branded as “the first job-experiencing theme park where three generations can enjoy themselves.”
Kandu opened in Bogata, Colombia in January of 2012, with the promise to build four more kid cities throughout the country. That same year, KidZania opened two new locations in Santiago, Chile and another in Mexico City. In 2013, Kandu opened two new cities, a second in Colombia in the city of Medellin, and another in Chiba, Japan. At the same time, KidZania expanded to Kuwait, Egypt, and Thailand. In 2014 and 2015, new KidZanias opened in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, London, and Brazil. KidZania’s expansion remained aggressive, but just three locations in, Kandu had already stalled. In 2015, Kandu Medellin closed its doors after just two years of operation. The following year, while KidZania was expanding to Russia and opening additional fun centers in South Korea and India, Kandu was facing another closure. After four years of operation, the Kandu in Bogata, Colombia closed its doors, leaving the Kandu in Japan as the sole operating location.
In 2016, the Exchange City in Kansas City ceased operations after several years of financial difficulties and a long series of mayors who couldn’t be bothered to take their job seriously. I would have run laps around this kid. I would have won that mayoral race in a landslide. This kid would cry if he saw my campaign. Kansas City’s Exchange City was one of the last remaining Exchange Cities to not transition into a Junior Achievement BizTown, which by the mid-2010s had dozens of locations around the United States. Kandu would finally open an additional location in 2018, when Kandu Torino debuted in Italy. Also in 2018, KidZania would open an additional location in Mexico and a new location in Costa Rica. The following year, four new KidZanias were opened, including, finally, a location in the United States with KidZania Dallas.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic forced most non-essential businesses to close their doors, including kid cities. While most centers would reopen months later with modified experiences, many would cease operations for good during the shutdown. This included four KidZania locations and the Kandu in Torino, Italy. The latter resulted in Kandu once again having just a single operating location. KidZania would recover well in the years following the shutdown, with most locations reopening and several new cities being constructed. As of 2024, 26 KidZanias are operating with five more in development. Junior Achievement has enjoyed a similar success, with over 40 JA BizTowns now operating throughout the United States. In 2021, Junior Achievement opened a new BizTown in Kansas City, bringing the concept back to the city in which it originated.
Thanks to the success of KidZania and JA BizTown, kid cities are as popular as ever, a truth that many feel conflicted about. The effects of kid cities on children is rife with debate. School curriculums, especially in the United States, are often criticized for being too academic, theoretical, and according to some, useless. It is common to hear complaints that what is taught in schools has no real world application. Why did we spend so much time learning about the Pythagorean Theorem when we could have learned about credit scores or how to start a business? Why did the Department of Education insist that we learn that the mitochondria was the powerhouse of the cell rather than forcing us to take a government-mandated tax class that would have been great and that no one would have ever complained about?
In many ways, kid cities are the other extreme, showcasing what a curriculum focused on practicality and vocation looks like. Parents and educators alike lauded the kid cities for their lessons in financial responsibility and career education. But at the same time, over-preparing children for the quote, unquote “real world” has its drawbacks. Cementing the inner workings of society into impressionable minds, to some, can come across as an indoctrination of the status quo and existing power structures. “It’s very hard, in our public school system, for people to learn about the free enterprise system, a system that has built America.” If all you do is teach children how to navigate the existing world, they might be less equipped and motivated to change and improve it. Even from a practical perspective, the world is always changing, and the world that you can educate children on when they are eight will not be the world that they enter when they are eighteen.
The stated reason that Exchange City transitioned into JA BizTown was because the Exchange City curriculum focused heavily on balancing checkbooks and filling out ledgers, skills that were becoming less useful in modern life. Professions also change over time. Today's kidizens and junior capitalists can still take up work as a food worker or a firefighter, but new jobs such as Amazon Fulfillment Warehouse Employee and Amazon delivery driver showcase the passage of time in an unsettling way. In its current form, kid cities act as a supplement to academics. With at most a few weeks of curriculum for the education centers and a focus on entertainment for the fun centers, kid cities are able to escape most criticism, but concerns over the presentation of heavier topics and the infiltration of advertising on impressionable minds should be a continuing conversation, and likely deserves more thought than it has been given over the past 40 years of kid cities.
There will probably never be a consensus on issues such as education style or what age a child should be introduced to McDonald’s, but there is a truth found in the Kid City experience that is less controversial and far more depressing. Children will always want to be adults, and adults will always want to be children. Children envy adults for their freedom, while adults view their freedom as responsibility. This is especially true for those that had a relatively privileged childhood, and were not thrust into adult roles at a younger age due to circumstance. It is easy to blame the existence of kid cities on capitalism, power structures, or the United States, but those are only influences on the content found within. The concept is universal. Kid cities are now enjoyed by children all around the world. Even with a different economic system, in a theoretical utopia, the grass will always be greener, and the genius of Kid Cities is that they harness this yearning and build a large-scale set for kids to play out their desire to experience adulthood. Adults, on the other hand, would rather build a fantastical recreation of their childhoods to return to. Envy may be the thief of joy, that is, unless you build a giant simulated environment so that you can experience the object of your envy, in which case, envy rocks, and if managed well, is extremely profitable. And that, kids, is your lesson in the grown-up world. Man, I would have made a great mayor.