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From Blank Slate to Data-Driven: Todd Andrus on 26 Years of Building the Attractions Industry
Todd Andrus
Vice President & Executive Director, North America
IAAPA
8 min read | 22nd July | John Kouimtzis
“We can't take our eyes off the core of what we do, which is making memories”
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Todd Andrus has spent 26 years in the attractions industry, opening some of the biggest names, including LEGOLAND Florida, the Orlando Eye, Madame Tussauds and SEA LIFE Orlando. Each of those launches meant making high-stakes decisions from day one, combining research, experience and instinct to build attractions that would eventually become data-rich operations.
Today, Todd is Vice President and Executive Director, North America at IAAPA, the global trade association for the attractions industry. The role has shifted his focus from running individual attractions to supporting the industry as a whole, through policy advocacy, education programming, and the kind of one-on-one conversations that come from 26 years of operators trusting his experience.
In this conversation, Todd reflects on the lessons only large-scale attraction launches can teach, how data and experience work together to shape better decisions, and what attendees can expect from IAAPA Expo 2026 in Orlando.
01
The Blank Slate
You've been involved in the opening of major attractions including LEGOLAND Florida, the Orlando Eye, Madame Tussauds and SEA LIFE Orlando. What have those large-scale launches taught you that simply can't be learned from operating an established attraction?
When you're opening new attractions, there's no script. There's no predetermined way forward. Everything is very market specific. I've opened attractions in different parts of the US, and Orlando specifically is just a different beast altogether. You've got tourists, , whether it's international visitors, domestic tourists, or the nearby drive market. You're starting with a blank slate.
From a marketing perspective, you have to be mindful of the different levers you pull,. With an existing attraction, there's already awareness in the market, and you're pulling levers to drive ticket purchase. When you're opening a new site, you first have to build the anticipation and the awareness, so you lean more heavily into earned media channels to drive that.
You also have to be very articulate in painting the picture. Nine times out of ten, you don't have an existing building or an existing attraction. You're going off artist renderings, but that only gets you so far. You have to paint the picture verbally about what people are going to see and be very specific in how you craft that story.
“You're first selling yourself and putting yourself out there. People are buying you, and then trusting that what you're telling them is actually going to be delivered.”
The next part is that relationships matter. Because there's no history to the attraction, you're leaning on your existing relationships to develop promotions, to get the media to come out and pay attention to what you're building.
And then there's the business model. You have no historical understanding of how this thing is going to perform, what expenses are going to be, what revenue is going to be. Sometimes you’ll have a consultant working alongside you, but there's really no firm understanding of how the business will perform. You have to be super critical as you're laying that out, because if you build that business plan and completely miss it in year one, it cascades through every year after. You end up chasing that initial selling concept. So conservative estimates are really the way to go.
I'll tell a quick story here. When we opened the Aquarium, we factored rain into the business model as a negative, assuming people wouldn't want to leave their hotels in bad weather. What we actually found was the opposite. When it rained, we'd have a line 45 minutes long, because people weren't going to outdoor attractions, they wanted somewhere indoor. Any time it rained, we had a windfall. I'm not going to say I did a rain dance, but I did a rain dance quite frequently.
02
Balancing the Ledger
You've been vocal about issues such as TSA funding, policy advocacy in Washington, economic impact studies. How much of your role ends up being about the visitor experience directly, versus the conditions that make the industry viable in the first place?
This is a careful balance. IAAPA North America has a dedicated team working on federal policy in Washington, D.C., a team working across multiple states, and people working with Canadian governments at both the federal and provincial level. We also have a dedicated C-suite, including our CEO Jakob Wahl and COO Michael Shelton, who work on behalf of our members. Everybody works in concert with each other so we can deliver value for our members.
What I love is spending time with our membership, understanding the value they're getting from IAAPA, and hearing directly from them about what we can do better. Hearing what issues are most important to them, what their challenges are, so we can find solutions and drive the industry forward. We're a member-based, member-run organisation, so spending time with our members and hearing how we can better serve them, better help them, and clear the way for them is genuinely important.
“Everybody is tied into the attractions industry. They spend their time at the attractions, they're season pass holders, they love being part of it.”
That passion shows up in the strangest places. I was in DC about a month ago meeting with senators and members of Congress about policy and workforce development, and at the end of every single conversation, we would ask what their favourite coaster was, or what their first coaster was. You'd watch them turn instantly from policy talk to a memory of riding their first coaster with a parent.. All the workforce development and policy conversation falls away, and they go straight back to that memory. They instantly got that we were in the business of making memories and they were willing to help.
And how great that we get to be part of creating that, those family memories. That's what I love about this industry.
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IAAPA Expo, Orlando
03
Direct to Indirect
You've spent much of your career helping individual attractions grow attendance, but now you're focused on helping an entire industry grow. How has that shift from operator to industry leader changed the way you define success?
It's a transition from direct to indirect impact. My role now is about developing the tools that allow individual parks to do better, whether that's education, advocacy, developing white papers on best practice, or even just advice. I've been in the industry for 26 years, and I have one-off conversations with operators all the time where they're struggling with something, and I'll give them my perspective on what we would do in that situation when I was an operator. It sparks something, and it's a pretty incredible back and forth. But again, it's that shift from direct impact to something more indirect.
The other side of it is macro growth of the industry. Through our advocacy efforts, we're helping improve the industry collectively, through workforce initiatives, through policy work. We've got legislation right now on drone regulation, so individuals can't fly drones over fixed-site theme parks. That's a mechanism that will provide a safer guest experience.
“Because of the work we're doing, we're helping raise the tide, which is going to lift all the ships together.”
04
Where Instinct Still Wins
The attractions industry has become significantly more data-driven over the past decade. How do you see technology changing the way operators make decisions, and where do you think instinct is still needed?
I've been in the industry for 26 years, mostly in marketing, and we've always relied on data wholeheartedly, demographic information, ticket sales, visitor trends. From an operator perspective, you're looking at people movement through the parks, queue lines, retail sales, food and beverage sales. There's an inordinate amount of data available, and technology makes looking at it a lot easier. It simplifies things and shows you trends. But instinct and experience is what you do with the data.
"Technology simplifies the data and shows you the trends, instinct is what turns that into action."
You need that instinct, that experience, to actually run the attraction. Data is not going to run it for you. And that experience is hard to train. There are a lot of people just getting into the industry who see a bad weekend in the data and don't know what to do with it. A veteran who's been in it a long time knows what they've tried before that didn't work, and what has worked, whether that's adding value to drive up basket value or understanding what actually motivates consumers to return. It's an art, and I love it.
05
Data, Dreams and the Human Element
AI is dominating conversations across every industry right now. Where do you believe it will genuinely improve the attractions industry over the next five years, and where do you think the human element will always remain irreplaceable?
AI is a constant conversation. At the IAAPA Expo, we educate about 20,000 people over seven days, and if you look at the education programming, AI has been one of the top submitted topics over the last couple of years, because everybody's trying to figure out what its impact is going to be and how to take advantage of it.
From this seat, I see AI as something that analyses a lot of data, and one of the ways that's really going to help our industry is crowd management. It can help map out where people are going within a park, so you can manage guest flow, understand where you need to place attractions so not everyone's moving in one direction, and figure out where to put retail, food and beverage, or restrooms.
AI is going to expedite that and make it a lot more data-driven, versus finger in the air and then investing capital in an attraction later on. AI is also going to help with personalisation, from ticket planning and trip planning through to the visit itself, so you're offering the right products to the right person rather than wasting time, effort and money on the wrong pitch. I was at an attraction just last month that's launching something that takes your likeness and puts you into the attraction itself, so you're looking at a beautiful vintage poster and suddenly it's you on the motorcycle. That's AI making that possible, and then you can buy it in the gift shop. Really neat.
"AI is going to expedite the data, and that just means more time and more precision spent on the moments that actually make the memory."
But hospitality is run by people. When you walk into an attraction and there's the warm smile of the person welcoming you in, that immediately sets the tone for the day and establishes the brand of that attraction. The other human element I'd point to is safety. When you sit into a roller coaster and someone comes over, looks you in the eye and checks your harness, you feel safe. Someone has checked it. Especially in hospitality, there are many instances where the human element is required and needed.
06
The Friction Audit
Through IAAPA you have visibility across the entire ecosystem, parks, zoos, museums, FECs, suppliers. What's one trend you think the industry should be paying far more attention to than it currently is?
This is going to sound counterintuitive, but it's making sure we don't take our eyes off making family memories. That's the core of what we do. Sometimes attractions get too slick, too technologically savvy, too far ahead of their skis, and lose sight of that. We just can't take our eyes off providing a space where, as a parent, you can take your kids and feel like a good parent for a few hours.
The second component is removing friction at every point, whether that's buying tickets, coming through the front gate, or waiting in line to buy a soda. The modern family isn't patient. They want it now, and if you've got friction points in the way, that detracts from wanting to go to the attraction in the first place. We need to be laser-focused on eliminating those friction points, because doing that plays directly into creating family memories.
That's what it comes down to, if I have to figure out where to park, I'm already ticked off before I've even set foot in the door. If I have to search for a QR code in my email and the scanner doesn't work, I'm angry before I've walked in. So how do we make it effortless? If my ticket is already on Apple Pay or Google Wallet, I scan it and I'm in, smiling. If I've pre-purchased food, I'm not pulling out my wallet.
There was a park I visited in Mexico, Xcaret, a phenomenal property, where they had cameras set up throughout the entire park. I had a wristband from staying at the hotel, and I'd scan it near a camera and it would take a photo. Every picture from the day went straight to our hotel room TV, and if we wanted to buy them, we could just charge it to the room. What I wasn't doing was pulling out my phone in the park, because the second I do that, I'm thinking about work notifications and I'm separated from my family. That system was built to keep me present with my family while still capturing the memories. It eliminated friction, but it stayed focused on the family moment. That's ultimately what it's all about, improving the guest experience.
Xcaret Park, Mexico
07
What's Next: IAAPA Expo 2026
As the person responsible for bringing partners into Funlab Venues, how do you future-proof a partnership today for a venue experience that might look quite different tomorrow?
IAAPA Expo 2026 kicks off November 16th, and it's going to be a historic event. We're increasing the size of the show floor by 50%, expanding from the North-South building into the West building, so we'll have both buildings running side by side. More vendors, more education, more connection opportunities, more of everything. It's going to be our largest expo ever.
It's organised around a pavilion strategy, so businesses in similar categories sit together. We've got operational services, a chef's demonstration area and food pavilion, an inflatables area, and Haunting Grounds, the interactive haunted attraction suppliers area, which used to be off to the side and is now moving onto the main show floor. The two buildings are divided up by pavilion, connected by a walkway that's about a seven-minute walk, and we'll have transportation running constantly between them.
Thursday night we head back to Universal Epic Universe for IAAPA Celebrates. Last year that event was members only, this year we're opening it up to non-members too, so if you've got a friend who isn't a member yet, you can bring them along. The whole park will be open, with all-inclusive food and beverage available, just like last year. It's the best way to experience Epic Universe.
“It's about making connections that will lead to business in the end.”
We're also working on some signature events with keynote speakers, inspirational people focused on moving the industry forward. And this year we're introducing IAAPA After Hours, an opening night celebration in the West Building . Last year you had to pay to attend; this year it's free, so more people can mix, mingle and make plans to catch up later in the week. We wanted to make that first night more accessible to everyone.
At the end of the day, that's really what the Expo is about, the connections.
Register for IAAPA Expo, Orlando: https://iaapa.org/expos-and-events/iaapa-expo
IAAPA Expo, Orlando
Final Thoughts
Todd's answers circle back to the same idea: the fundamentals don't change, build trust before you build the business case, know your market well enough to call the right shots when the numbers can't, say focused on the guest experience, and use the tools that help you get better at it.
That's what's carried him from opening attractions to helping steer the industry from the top. And it's the same thinking behind what's coming at Expo 2026, bigger, more connected, still built around getting people back to the moments that matter.
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