The good news: building a Stars Hollow attraction *is* a possibility (as in it would be allowed if we meet all of the criteria set by WB) and I now have an understanding of what sort of royalty they would be expecting.
The bad news: me alone cannot make this happen. I would need a partner with 5+ years experience in the hospitality field and/or worked with design & construction, licensing experience a plus, and/or experience with the day-to-day of running hotels or parks or restaurants would be a plus, etc.
I was originally going to find these sort of professionals *after* the funding came in via Kickstarter, but the WB requires them prior for their vetting process before approval can happen.
They also want assurance about the land we’d be buying and the town we choose to build in… that studies have been done about traffic, community approval, city manager is on board, etc. That one is hard because it’s not like I can afford the land prior to funding & my realtor was hesitant to do anymore research for me without knowing I had the funding.
The WB VP of Global Themed Entertainment also said that they will NOT approve funding being 100% crowdfunded. ???
She thought *maybe* they’d consider if it was partially crowdfunded, but I would need an investor also contributing a decent amount as well.
So, there is a long, hard road ahead, but it’s not Impossible. I just need the right connections and more people interested in this happening.
I may end up doing some sort of a petition/poll as a dry run to a) figure out how many would pledge if we crowdfunded (because she had her doubts we’d hit the number I wanted, but she was also unaware of how the game ‘exploding kittens’ got over 219,000 backers and raised over $8.5 M… for a flipping card game!) and more importantly b) figure out how many would visit such and attraction & how often. This cannot be done via just Facebook since there are plenty of GG fans not apart of Facebook or Facebook groups.
All is not lost, this is just going to take a LOT more time & work.
Long story short: It’s not over, it’s just beginning & I’m not giving up.?