In the large social media world of today, there is an abundance of Instagram accounts, websites and YouTube channels that make up the coaster community. Of these thousands of accounts and channels, few stand out above the rest. One of those is Midway Mayhem, the YouTube channel dedicated to POVs, trip reports and most notably construction updates. Midway Mayhem is the go-to spot for in-park updates and coaster construction. Run by Dan Leavelle, the channel features mostly Florida based updates, but also branches out to most coaster construction around the country. We had the chance to interview Dan and get his take on different aspects of the coaster community as well as the effect that the community has had on social media and vice versa.
C101: Hi, Dan. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. What inspired you to get involved in the coaster enthusiast community?
Dan: I’ve always had a love for theme parks ever since I was five years old or even younger. My mom said sometimes I used to take printer paper and string it up in a line and draw roller coasters. And this thing could be 15-20 pages long, and I was doing it at that age. When I went to theme parks in middle school, I always tried to collect cereal boxes that allowed you to get tickets to the parks or I did the book fundraisers so I could get to the parks as much as I could, and it just kind of grew into a love.
Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain was the first coaster that kind of created that “spark.” I went to the parks all the time. My dad passed away when I was 13, and instead of turning to drugs and other bad stuff, theme parks were my drug. So, I was able to able to escape and get away to them, and that’s where I kind of formed into the community. A lot of stuff was going wrong in my life, and I obviously wanted outreach to different people, and to talk to different people, and I found the coaster community very welcoming at the time.
So, I wanted to get more involved in the community. A website started up way back called Beaker’sCoasters.ak.com, and I said “Hey, do you want any help?” And this was when X, Deja Vu, and Goliath Jr. were getting built, so that’s when I really wanted to cover construction. At the time, there were probably less than ten websites out there when it came to theme parks. So, this is way back when.
It grew from there, because I was wanting to be at the parks as much as I could. I would spend every waking moment that I wasn’t at work or at school at a park. The community was very welcoming, they loved the photos and videos, and I wanted to give back.
C101: What made you decide to create your own YouTube channel?
Dan: What sparked me in a way to do Midway is, I had some, quote, “really bleep-y jobs.” I’ve always had to work for someone else and listen to somebody else. And you know what? I said, screw it. I am done with this, I am tired of doing other stuff for other people, so I’m going to do something and I’m doing something because I want to do it for myself and my family.
So, that day I kind of had that decision, I called my mom, who I’m very close with, and I said, “Look, this is going to sound really crazy, but you’re going to have to trust me.” And I said, “I’m going to quit my job the next day and I’m going to start a YouTube.” She was very supportive, but she was very scared and nervous about what could possibly happen. I took a leap of faith, and my wife trusted in me and knew that I was doing a lot of good work and that I had a skill for this, and that’s where Midway started.
My first day that I was really covering stuff, I was Mako Madness before Midway Mayhem. I was at SeaWorld (Orlando) and the Sky Tower got stuck about three quarters of the way up the tower, and I’m like, “Well, this is a heck of a way to start it.” So, I had photos of them trying to evac people off, the fire department and all that. And the news stations picked it up, so I knew it was going to take off really big, and it’s just blown up into something really fantastic.
C101: Midway Mayhem is different from a lot of other channels in that it goes beyond just news coverage and goes into in-park construction updates. What made you choose this style?
Dan: Well, I transferred what I had learned from my high school and done for other sites into my work. I find construction very satisfying because it’s one of those things where you can see the first developments with marketing, or you hear rumbling and grumblings of possibly a project, and then stuff starts happening.
It’s one of those things, I know some people don’t like opening up the present and knowing what’s going to happen before it gets a grand reveal, but, dang, I’m the type of guy that wants to open up the box before Christmas. I want to know what’s going on. I like being able to know what’s getting built, see it start to develop, watch it the whole way through, and then when it comes my time, I plant my butt in the seat and I enjoy myself.
I feel like almost a part of the team. It’s kind of a weird thing, the parks recognize what we do, they appreciate it. It’s a very grey area topic though because they don’t fully endorse it, but it’s one of those things— they appreciate what we do. I wanted something that I could literally go to every single day and see something different, and I think the viewers appreciate that. It’s pretty neat, it’s almost like teaching a new generation of enthusiasts what to look for.
C101: What does it mean to you to be a part of the online coaster community? What sort of connections have you been able to make through social media?
Dan: Let’s put it this way, every single person that comes to me at a park and recognizes me, I say the exact same thing: “If it wasn’t for them, I would not be doing this.” Plain and simple. The community has been so loving and kind. There’s some people that aren’t exactly the nicest, but generally, this community has been very awesome. I’ve had people from the UK and Australia meet me, like all over the country.
I’ve even had people send me gifts! I collect magnets, I literally probably have 400+ magnets on my fridge. And some of them are from people who I’ve met because of Midway. It’s so awesome, man. This community has shaped me from a young age to where I’m at right now and will continue to shape me. Whatever the people want in general as far as coverage, we try to provide.
As far as connections, this is going to be a funny story. I was working with RollerCoasterPro.com at the time. Tatsu had just opened, I was on the crew for that, and I filmed a music video and everything and put it up on the page. And people were watching it, it was pretty popular. Well, I don’t check my junk mail usually. 99.9 percent of the time, always just hit delete, don’t look at it, not worth my time. The one time I decide to look through my junk email, I see an email from somebody, and it just happens to say, “Hey, I really liked your Tatsu video, I happen to work at a theme park in Florida” and that was pretty much it.
So, I responded back and said, “Oh, that’s kind of incidental, I’m going to Florida in a month with my mom on a trip.” So we started talking back and forth and everything, and long story short, the day that it actually came when I met the person that sent the email, Hurricane Ernesto was going on down in Florida. Parks are open during hurricanes, but not the greatest weather. So, chances of somebody ditching are pretty high. And I’m standing over by the lighthouse, and there’s a specific spot on the bridge, and I can still to this day remember, Lauren walking across the bridge with an umbrella, it is hurricane-ing like no other, and it felt like nobody else was around, it was kind of that magic moment.
So, I met my wife because of theme parks, and that’s pretty cool. She fully supports what I do and she’s been on a lot of trips. We constantly plan trips, and she does a lot of the back work for Midway. I’m very proud of her when she does an update too. So as far as meeting somebody, that’s my story.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2shSA-hU0H/
C101: What about the theme parks appeals to you the most, and what first interested you about the industry?
Dan: Escapism. That’s the best thing I can say. I prefer going to a park I’ve never been to. The home parks are nice and everything, but my ideal thing is when I go to a brand new place and I have to pick up a park map. For my recent Japan trip, I knew some rides that were over there, but 95% of the stuff we did, I had zero clue what was going on, and it was amazing. I love having those “GP” moments, I hate the term “GP,” but it’s so satisfying to me to escape everything. Even though theme parks are my job, I can still find solace in parks when I go to them for the first time or many hundreds of times as well.
That’s what kind of drives me going back to the parks. Just being able to sit in front of a roller coaster, doesn’t matter if there’s people around me, I can just watch other people having fun. This industry has a lot of people that are going through things, and they look to theme parks for enjoyment. It’s fun every time I see someone on a roller coaster enjoying themselves, because they could be having the crappiest day, the worst day in the world. But you go ride a roller coaster; it’ll change your mind.
C101: Can you talk a little bit about the growth of your channel over the years?
Dan: I’m a realist. I will give it to you straight. I’m putting this out there so hopefully people will understand this side of me as well. I think there are far too many pages out there as of right now. That’s not just because I have a page and it’s my business or anything like that, it’s just saturation. I was very young when I started getting interested in coasters, maybe 13, and there are a lot of kids out there maybe having the same issues I was at that age. But, man, the internet was different when I was first doing things. We had AOL dialup.
It took a while to download files, you had to scan them, you had to print photos and then upload them, it took a long time to do an update. Now everybody that has a phone can have a page, so you have to set yourself apart. I think having the ability to go to the parks any time I want, and living in Florida is a huge advantage — we always have something getting built. A lot of these pages are Midwest-based or places that are not home to year-round parks, and four months out of the year, they don’t have that much going on.
I think people don’t understand the amount of time that it takes for the construction updates. I’ll go spend four, eight, sometimes even sixteen hours at a park. This is rain, sun, shine, thunder, lightning, 90 degrees, whatever. There are days I feel like I’m going to pass out and die, but I know that the content is worth it and people really want it. So, I will bake out in the sun because I know other people will really enjoy the content.
When I get home, I try to relax, and then it comes into editing. Right now, I’m editing a new SeaWorld Orlando video, and I spent probably 3-4 hours at the park, and I am probably halfway through the editing stage, and I’m about two hours in, and I have at least another 2 hours. Not to mention the photos — every photo is hand touched. I don’t really touch up the colors or anything like that though, because I want people to feel like they’re there. When all is said and done, I can easily spend 15 hours on an update to try to get it out by 7 a.m.
It just takes a lot of time, but it’s very satisfying to me to see people enjoy this. I’d be lying if I didn’t enjoy seeing some of the first stuff. I like being there for when the track arrives for the first time, I like seeing the track go up onto the structure for the first time. To me that is so exciting, because I know everybody else is hyped, and if I’m seeing this, it’s going to make everybody else hyped too. When I see my stuff take off, that’s cool. But even if it doesn’t get a lot of shares, somebody is going to see it, and somebody’s going to appreciate it.
If I say something in the videos, pay attention. Because there’s generally a good reason why I’m saying it because either inside information or my own intel, pay attention. There’s little things that I film and do that people will pick up on, that they can realize, “Oh, crap. This is happening.”
C101: What has your experience been like using YouTube as your platform?
Dan: I started the YouTube channel, but I didn’t think that was how I was going to make money, that wasn’t my expectation from day one. When I started the YouTube, I was pretty much broke, and YouTube does not make you a ton of money unless you have a ton of subscribers or you’re posting videos that are getting hundreds of thousands of views. The platform itself, when I started, was Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. That’s how I always wanted to do it because I wanted to engage people in every single major medium. Each one of them is their own beast. If you look at our YouTube, it’s by far the biggest, we have the highest numbers on there. I don’t know if that’s because of YouTube’s algorithm or what, but generally more people gravitate to that.
It’s more personal, so that’s probably why, because I can talk during the video and say “Hey, this is going on, you might want to keep an eye on it.” Recently, for Gwazi [at Busch Gardens Tampa] we had an update video, and I said, “Track is going up in the next week.” I didn’t promise it or anything like that, but I said the track would be going up in the next week. So, I’m not calling anybody out, but someone on my channel said, “I watched Steel Vengeance [at Cedar Point] from day one, there’s no way it’s going to have track in the next week.” Six hours later the track was on the structure. Like I said, there’s a reason why I say things.
YouTube is by far the best medium as far as communicating, because you can have people watch live with you, you can live stream it, and it gives us a chance to have something that will be saved. If you’re looking into this as a business like we are, it also gives you the chance to monetize it. It gives you a chance to save all of the work that you’ve done, your personality, it’s nice. So, we provide more for that because that’s where more people are coming.
We’ve brought in some new things here and there. Nelson has come onto our team within the last year and he’s done a fantastic job. He’s brought in some stuff that I was not sure about, but I had to trust him, and sure enough, it’s doing pretty good. We’re trying to do analysis and other things like that. We have a lot of great ideas for Midway, and it’s going to be generally for YouTube.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1pa_5FhWpY/
C101: What can young enthusiasts or new enthusiasts who have a passion for coasters themselves do to stand out in the crowded social media space of today?
Dan: Be you. That’s the only thing I can say. You have to stand out. And if you start getting a following, and most of these people when they start a page, that is their drive. I did this not to try to be famous — I don’t want to be famous. People still come up to me, I’ve had people literally shake when meeting me. And I’m like “Why? I’m just some random dude with a camera!” It’s one of those things, you have to stand out, but I don’t want to be famous. I tell people that come up to me in person and say, “You really inspire me to want to do a YouTube channel” and I say, “Just do you.” And people will fail. A lot of people will fail. I could fail, who knows. But as long as you’re it because you’re happy and not for other people, and I know it sounds cliché, but that’s the most important reason.
If you go to the parks and you like taking photos of them and if you can do it, do some quality stuff. If you invest money into the right equipment, it shows. I used to have an $80,000 race car, and I sold the car so I could buy all of my equipment for Midway. My buddy Chad from Ohio Valley Coasters used to have a point-and-click camera, and if that’s where you gotta start, that’s where you gotta start. I’ve always said that the best camera is the one that’s always in your hand. Whether it’s a cell phone or a point-and-click, you could get the first shot of some track showing up and that could be your first big break. People have to also understand that you will fail daily. I’ve had days where I go to parks and nothing happens or I’ve had a major groundbreaking moment like a first test run, and the camera has failed. What do you do in that situation? You learn. You learn from it. And you know what? Next time I had two cameras out there just in case.
C101: Do you have any concluding thoughts or anything else you wanted to say?
Dan: It’s just been crazy, this whole ride with the industry, and I’m looking forward to the future. I’d love to inspire a new group and a new generation of people that want to take photos and do videos. One day, I would like to be able to…hire people for Midway. And some of those people are out there right now taking photos.
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Thanks again to Dan for his time and for allowing us to talk to him about a wide range of theme park topics. You can find Midway Mayhem on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram at the links below.
YouTube: www.youtube.com/midwaymayhemchannel
Facebook: www.facebook.com/MidwayMayhem
Instagram: www.instagram.com/midwaymayhem/
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