Human lizards. Ropes courses. Greaseless fryers. A water balloon fight cage. The annual trade show of the International Attractions and Amusement Park Association (IAAPA) is one giant fun factory.

Held Nov. 15-19 in Orlando, Fla., itself a mecca of the amusement industry, the show hosted 1,140 exhibitors and 25,000 attendees. It is the place to go for ideas, even if most of the show, which is dedicated to artificial experiences, is anathema to resorts. Plus, it makes clear just what the summer (and year-round theme park) competition is up to, and that’s almost as important.

And there’s always something worth seeing. Rick Wiseman of Bromley has been to IAAPA several times. Bromley already has a thriving summer slate: three Alpine Slides, four ziplines, a water slide, giant swing—“that’s a neat attraction,” he says—mini golf, four bungee trampolines, a climbing wall and a kids’ park with inflatable slide, bounce house, and bumper boats. He wants more.

While he saw “pretty much the same things” as in previous years, and yes, “a lot of the booths are not applicable,” he adds, “You see a lot of stuff you don’t expect, especially clothing for the retail shop, and items for impulse buying.”

But that was just for starters. “We try to decorate the attractions in summer,” he says. “We’re putting up some big umbrellas and tents we saw this year. We’re adding some imitation palm trees, and found some suppliers for those. We also found some stand-alone food dispensers for F&B. And a lot of interesting things for the retail shop. Different brands of sunglasses, T shirts, towels, and other items.”

And that got him thinking. “Our retail shop is by the entrance to our park,” he says. “I think if we put a satellite shop up in the base area, we’ll sell a lot more sunscreen, T-shirts, that sort of thing.”

There are more explicit opportunities for education, too. “IAAPA also presents good seminars on a wide range of topics—marketing, safety concerns, using the web more efficiency, a lot of different operations. It kind of dwarfs the NSAA show,” he notes.

For first-time winter resort visitors, the impact is greater. Renée Mattson, executive director of Duluth’s Spirit Mountain, went on the advice of a supplier. “It was great!” she says. “And talk about overwhelming—I realized I had to walk every aisle, and that took two days.”

Spirit installed a mountain coaster last summer, and it drew large crowds. Now, Mattson says, “we’re looking to add activities, and I wanted to touch and feel them in person.

“I saw things for all areas of our operations, and that surprised me,” she says. “We’ve bought some equipment already. We found some really great kitchen equipment—two greaseless deep fat fryers. And some tchochkes for our retail shop. We already took delivery.” A totally self-contained, mobile vending cart, “very James Bondish,” is getting further review. “It’s kind of pricy, but not compared to what you’d pay to build a concession that would stay in one place,” she notes.

One activity that caught her eye was a sort of stationary Zorb or Ogo ball—a giant clear plastic ball spins in place, rather than rolling down a slope. It has some water inside, and guests run, surf, and slide on the inner surface as the ball spins. “It’s like a gerbil running on a treadmill,” she says. “I’m not quite sure how it would translate to our operation, but it’s cool to think about.”

She’s also looking to add mini golf, and grabbed “a thousand brochures” from the dozens of mini golf booths. Mattson also checked out more typical interactive adventure items, including climbing walls, ropes courses, and bungee trampolines.

Artificial skiing surfaces, for skiing or for summer tubing lanes, also caught her eye. “It was nice to actually see those surfaces and see how slippery they were,” she says.

And in the completely unexpected vein: splat balls. “They look like tomatoes or eggs,” she explains. “You throw them and they go splat, then reconstitute themselves. We might sell those in the base lodge this winter; it doesn’t make a mess, even though it sounds like it should.”

“It was a neat show, something I’d like to go to again,” she says.

Both Gunstock and Boyne were also first-time visitors at the show—and arrived in force. Gunstock brought three people; Boyne, four.

And how’d it go? “It was amazing,” says Gunstock GM Greg Goddard, laughing, “like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was more massive than I imagined. Once you start to walk around, it makes more sense, but between the sights sounds and smells it can be pretty overpowering.”

The Gunstock crew—Goddard, Bill Quigley, and Jeff Jacobsen—split up and went separate ways, then compared notes in the evening and sifted out the likeliest candidates. “We definitely came away with a lot of ideas. On the second day we picked 35 vendors to go back and talk to. We found some things we would use to supplement some of the major attractions we’re contemplating. Our theme is family outdoor recreation. But there are lots of things you can add that are low expense and fast ROI that help make a more compete visit.”

Among those things: “the playgrounds and other active features, like the spider climbs and inflatable slides and games people can play. We’re interested in Water Wars [a two-person, water balloon fighting cage—think of a less lethal version of Mad Max’s Thunderdome]. It allows you to have a water-based activity at negligible cost,” he says.

“My overall impression is that there’s so much out there that fits into the mountain resort model that we’re not exposed to through our usual trade shows and the exposure we get as skier area operators,” he says. “It really expands your sense of what’s possible and what fits.”

Goddard expects to implement three or four of the games and rides, in addition to active attractions. “We’re certainly going to be doing things with active kids play, water-based activities, some of the waterfront-type stuff. We can use our snowmaking pond for paddle boats and kayaks, and eventually even bumper boats,” he says. That water focus suits a resort in New Hampshire’s lakes region.

Boyne, too, used a tag-team approach for its first-ever trip to IAAPA. The team included Richard Wren, John McGregor, Joel Woods, and Big Sky’s Christine Baker.

Their impression? “Holy huge!” Wren says. “We were there for two days, and barely had time to talk to people.

“It was very international,” he adds. “Everything and anything was on display. You could pretty much find anything you could want.”

Like other resorts, Boyne was looking for outdoor, interactive adventure activities, “everything from ropes courses to bungee tramps. We saw a high ropes course that piqued our interest, and spent some time at the Extreme Engineering booth with its climbing walls, auto belays, and bungee tramps.”

Technology, both hardware and software, was everywhere. “All the different aspects of attractions were utilizing new technology, from the hydraulics in the bungee trampolines to the 3D and 4D movie theaters. Tech is really driving the industry,” Wren says.

Among the many surprises were the range of software vendors. “A few of them had some good ideas,” he notes. Boyne is also looking for a way to do photography on its ziplines, and there were dozens of variations on that theme.

One unexpected takeaway: “We’re looking into doing Segway tours,” Wren says. “We had looked into it before, but we talked to a few people at the show, and they have already come up to visit us.”

And that is yet another example of what makes IAAPA valuable for winter resorts. As Wren says, “It shows what’s out there that we don’t know about yet.”