A boy of about 7 is standing on the precipice of what’s called the Leap of Faith. It’s about a foot wide, just wide enough for a pair of feet, and about 20 feet high — tall enough to get your palms sweating as you grip the orange pole you climbed all the way up.
The idea is to jump — while secured in a rappel harness — from the precipice to grab a hanging black punching bag — a long, heavy bag — before rappelling, safe and sound, to the floor.
That’s it — jump, grab and fall. Gravity does the work, once you make the choice to jump.
The boy is still gripping the pole; three of his friends are waiting at the bottom for him to take the plunge.
“The Leap of Faith is all in your head,” said Joel Chaudoir, senior project manager for Smugglers’ Notch Resort. “It’s all about that fear factor.”
Chaudoir is taking a group on a tour through the resort’s new Family FunZone 2.0, which opened Friday. It’s an upgrade from the original Family FunZone, which was only half as big.
Upgrades include a laser tag arena, a laser maze that allows players to duck under and leap over laser beams like a spy, a video game arcade where players can compete for real prizes, a transparent rock climbing wall and an $80,000 slot-car racetrack built by David Beattie, the man who designed the custom slot-car track in Jay Leno’s basement.
One impressive aspect of the new Family FunZone is where the funding — $5.1 million — came from. Bill Stritzler, managing director of Smugglers’ Notch Resort, said every dollar that went into Family FunZone 2.0 came from Vermont.
“It doesn’t come from out of state or out of the country. … Everything you see here was designed, paid for, conceptualized and built by Vermonters,” Stritzler said. “… It will create at least an additional 20 jobs, and good jobs at that.”
Stritzler said the resort wanted a place where an entire family could gather and play, not just young kids and grandparents.
“We have a very long commitment to be a place for family, and this is a culmination of that objective,” Stritzler said. “Family has always been defined in segments. We wanted to develop a facility for across the board, a place where anyone from 3 to 93 can have fun regardless of age, gender or beverage preferences.”
(Yes, the Family FunZone 2.0 offers beer and wine as well as kid-friendly soft drinks.)
“Parents were telling us, ‘It’s very nice for the kids, but there’s nothing for us to do here,’” Stritzler said, so the staff at Smugglers Notch looked for a way to fix that.
Now, “there’s no place that we know of in the country that you can do everything you can do here in one place,” Stritzler said.
“Bill told me, ‘I want you to build something no one’s ever done before,’” said Stacey Comishock, director of activities at the resort. Comishock wanted to build something in keeping with the resort’s character, and “we really made it work. We ended up with this facility. I really do believe it’s multigenerational, for 2-year-olds and grandparents. They like spending money on their grandkids and they like recreating together. It’s been a labor of love.”
State Sen. Richard Westman of Lamoille County, who was at a ceremonial ribbon cutting on Friday, praised resort staff for funding for the new FunZone with in-state money.
“It would be very hard if this was owned by someone around the world,” Westman said. “Having grown up knowing the original people who started this place in 1956, those people had a vision, and I think you’re living that. I’m proud of this place. This place is home.”
Finally, he jumps
Back to the 7-year-old boy quivering on the precipice at the Leap of Faith.
He finally jumped, and then it was this reporter’s turn.
Everything sounds easy until you really start to climb and see the ground and your friends get smaller beneath you. Your palms start to sweat and you want to climb back down, which, of course, you’re welcome to do — but that won’t do.
“It’s easy,” says the boy, now on the second floor at my eye level. “It’s really fun.”
Here was this strange boy witnessing what felt like a pivotal moment in my life, and he was standing there nodding vigorously.
“Just do it. You’ll be glad you did.”
As I sailed gently — and safely — to the ground, I realized the boy was right. It was really, really fun.
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