December 9, 2025 • 20 mins
Step into the fantasy world of Mark Klaus, creator of CASTLE NOEL. “America’s Largest Year Round Indoor Christmas Entertainment Attraction.” Experience 40,000 square feet of amazing installations,
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
On this initiative Cleveland CEOs, you should know a conversation
with Castle Nowell, which has fast become one of americas
must see Christmas attractions on the square in Madina. And
it was all started by one man with a certain
twinkle in his eye. So I'm not exactly sure what
to call you. Is it to Santa of Northeast Ohio?
Mark Claus? Mister Clause? What do we call you, Mark Claus?
(00:24):
That'll work?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, that works great.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
So I will tell you My experience is that I
see him in the summertime, very rarely by the way
out on the Portage Lakes because he works all the time.
He's got a boat that looks like a sleigh because
Christmas is year round for you.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, it's the prance or power had one fifty on
the beast that is.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
So.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
What's new at Castle Nowell this year? Oh my gosh,
this year is just incredible. There's sparkled around, tons of
new props all over the place, Christmas story, Santa Claus,
the movie Jingle all the Way. Jingle all the Way
is huge because we've always had the turboman costume and
the booster costume. I have been searching and searching for
(01:04):
the Dementor costume, Sindbad's costume with the brain in the top,
that real cool piece. And I've been looking everywhere, and
I know a lot of people in the movie industry,
and I'm like, where is that thing. I was even
on a show with Sinbad and I'm like, Sinbad, do
you have the dementor costume? Well, I don't know if
I have it or I don't know. I'm like, come on, man,
if you have I know, I'm like, come on, man,
just tell me if you have it or don't. I
want to buy it. And it just wouldn't come up anywhere.
(01:27):
I couldn't even get a lead on it then. And
then last year there was this auction and I flipped
the Oh my, there it is. I look at my wife.
I'm like, honey, I'm sorry, But no matter what happens,
this has got to end up at Castle Moel.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So So what else is on your wish list of
things that you want to get in for people to
come see?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
You know, I'm always just looking for something that people
remember and people enjoy. We have some professional wrestlers coming
in in December and they're bringing signed versions of their
action figures and yeah, it's cool, but I'm always just
looking for the next thing, the next big experience. Like
this year, one of our huge things is the new
(02:04):
Gingerbread Theater. Now, I wanted you to feel like you
walked inside of a real giant gingerbread house, and that
meant I had to have a ton of detail. So
I sculpted all these different models of frosting like that
you put on a gingerbread house, real big ones, and
my son and I casted ten thousand of those pieces
to make up this pattern in this gingerbread house over
(02:26):
the summer, ten thousand pieces of frosting, not to mention
like twenty five thousand pieces of candy that are also
installed inside of that room. And I wanted to do
something that really took us to a new level. So
we have an audio animatronic show where you're entertained by penguins,
an owl, a polar bear, piano player, the yetti, all
(02:47):
this stuff that goes on. You're invited to Santa Clauss party.
The big thing is that they're trying to make this
great gingerbread house for Santa. And at the end, during
this big piece of music, the floor opens a ten
foot gingerbread house Rye. This is out of the stage
and it's just like more to see, more to take in,
more to do. The Grand Hall. When we started we
(03:08):
had all track lights, right because we're just trying to
build what we could. Now it's all theatrically lit. And
then now a computer show runs the entire room. So
the Christmas tree, the twenty four foot tree was stripped
down this year, wired with five different kinds of controllable light,
and the entire room is now organized into a singular
(03:28):
light show that happens while you're in there. Everything in
Caston Nowell is being upgraded. You know. We get a
lot of people coming they're like, oh my god, I
was here two years ago. It's completely different. I don't
get it right. So that's really the goal. We work
on it. I work on it seven days a week,
and my staff is awesome. They are. We're not a
big crowd, but man, it's like a bunch of kids
(03:49):
building the coolest for whatever. Right. We're just we're just
in there pitching and pitching. We're working on a new
Santa's virtual sleigh ride. But it's not just a virtual
sleigh ride, it's a show. We have incredible props and
setups in their Sata's magical machines with lists printing and
lights going off and meters counting the kids, and you know,
(04:09):
everything I do. I want to lift it to a
level that people don't expect. And I'm so thankful. I
got to tell you, it's so humbling. I told my
wife last year, I said, you realize we don't own
this anymore, and she goes, what do you mean we
don't own it? I'm like, this belongs to the people
(04:29):
that love it. We have thousands of families that come
every single year. There's people There's a lady that took
a picture holding her baby on her stomach, like when
she was standing by the slide, and she takes that
picture every year. Soun'sdown fourteen right, She's got them wrapped
around the same picture. So for me, it's a responsibility
(04:50):
to make sure that this piece of all these thousands
of families that come every year a piece of their Christmas.
And so we're responsible to keep that that pure dream there.
We're responsible to make sure that every year these people
can say that's a big part of their Christmas. Right,
So I take it. I'm super humbled by it. It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
And that is one thing that we all look to
do is make those cherished Christmas memories with their families. Right,
that went away for a while and it started to
come back, and and how many years now total?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Fourteen? This is we're moving into our fourteenth.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Fourteen fourteen season. Now I'm going to guess and say
that when you started this, there were some people who
were going, this guy's a little crazy, this guy's a
little nuts.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, there were those.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
And now you're responsible for this entire tourism area in
downtown Medina where people come by the thousands every holiday season. Yeah,
and in turn the other businesses benefits. Oh yeah, and
we're thrilled with that. I remember one day there was
a bus and they had just gotten out of the
castle and she says to my wife, the bus manager,
(05:59):
she says, oh my god, something fell out that we
were supposed to do later. We need to kill twenty minutes.
Is there anything we could kill twenty minutes on? And
there's this great little popcorn store on the square and
we're like, Dana's like, go up to something's popping. They
got all sorts of really cool stuff in there. And
so Dana called him and said they're coming, and they
unloaded the bus into their store and she was so thankful.
(06:21):
She brought us down this big box of popcorn and
it was like, that was awesome. I love the fact
that what we're doing there. First off, Madna's a wonderful town.
It's vibrant, it's a live it's an incredible place. It's
like a courier and nice Christmas card. So when you
come to Castle Noel, it feels right. You know, if
you come from out of town, you know, it was
easier places for me to buy or build inside of
(06:43):
a big old office Max, right, But you'd have been
going into like a semi closed down shopping center and
the inside would have been magical, but it wouldn't have
felt like if you came from Indiana. We have tons
of people come from ten hours away, and if you
drove up to an old office Max, no matter how
magical it is inside, you'd be like, Okay, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I hope it's great. But when you come from out
of town and you drive into Medina with the gazebo
and the lights and all the great stuff and its Christmas,
it's the right feeling. And the town is awesome. Look
what last year I was so I was so blessed
to be a part. I came up with this idea
to bring Christmas to hundreds of people that lost everything
(07:23):
down in North Carolina, and the town pulled together with us,
and really as a group, we came together and I
was in tears when that night came where we had shows,
we had the castle, we had the mini golf, they
had the candlelight, they had the Christmas parade. Came back
just for that one night in January for this and
(07:46):
the fireworks were there that same thing. And when I
saw the way people were running out and shaking hands
with the people that were there visiting us and just
love them. Man, It's like you can't be in a
better town than that, right, So it's a great town.
I love Medina and I'm thrilled to be there.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
So you really have created a different category of a
business that hasn't been duplicated. You would think that it
would be easy to duplicate. Like you look at a
haunted house, right right, It seems like almost anybody can
throw up a haunted house these days. But what you
have is you've created something totally unique that cannot be duplicated.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Well, we have things that you you know, first off,
it's it's never been about how fast can we build
a business get people in their boo boom boom. Man.
You walk through there and you can see when people come.
We spend piles of whatever gets in on the product,
whether it's trimming the hallways, whether it's new animations, whether
it's new it's about the gift. You know, this is
(08:48):
a place that celebrates my mom and dad. I lost
my mom in a car accident on Christmas Eve when
I was sixteen years old, and so Christmas was super tough, right,
But I was always good at helping. I used to
do Santa run bys. Those were really great, like back
before there were cell phones everything else. I was in
high school. I would do these Santa run bys because
I felt like if you saw Santa Claus on Christmas
(09:10):
Eve in your house, you knew he wasn't real if
you were a kid, right, but if you saw him
running through your backyard, well you know then maybe. So
I used to do that and all that, and so
when this came up, did you have the beard then too? Oh? No,
I had this awesome camel hair, beard, and a top
notch suit. I went all out, and I used to
do There was a schedule, you know. People would call
(09:31):
and I would put him on a schedule, and I'd
show up at that prescribed time and run through their
backyard and wave at the kids through the windows and
they'd all laugh, and it was wonderful when I got home.
The one time, I think I was a senior in
high school, I went back to my girlfriend's house at
the time, and her mom said, Oh, my friend's grandson
is at their house. Would you do one more of
these things? And I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll do another one,
(09:54):
you know. So it's like eleven thirty. I went over
to her house. I parked the car. It was snowy
and nice, and I grabbed my stuff. I start running
through the yard and I'm running and I turned to
the left to look at the window. He's standing there
in the window looking out, hands on the window. Still.
I wave, And as soon as I wave, I'm laying
on my back with my beard and hat hanging off
(10:14):
of the clothesline because I literally closed line myself at
full speed. I jumped up, grabbed my stuff, ran out
of the yard, I was so worried the kid saw it,
you know, and so I called up and she was worried.
I broke my neck and I called him up and
they said no. As soon as he the second he
saw you, he spun around to get his grandpa, so
he did not see the But you know, it's like
(10:37):
this whole Christmas thing, it's important. When we grew up,
Christmas had this shared energy, right, Like I don't know
if you remember when you were a kid and it
would be that winter night and close to Christmas and
somebody's mom would yell out the house, Rudolph's on in
five minutes, you know, and every kid would run. And
(10:58):
even though you were with your family, watch root Off
the Red Nose Reindeer in your house, you knew every
other kid everywhere was watching rud Off the Red Nose Reindeer.
So there was this shared energy. You went to the
malls all decorated up right, all this fun stuff. And
when I went to a mall and saw that they
had put Santa Claus on a folding chair and their
center display was a polar bear arctic thing with no
(11:19):
holiday in anything in it, I looked at my wife.
I'm like we can't let this happen. So we want
to make that great, big Christmas thing that's special that
people families can share together. And it's because it's not online,
it's not something like the movies they could watch in
July or something else. It becomes that that wonderful the
(11:42):
family goes together. We enjoy this, this couple hours together.
I see kids on dad's shoulders, kids with their faces
plastered against the window displays from New York. You know,
people not staring at their phones. Right, they're sharing something together.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And you've even taken that a step further because you
have the restaurant there now. Yeah, so they can make
the really legitimately make a day out.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Oh yeah, well, first you can go to Castle Lowell
and then you go down to Alien Vacation where Santa
Claus meets the Aliens. I like to call my mini
golf a mini golf for people that don't like mini golf,
because it's this incredible journey through all sorts of places
that in the world, a Mayan temple and a North
Pole and a jungle with a t Rex and the
alien planet, and there's movie props sprinkled around like the
(12:28):
slee stack from Land to the Lost and some Men
in Black Stuff and we're upgrading that with a bunch
more sci fi props coming soon. And now with the restaurant,
the Starlight Room, you can you can go to Castle Luell.
You can go have some great burghers and paninis and
stuff at our restaurant and it's underneath a light show
with ten thousand lights above your head. So during your
(12:50):
there's this wonderful ambient light and then during your dinner
there's different shows that go off with the music above
your head. And it's just a way to spend a
day and really feel like you got the most out
of Christmas.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, well, there's no shortage of Christmas year round there.
I mean, there are people who, as you know, listen
to Christmas music in the middle of summer. There are
people who love to watch Christmas movies in the middle
of summer. That's why the TV networks put them on, right.
You see people visiting in the middle of summer too.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Oh, we're we're busy a lot, all the travelers and such.
And in the summer we have great summer programs. We
do Island Drum Night, we do Full Luau's where we
have the fire dancers and the pig Ross and I
don't mess around. I go right to Hawaii get the
actual cast of folks that you know, they're right from
the culture. So it's really really cool. And uh so
(13:42):
there's all sorts of summer programs. They'll be Latin music
next summer. So we also are opening our outdoor patios.
So we have the most beautiful outdoor patio for dining
and having a drink and enjoying it. It's not like
a sports bar. We have giant TV, a giant we
know that you were in Madna. Well that's the idea, right,
not giant Paul trees, a waterfall, beautiful timber structures, the stage.
(14:04):
I mean, it's just gorgeous and people. We had a
Halloween event and there were so many people that were there.
They're just, oh my gosh, I never knew it was
going to be like this. And even though it was cold,
they're all sitting outside because we have fire pits and
you know, all the good stuff. So it's all it's
all really about giving people a level of experience that
(14:26):
separates them from their daily grind, right, So.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
There you have that a nice relaxing night out the
tiki bar kind of thing. And then right around the corner,
Uncle Eddie's r V from the Critter, it's.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Right there with you. Are you kidding me? It's a
concert reminder of the joy of the season. And Cousin
Eddie's Motor Home. We've got it half refit so far.
We're not messing with the beauty that is the horrible
inside of Cousin Eddie's motor Home, but we are going
to be offering opportunities for people to have dining inside.
They're gonna eat in Cousin Eddie's Motorhome. They'll two six
(15:00):
top tables, one in the front, one in the back,
and people have a chance to eat inside Cousin Eddi's
motor room. There's an enormous demand for this and we
are trying to get that set up as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Probably your most photo photoed spot maybe, right, that's the
one I always see people.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
People are always photoing that. Of course they photo a
lot of stuff, but that is a huge that's a
huge thing. Right. People get dressed up, they come over there,
they drive from Oklahoma with those costumes for their Christmas
card photo in August and they're like, so there's always
always more going on with that thing.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
So has there ever been a prop something that you've
gone to purchase and you've really had to convince your
wife it was okay for you to buy it, or
has she been on board for a most okay?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, I learned earlier my wife likes to play the
voice or reason like to everybody around. She's she could
play the suffering like that to deal with the goofy husband, right,
But the fact is, I can't have her in a
room when I'm at an auction, around an auction because
there's a limit, right, because you could go you could
go crazy. I mean, I watched a little rubber bug
from Star Trek the next Generation, so for thirty three
(16:06):
thousand dollars, and it wasn't even like a rubber bug.
I knew it was just a rubber bug. So you
never know. A piece of cardboard that said the end
from a B movie company went for one hundred thousand dollars,
So you never know what things are going to go for.
So there is a limit, you know. I try to
get as much as I can, but there's a limit
when when a prop goes crazy, like I was in
way too long on Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer puppet.
(16:28):
My wife would have shot me, but it ended up
going for like almost a half a million dollars. Oh wow.
So so I don't have her in the room because
she will say one more, one more if I bid one.
Although I have to tell you when I bought The
Miracle on thirty fourth Street, Santa Claus Suit, I was
literally shaking, and because it just you know, it was
(16:51):
such a piece of history. It's a piece of history.
It was such an iconic movie, and I knew I
really wanted to bring that for people to see and
feel close to that history. And but it kept growing
and growing, and I was literally shaken. And my son
was in the room with me and he puts sand
on my shoulder and goes, just one more, Dad, just
go one more. And it was like it was just
(17:13):
about to close. And I went one more and then
it sold to us, and I was like, once it
was over, I was okay with it more so, but
it was just like it gets it. You get emotionally
involved in that, you know. Because and then when I
watched we brought it out for Santa Day. We have
a whole bunch of Santas that come every May, and
they do like a convention there. And when I brought
(17:34):
that out, there were guys crying, like, you know, that's it,
that's mere, you know, and everybody grew up with that,
our parents grew up with that. I mean, that movie's
been around since the end of the war. Yeah, and
so to have something that special is really exciting. And
the Santa's in Reindeer from Santa Claus the movie, and
you know, the new Dementor costume from Jingle all the
(17:54):
way along with Booster and Turboman, the Grinch is Sleigh.
You know, I don't often get a chance to walk
through and appreciate because I'm always looking at the things
I need to do, the things I need to improve on.
But every once in a while, I have to take
a walk through with a reporter or somebody that comes
in from out of town and I want to show
them the place, and and I walk around and I
(18:15):
get them. I'm like, don this is some really amazing stuff,
right I had that. Well, it's it's just it really,
it's really been.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
But that's the amazing thing for visitors is that we
go through and our kids may not appreciate everything that
we do, but there's things that they appreciate that we don't.
But we'll see Sindbad's costume and we remember seeing that movie, right,
and watching Arnold Schwarzenegger run through the streets of Minneapolis
to try to find Turbo Man and all of that,
and it just that's what's great. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And the toy Land hits that harder than anything, right,
I mean, I want Toyland was always a big part
of the castle. People loved it. And then I decided
to yes and upgrade Toyland, and I spent over a
year and a half off redoing Toyland with just tens
of thousands of toys. Put a year and a half
into just attaching toys to the wall. And it's not
(19:09):
done in a way like a museum would do, with
a very clean presentation, And it looks like our closet
when we were a kid. Right. You kick open the
door and you just blow through all the toys that
are on the floor till you find the one you
want to play with. Well, that's sort of what it's like.
But you walk through a thousand hot wheels rotating around you,
and you see like guys of a certain age. I
told my wife when we redid it, I go, there's
(19:30):
certain things I have to get. One of those things
was the USS flag, the g I Joe aircraft carrier.
I mean, it was too big for everybody's living room.
It costs too much money, so nobody's parents wanted to
buy it. Like kids at school say I got that,
and you'd be like, now you don't, you know? Then
show us right, And so that's there and you see
guys like, oh my gosh, you know there it is.
(19:52):
It's like the holy Grail of toys and all the
you know, Missus Beasley from people that grew up in
the sixties from family Affair and just that room is
completely coated in toys and then the anywhere window frames,
everything else is we individually glued every playing card or
(20:15):
money from the movie, from the different games, the different money,
and so it's a giant collage, ceilings, walls, everything. People
love that.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
That's Mark Klass of Castle Nowell. You can see everything
that he was talking about in person at Castle Noel
on the Square in Madina and online at Castlenowel dot
com
On this initiative Cleveland CEOs, you should know a conversation
with Castle Nowell, which has fast become one of americas
must see Christmas attractions on the square in Madina. And
it was all started by one man with a certain
twinkle in his eye. So I'm not exactly sure what
to call you. Is it to Santa of Northeast Ohio?
Mark Claus? Mister Clause? What do we call you, Mark Claus?
(00:24):
That'll work?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, that works great.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
So I will tell you My experience is that I
see him in the summertime, very rarely by the way
out on the Portage Lakes because he works all the time.
He's got a boat that looks like a sleigh because
Christmas is year round for you.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, it's the prance or power had one fifty on
the beast that is.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
So.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
What's new at Castle Nowell this year? Oh my gosh,
this year is just incredible. There's sparkled around, tons of
new props all over the place, Christmas story, Santa Claus,
the movie Jingle all the Way. Jingle all the Way
is huge because we've always had the turboman costume and
the booster costume. I have been searching and searching for
(01:04):
the Dementor costume, Sindbad's costume with the brain in the top,
that real cool piece. And I've been looking everywhere, and
I know a lot of people in the movie industry,
and I'm like, where is that thing. I was even
on a show with Sinbad and I'm like, Sinbad, do
you have the dementor costume? Well, I don't know if
I have it or I don't know. I'm like, come on, man,
if you have I know, I'm like, come on, man,
just tell me if you have it or don't. I
want to buy it. And it just wouldn't come up anywhere.
(01:27):
I couldn't even get a lead on it then. And
then last year there was this auction and I flipped
the Oh my, there it is. I look at my wife.
I'm like, honey, I'm sorry, But no matter what happens,
this has got to end up at Castle Moel.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So So what else is on your wish list of
things that you want to get in for people to
come see?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
You know, I'm always just looking for something that people
remember and people enjoy. We have some professional wrestlers coming
in in December and they're bringing signed versions of their
action figures and yeah, it's cool, but I'm always just
looking for the next thing, the next big experience. Like
this year, one of our huge things is the new
(02:04):
Gingerbread Theater. Now, I wanted you to feel like you
walked inside of a real giant gingerbread house, and that
meant I had to have a ton of detail. So
I sculpted all these different models of frosting like that
you put on a gingerbread house, real big ones, and
my son and I casted ten thousand of those pieces
to make up this pattern in this gingerbread house over
(02:26):
the summer, ten thousand pieces of frosting, not to mention
like twenty five thousand pieces of candy that are also
installed inside of that room. And I wanted to do
something that really took us to a new level. So
we have an audio animatronic show where you're entertained by penguins,
an owl, a polar bear, piano player, the yetti, all
(02:47):
this stuff that goes on. You're invited to Santa Clauss party.
The big thing is that they're trying to make this
great gingerbread house for Santa. And at the end, during
this big piece of music, the floor opens a ten
foot gingerbread house Rye. This is out of the stage
and it's just like more to see, more to take in,
more to do. The Grand Hall. When we started we
(03:08):
had all track lights, right because we're just trying to
build what we could. Now it's all theatrically lit. And
then now a computer show runs the entire room. So
the Christmas tree, the twenty four foot tree was stripped
down this year, wired with five different kinds of controllable light,
and the entire room is now organized into a singular
(03:28):
light show that happens while you're in there. Everything in
Caston Nowell is being upgraded. You know. We get a
lot of people coming they're like, oh my god, I
was here two years ago. It's completely different. I don't
get it right. So that's really the goal. We work
on it. I work on it seven days a week,
and my staff is awesome. They are. We're not a
big crowd, but man, it's like a bunch of kids
(03:49):
building the coolest for whatever. Right. We're just we're just
in there pitching and pitching. We're working on a new
Santa's virtual sleigh ride. But it's not just a virtual
sleigh ride, it's a show. We have incredible props and
setups in their Sata's magical machines with lists printing and
lights going off and meters counting the kids, and you know,
(04:09):
everything I do. I want to lift it to a
level that people don't expect. And I'm so thankful. I
got to tell you, it's so humbling. I told my
wife last year, I said, you realize we don't own
this anymore, and she goes, what do you mean we
don't own it? I'm like, this belongs to the people
(04:29):
that love it. We have thousands of families that come
every single year. There's people There's a lady that took
a picture holding her baby on her stomach, like when
she was standing by the slide, and she takes that
picture every year. Soun'sdown fourteen right, She's got them wrapped
around the same picture. So for me, it's a responsibility
(04:50):
to make sure that this piece of all these thousands
of families that come every year a piece of their Christmas.
And so we're responsible to keep that that pure dream there.
We're responsible to make sure that every year these people
can say that's a big part of their Christmas. Right,
So I take it. I'm super humbled by it. It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
And that is one thing that we all look to
do is make those cherished Christmas memories with their families. Right,
that went away for a while and it started to
come back, and and how many years now total?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Fourteen? This is we're moving into our fourteenth.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Fourteen fourteen season. Now I'm going to guess and say
that when you started this, there were some people who
were going, this guy's a little crazy, this guy's a
little nuts.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, there were those.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
And now you're responsible for this entire tourism area in
downtown Medina where people come by the thousands every holiday season. Yeah,
and in turn the other businesses benefits. Oh yeah, and
we're thrilled with that. I remember one day there was
a bus and they had just gotten out of the
castle and she says to my wife, the bus manager,
(05:59):
she says, oh my god, something fell out that we
were supposed to do later. We need to kill twenty minutes.
Is there anything we could kill twenty minutes on? And
there's this great little popcorn store on the square and
we're like, Dana's like, go up to something's popping. They
got all sorts of really cool stuff in there. And
so Dana called him and said they're coming, and they
unloaded the bus into their store and she was so thankful.
(06:21):
She brought us down this big box of popcorn and
it was like, that was awesome. I love the fact
that what we're doing there. First off, Madna's a wonderful town.
It's vibrant, it's a live it's an incredible place. It's
like a courier and nice Christmas card. So when you
come to Castle Noel, it feels right. You know, if
you come from out of town, you know, it was
easier places for me to buy or build inside of
(06:43):
a big old office Max, right, But you'd have been
going into like a semi closed down shopping center and
the inside would have been magical, but it wouldn't have
felt like if you came from Indiana. We have tons
of people come from ten hours away, and if you
drove up to an old office Max, no matter how
magical it is inside, you'd be like, Okay, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I hope it's great. But when you come from out
of town and you drive into Medina with the gazebo
and the lights and all the great stuff and its Christmas,
it's the right feeling. And the town is awesome. Look
what last year I was so I was so blessed
to be a part. I came up with this idea
to bring Christmas to hundreds of people that lost everything
(07:23):
down in North Carolina, and the town pulled together with us,
and really as a group, we came together and I
was in tears when that night came where we had shows,
we had the castle, we had the mini golf, they
had the candlelight, they had the Christmas parade. Came back
just for that one night in January for this and
(07:46):
the fireworks were there that same thing. And when I
saw the way people were running out and shaking hands
with the people that were there visiting us and just
love them. Man, It's like you can't be in a
better town than that, right, So it's a great town.
I love Medina and I'm thrilled to be there.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
So you really have created a different category of a
business that hasn't been duplicated. You would think that it
would be easy to duplicate. Like you look at a
haunted house, right right, It seems like almost anybody can
throw up a haunted house these days. But what you
have is you've created something totally unique that cannot be duplicated.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Well, we have things that you you know, first off,
it's it's never been about how fast can we build
a business get people in their boo boom boom. Man.
You walk through there and you can see when people come.
We spend piles of whatever gets in on the product,
whether it's trimming the hallways, whether it's new animations, whether
it's new it's about the gift. You know, this is
(08:48):
a place that celebrates my mom and dad. I lost
my mom in a car accident on Christmas Eve when
I was sixteen years old, and so Christmas was super tough, right,
But I was always good at helping. I used to
do Santa run bys. Those were really great, like back
before there were cell phones everything else. I was in
high school. I would do these Santa run bys because
I felt like if you saw Santa Claus on Christmas
(09:10):
Eve in your house, you knew he wasn't real if
you were a kid, right, but if you saw him
running through your backyard, well you know then maybe. So
I used to do that and all that, and so
when this came up, did you have the beard then too? Oh? No,
I had this awesome camel hair, beard, and a top
notch suit. I went all out, and I used to
do There was a schedule, you know. People would call
(09:31):
and I would put him on a schedule, and I'd
show up at that prescribed time and run through their
backyard and wave at the kids through the windows and
they'd all laugh, and it was wonderful when I got home.
The one time, I think I was a senior in
high school, I went back to my girlfriend's house at
the time, and her mom said, Oh, my friend's grandson
is at their house. Would you do one more of
these things? And I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll do another one,
(09:54):
you know. So it's like eleven thirty. I went over
to her house. I parked the car. It was snowy
and nice, and I grabbed my stuff. I start running
through the yard and I'm running and I turned to
the left to look at the window. He's standing there
in the window looking out, hands on the window. Still.
I wave, And as soon as I wave, I'm laying
on my back with my beard and hat hanging off
(10:14):
of the clothesline because I literally closed line myself at
full speed. I jumped up, grabbed my stuff, ran out
of the yard, I was so worried the kid saw it,
you know, and so I called up and she was worried.
I broke my neck and I called him up and
they said no. As soon as he the second he
saw you, he spun around to get his grandpa, so
he did not see the But you know, it's like
(10:37):
this whole Christmas thing, it's important. When we grew up,
Christmas had this shared energy, right, Like I don't know
if you remember when you were a kid and it
would be that winter night and close to Christmas and
somebody's mom would yell out the house, Rudolph's on in
five minutes, you know, and every kid would run. And
(10:58):
even though you were with your family, watch root Off
the Red Nose Reindeer in your house, you knew every
other kid everywhere was watching rud Off the Red Nose Reindeer.
So there was this shared energy. You went to the
malls all decorated up right, all this fun stuff. And
when I went to a mall and saw that they
had put Santa Claus on a folding chair and their
center display was a polar bear arctic thing with no
(11:19):
holiday in anything in it, I looked at my wife.
I'm like we can't let this happen. So we want
to make that great, big Christmas thing that's special that
people families can share together. And it's because it's not online,
it's not something like the movies they could watch in
July or something else. It becomes that that wonderful the
(11:42):
family goes together. We enjoy this, this couple hours together.
I see kids on dad's shoulders, kids with their faces
plastered against the window displays from New York. You know,
people not staring at their phones. Right, they're sharing something together.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And you've even taken that a step further because you
have the restaurant there now. Yeah, so they can make
the really legitimately make a day out.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Oh yeah, well, first you can go to Castle Lowell
and then you go down to Alien Vacation where Santa
Claus meets the Aliens. I like to call my mini
golf a mini golf for people that don't like mini golf,
because it's this incredible journey through all sorts of places
that in the world, a Mayan temple and a North
Pole and a jungle with a t Rex and the
alien planet, and there's movie props sprinkled around like the
(12:28):
slee stack from Land to the Lost and some Men
in Black Stuff and we're upgrading that with a bunch
more sci fi props coming soon. And now with the restaurant,
the Starlight Room, you can you can go to Castle Luell.
You can go have some great burghers and paninis and
stuff at our restaurant and it's underneath a light show
with ten thousand lights above your head. So during your
(12:50):
there's this wonderful ambient light and then during your dinner
there's different shows that go off with the music above
your head. And it's just a way to spend a
day and really feel like you got the most out
of Christmas.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, well, there's no shortage of Christmas year round there.
I mean, there are people who, as you know, listen
to Christmas music in the middle of summer. There are
people who love to watch Christmas movies in the middle
of summer. That's why the TV networks put them on, right.
You see people visiting in the middle of summer too.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Oh, we're we're busy a lot, all the travelers and such.
And in the summer we have great summer programs. We
do Island Drum Night, we do Full Luau's where we
have the fire dancers and the pig Ross and I
don't mess around. I go right to Hawaii get the
actual cast of folks that you know, they're right from
the culture. So it's really really cool. And uh so
(13:42):
there's all sorts of summer programs. They'll be Latin music
next summer. So we also are opening our outdoor patios.
So we have the most beautiful outdoor patio for dining
and having a drink and enjoying it. It's not like
a sports bar. We have giant TV, a giant we
know that you were in Madna. Well that's the idea, right,
not giant Paul trees, a waterfall, beautiful timber structures, the stage.
(14:04):
I mean, it's just gorgeous and people. We had a
Halloween event and there were so many people that were there.
They're just, oh my gosh, I never knew it was
going to be like this. And even though it was cold,
they're all sitting outside because we have fire pits and
you know, all the good stuff. So it's all it's
all really about giving people a level of experience that
(14:26):
separates them from their daily grind, right, So.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
There you have that a nice relaxing night out the
tiki bar kind of thing. And then right around the corner,
Uncle Eddie's r V from the Critter, it's.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Right there with you. Are you kidding me? It's a
concert reminder of the joy of the season. And Cousin
Eddie's Motor Home. We've got it half refit so far.
We're not messing with the beauty that is the horrible
inside of Cousin Eddie's motor Home, but we are going
to be offering opportunities for people to have dining inside.
They're gonna eat in Cousin Eddie's Motorhome. They'll two six
(15:00):
top tables, one in the front, one in the back,
and people have a chance to eat inside Cousin Eddi's
motor room. There's an enormous demand for this and we
are trying to get that set up as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Probably your most photo photoed spot maybe, right, that's the
one I always see people.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
People are always photoing that. Of course they photo a
lot of stuff, but that is a huge that's a
huge thing. Right. People get dressed up, they come over there,
they drive from Oklahoma with those costumes for their Christmas
card photo in August and they're like, so there's always
always more going on with that thing.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
So has there ever been a prop something that you've
gone to purchase and you've really had to convince your
wife it was okay for you to buy it, or
has she been on board for a most okay?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, I learned earlier my wife likes to play the
voice or reason like to everybody around. She's she could
play the suffering like that to deal with the goofy husband, right,
But the fact is, I can't have her in a
room when I'm at an auction, around an auction because
there's a limit, right, because you could go you could
go crazy. I mean, I watched a little rubber bug
from Star Trek the next Generation, so for thirty three
(16:06):
thousand dollars, and it wasn't even like a rubber bug.
I knew it was just a rubber bug. So you
never know. A piece of cardboard that said the end
from a B movie company went for one hundred thousand dollars,
So you never know what things are going to go for.
So there is a limit, you know. I try to
get as much as I can, but there's a limit
when when a prop goes crazy, like I was in
way too long on Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer puppet.
(16:28):
My wife would have shot me, but it ended up
going for like almost a half a million dollars. Oh wow.
So so I don't have her in the room because
she will say one more, one more if I bid one.
Although I have to tell you when I bought The
Miracle on thirty fourth Street, Santa Claus Suit, I was
literally shaking, and because it just you know, it was
(16:51):
such a piece of history. It's a piece of history.
It was such an iconic movie, and I knew I
really wanted to bring that for people to see and
feel close to that history. And but it kept growing
and growing, and I was literally shaken. And my son
was in the room with me and he puts sand
on my shoulder and goes, just one more, Dad, just
go one more. And it was like it was just
(17:13):
about to close. And I went one more and then
it sold to us, and I was like, once it
was over, I was okay with it more so, but
it was just like it gets it. You get emotionally
involved in that, you know. Because and then when I
watched we brought it out for Santa Day. We have
a whole bunch of Santas that come every May, and
they do like a convention there. And when I brought
(17:34):
that out, there were guys crying, like, you know, that's it,
that's mere, you know, and everybody grew up with that,
our parents grew up with that. I mean, that movie's
been around since the end of the war. Yeah, and
so to have something that special is really exciting. And
the Santa's in Reindeer from Santa Claus the movie, and
you know, the new Dementor costume from Jingle all the
(17:54):
way along with Booster and Turboman, the Grinch is Sleigh.
You know, I don't often get a chance to walk
through and appreciate because I'm always looking at the things
I need to do, the things I need to improve on.
But every once in a while, I have to take
a walk through with a reporter or somebody that comes
in from out of town and I want to show
them the place, and and I walk around and I
(18:15):
get them. I'm like, don this is some really amazing stuff,
right I had that. Well, it's it's just it really,
it's really been.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
But that's the amazing thing for visitors is that we
go through and our kids may not appreciate everything that
we do, but there's things that they appreciate that we don't.
But we'll see Sindbad's costume and we remember seeing that movie, right,
and watching Arnold Schwarzenegger run through the streets of Minneapolis
to try to find Turbo Man and all of that,
and it just that's what's great. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And the toy Land hits that harder than anything, right,
I mean, I want Toyland was always a big part
of the castle. People loved it. And then I decided
to yes and upgrade Toyland, and I spent over a
year and a half off redoing Toyland with just tens
of thousands of toys. Put a year and a half
into just attaching toys to the wall. And it's not
(19:09):
done in a way like a museum would do, with
a very clean presentation, And it looks like our closet
when we were a kid. Right. You kick open the
door and you just blow through all the toys that
are on the floor till you find the one you
want to play with. Well, that's sort of what it's like.
But you walk through a thousand hot wheels rotating around you,
and you see like guys of a certain age. I
told my wife when we redid it, I go, there's
(19:30):
certain things I have to get. One of those things
was the USS flag, the g I Joe aircraft carrier.
I mean, it was too big for everybody's living room.
It costs too much money, so nobody's parents wanted to
buy it. Like kids at school say I got that,
and you'd be like, now you don't, you know? Then
show us right, And so that's there and you see
guys like, oh my gosh, you know there it is.
(19:52):
It's like the holy Grail of toys and all the
you know, Missus Beasley from people that grew up in
the sixties from family Affair and just that room is
completely coated in toys and then the anywhere window frames,
everything else is we individually glued every playing card or
(20:15):
money from the movie, from the different games, the different money,
and so it's a giant collage, ceilings, walls, everything. People
love that.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
That's Mark Klass of Castle Nowell. You can see everything
that he was talking about in person at Castle Noel
on the Square in Madina and online at Castlenowel dot
com
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