Wilmington Series - Cape Fearless Extreme

Topsail Insider Intro, Coming Up, Saltwater Suites

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to Topso Insider's Wilmington series , where we spotlight the local businesses and events that create the rich culture , diverse communities and dynamic experiences and make Wilmington , north Carolina , a lively coastal hub . Coming up , join me for an interview with the co-owner of one of my favorite spots in Wilmington Cape Fearless Extreme . Mr Ron England will tell us about their wonderful aerial adventures in the trees with ropes and zip lining , or you can battle it out in their outdoor paintball facility . Here we go . Hello everyone , and welcome to Topso Insider's brand new Wilmington series . My name is Krista and I am your host Today for my very first interview for Wilmington . I am interviewing Mr Ron England . He is the co-owner of Cape Fearless Extreme Aerial Adventures and Paintball Park . It's really just one of my most favorite places in the Wilmington area . Me and the kids went and we absolutely loved it . It's actually in Regalwood , to be exact . So welcome , ron . Thank you so much for joining me and being my very first podcast for Wilmington .

Speaker 2 1:12

Thanks for having me here . It's an honor to be the first Wilmington area business included .

Speaker 1 1:18

I could not think of a better one . It's an exciting adventure park and I really want to highlight it For people who don't know what Cape Fearless Extreme is . Just put it in a nutshell form so we all know what we're talking about here .

Speaker 2 1:29

Cape Fearless Extreme is an aerial adventure park . Lots of people

Intro to Ron England and Cape Fearless

Speaker 2 1:32

have seen shows like American Ninja , so it's a park based on things like that , where there's a lot of mid-air obstacles , zip lines , cargo nets , swinging bridges , but everything is built outside , so it's a lot of all the fun stuff you used to do as a kid , but with very little risk because of our safety systems . We also offer paintball in the woods . There is a couple places in the general area , one in Wilmington where you get to play paintball inside , but most people prefer to play paintball out in the woods and dress up in a camo and play war games .

Speaker 1 2:05

War games exactly , exactly right .

Speaker 2 2:08

Run around in the woods and act crazy like everybody did when they were a kid and then part of our aerial adventure . We have a couple of different packages that we'll talk about as we get further along . Okay , but one of the things that we have that's kind of unique to us is we have a kids course that is built exclusively for kids , no adults on it at all .

Speaker 1 2:27

Okay , what is the age group for the kids course ?

Speaker 2 2:29

For the kids course . It's ages seven to 11 . Usually we say seven to ten , but every once in a while somebody gets a kind of a timid ten-year-old or eleven-year-old or they have a younger brother , younger sister who's going up on the course and they want to do it with them . But that course is built exclusively for children . We don't let adults up on the course unless their kids are the ones out on it . Otherwise adults have a tendency to ruin the experience for kids . They want to do too much of the clicking for them and give them too much advice on how to do the different elements , and it really is experiential education . So it's good for them to kind of figure it out on their own .

Speaker 1 3:09

For the aerial adventures that are for the adults . They can go up at ten or eleven years old .

Speaker 2 3:13

They can go up at ten years old , but they have to have an overhead reach of five feet eleven inches and a lot of people see that on the website . Five feet eleven inches oh , my kid's not that tall . That's not their height , that's their overhead reach . So , toes and nose up against the wall , reach overhead , without tiptoeing , as high as they can Wherever that top finger reaches . If it reaches five foot eleven inches , they are tall enough to go out on our course .

Speaker 1 3:36

And there's a weight limit at all .

Speaker 2 3:38

There's really not a weight limit . So we say two , seventy five , because that's what fits in the , in the harness comfortably Our zip lines , especially in our lifelines , they are rated . I mean you could hang school buses off of them and we tell people all the time you'll pull the trees out of the ground before you'll break the lifeline .

Speaker 1 3:56

I know there were some courses up in the mountains where you had to be at least 80 pounds , and I know that my eleven year old probably wouldn't hit that mark . So is there a weight minimum ?

Speaker 2 4:05

We don't have a weight minimum . Our zip lines , especially

Age and Size Requirements

Speaker 2 4:08

, are constructed a little differently than they do in the mountains . A lot of the ones out in the mountains where you're going longer distances or you're at a greater height , they have a braking system , where our zip lines are designed so that they're gravity breaking , which means they kind of have like a little belly built into them . So as you start to go build up speed going downhill , you hit that belly and then you start to go uphill which slows you down . Now , sometimes we have we have people who don't make it all the way to the end , but it's a simple grab onto the zip line and , hand over hand , pull yourself out of it , got it .

Speaker 1 4:41

How long has Cape Fearless been in business ?

Speaker 2 4:44

So we just finished our sixth summer , so our fifth year we opened . We did a soft opening five years ago in April and had a grand opening in the middle of June . So we just finished up our sixth summer .

Speaker 1 4:57

I just really love the name that you referenced our beautiful Cape Fear River down here so I just wanted to know who came up with that really cool name . Was that you , to get credit for that ?

Speaker 2 5:04

No , that was entirely in my business partner . Christopher Sherry . When we first came up with the idea of what we were going to do down here , we were kicking around names and Chris and his girlfriend at the time , who's now his wife , and my girlfriend at the time , who's now my wife we were all just coming up with all different names and Chris is the one who came up with Cape Fearless Extreme , and that really stuck .

Speaker 1 5:24

Yeah , it works well .

Speaker 2 5:25

We wanted to add the extreme part in , because what we do try to make it so that the course is family friendly . But our last element , especially on our adult course , it's on the extreme shot .

Speaker 1 5:35

Is it really ?

Speaker 2 5:36

Yeah , it's probably about 25% of the people who start out

Opening and the Cape Fearless EXTREME Name

Speaker 2 5:40

at the beginning of the adult course finish it . It's tough , especially during the summer . You're already hot , you're sweaty , you're looking up at this last course and you're like no , I'm out , I'm tapping out on there but it's funny because we've , you know , we get , we get all ages , we get all demographics , you know we get everyone from ten year olds to people in their 70s . You know people who are office people , athletes . We get a lot of military from Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg . I'm a .

Speaker 1 6:14

New name , but thank you for the service , by the way .

Speaker 2 6:17

It was a it was my pleasure to serve . So we get a lot of a lot of military as well , and they must love it . They do , they have a , they have a great time out there . But but even even those folks , not everybody makes it through black .

Speaker 1 6:29

What Absolutely right .

Speaker 2 6:31

I don't even know if I want to try it now you know , we've we've seen people in their 60s and early 70s make it through black . And then you have some folks who go out there . You look at them like and these folks got to be Jim rats , they're gonna sail through this and sometimes they take the longest it's just a height thing ? it's . It's a height thing , I think , and a concentrating on the task at hand and the height is all just perceived risk , because all of our lifelines are overhead . So once you clip into the lifeline , you're good . If you were to lose your mind and jump off the platform . You're gonna fall about six inches . No matter where you are on the course . So each course gets a little higher off the ground a little bit and the elements get a little bit more difficult , Mm-hmm . But the height really doesn't come into play , but it does for people's perception .

Speaker 1 7:18

It's a psychological thing that happens . Okay , let's talk about you , ron . Where are you from originally and how did you get interested in aerial adventures ?

Speaker 2 7:29

I'm originally from the Philadelphia area , grew up in Philadelphia , left home , went in the army , got stationed at Fort Bragg for how many ? Years . I was ten years at Fort Bragg and I was power trooper with the 82nd Airborne you got no fear heights . You know , when you're standing in the door of an aircraft looking down at everything , that looks really , really tiny , yeah , everybody's afraid of . But they spend a lot of time in jump school working on trusting your equipment , right . So same thing with our equipment , right ? once you are not trust your equipment . You put a lot of faith in it , so got out of the military , moved back up to the Pennsylvania area , moved up into the Pocono Mountains and eventually start working for a very large Resort on 5,500 acres of their own zip code oh wow open year round . They have their own ski slopes . They've got lakes , so I started working for them as a ski patroller . I was a combat medic in the army , so I started ski patrolling for them and I would spend all day skiing and it was great , it was a lot of fun . Then , towards the end of the season , the general manager said hey , we're looking for somebody to kind of oversee a quadruple program , if you want to stick around . So I spent three or four years going from hanging out the lakes in the pool in the summertime and skiing in the winter time , and it was great , you know .

Speaker 1 8:44

And I eventually wonderful .

Speaker 2 8:45

Yeah , but eventually I got bored with it and I decided I was gonna leave and try to do something else . And the GM talked to me . So what do you want to do ? I said you know , I really like to get involved in adventure sports somewhere . That's kind of where my heart is . I'm , I work as a whitewater guide , I train whitewater guides . So he said well , why don't you put together some ideas and we'll start an adventure program here ? We started off with Building a rock climbing wall nice and opening up paintball fields , and that did really well . And after about two years I decided

Ron’s Background and What Lead him to Aerial Adventures

Speaker 2 9:13

I'm gonna try to push opening up an aerial venture course here . So I got all the information together and got the quotes from the builders and took it to the board of directors and they gave me the okay . So we built an aerial venture park there and Once that was up and running I hired one of the guides who used to work with me at the wetwater rafting company , chris sherry . So as I got promoted up through the company , chris kind of got promoted up behind me . Yeah , we both found ourselves going from being in the outdoors rock climbing and aerial venture and playing paintball and skiing and hanging out at the lakes to being in the resort itself and Shirts and ties and , oh , working in an office . So I'm , you know now , I'm behind a desk and I'm the director of recreation and I'm not really spending the whole lot of time doing any Kind of recreation you climb the ladder , but it climbed the ladder and it's . It's definitely one of those . Be careful what you wish for , because you just might get it kind of stories , so Chris and I over the years we always joked around about if we could just pick the whole the aerial venture up and move it south . It would be great because you know the real ventures . In northeastern PA we get a lot of snow . You know , my knees were getting bad and I had less and less interest in being out in the cold once I got to the point where I couldn't ski anymore , you know . So we started kicking around the idea of moving it all south and Kind of started out as a joke . As years would go by , we were joking about it less and less and Then one one fall . We came down the New York Island area with our girlfriends and rode around Checking out places and everybody thought , yeah , we could all live down here , this is good . So we started looking for land . We needed property with good trees and good trees . So we put a bid on on 25 ish acres , mm-hmm . They accepted our offer . You know it was a solid year once we got down here before we can get everything built and and opened up . Once we got the ball moving , it was , it was quite an adventure . I .

Speaker 1 11:04

So getting that course set up , what are some of the challenges that you ran into while designing it , or said , getting it built ?

Speaker 2 11:10

The biggest challenge we had was that nobody had ever built one in the area the way our builders build . So we're very lucky . We're the only aerial venture in Coastal Carolina that is built entirely in the trees . We didn't have to build any towers out of dimensional lumber . We didn't have to sink any telephone poles .

Speaker 1 11:29

Everything we do is in the trees .

Speaker 2 11:30

Wow , so that was a challenge for our our county building inspectors .

Speaker 1 11:35

Who had ?

Speaker 2 11:35

never . You know , we're in Columbus County , so they had never experienced anything like this . They had never seen anything like it . So there was a lot of challenges Getting that kind of pushed through .

Speaker 1 11:47

Did you have to get permitting for ?

Speaker 2 11:49

right , we had to get permitting , but they didn't know what kind of permits we needed because , like well , you're not building a house , yeah , there's no electricity In the tree , you know so ?

Speaker 1 11:59

there was no rulebook right there was .

Speaker 2 12:01

There was struggling to find out what kind of permitting they could charge us for . Really and then when they came out to inspect it there , the one inspector was an older gentleman . He looked up and good , I'm not going up there to inspect it . So he had to get a younger guy out there , go out and check it out .

Speaker 1 12:15

How often do you have to replace the equipment in the safety gear up in the trees ?

Speaker 2 12:19

and just what we wear On our bodies so most of our equipment has a lifespan of five years outside of the gear ?

Speaker 1 12:27

Are there any safety measures and training that take place there ?

Speaker 2 12:31

So one of the things that we're really proud of is that we have what's called an auto belay system . So all of our guests are in Petzl climbing harnesses and then there are two lanyards that come off that are called clickets and Basically , the way they're designed to kind of simplify it , you have these two lanyards and once they clip on to the steel cable they have a little trigger mechanism on each handle and once you pull the trigger on one and disconnect one , the other one locks shut . So that prevents it . Even if you pull the trigger , you can pull it as hard as you want , it's not going to come undone from the lifeline until the first one is clipped back into something steel . So you can't even like you can't fool it with your finger or with a stick or anything like that . It's got to clip back into steel . The industry standard is just regular to regular carabiners and when we first opened the park up in Pennsylvania , that's what we were using , with two steel carabiners and you know you would hear people click , click and then , as they would get good at it , they would start unclipping faster and faster until you'd eventually see them standing up on the platform With a carabiner .

Speaker 1 13:36

You need chand and in the guys are gonna realize it right .

Speaker 2 13:39

They don't even realize it because they're getting so comfortable with the equipment and the guides are having hard attacks and you spend a lot of time yelling at guests to you know , make sure you clip back in , clip back in . And it just had this feel like you were . You were constantly being this taskmaster . Yeah so when we got the opportunity to do our own park , we spent the extra money on on the smart play system , and now our guides get to spend a lot of time , just kind of coaching and Having good personalities with the guests .

Speaker 1 14:05

So this is not like a desk job . You don't get to come in and sit back and relax . You're irresponsible for someone's safety . So how do you find your your guides and how do you train them , and how long do you train them before you let them loose ?

Speaker 2 14:16

So a lot of our guides come from guests . So we have guests who go through and they'll come back and they'll say , man , we really enjoyed that . If you're ever hiring , let us know oh .

Speaker 1 14:25

That's great .

Speaker 2 14:26

That those are our best . We know that we love . We love hearing those , and we also do some advertising on Facebook or on . Indeed , and really , for our guides , our target doesn't necessarily have to be somebody who's got a lot of experience with climbing or anything like that , or we want people to have great personalities . We can train people to use equipment . We could train them how to do all the rescues . We could train them what to do to help guests out , how to coach , how to memorize the demo speech . You can't train personality . The first thing we do for the interview is we talk to them for a couple minutes but then we send them out on the course and see , because if they , they don't have to be great at the course at first , but they have to be able to do it . They can't be afraid of heights . So most of our time is spent working with ropes , tie knots , learning the equipment , learning the rescue equipment and the various lowers . And our guides we I give them a lot of credit because they know that they've got to be ready to go out on that , on that Zip line or out on that wire at any point to get somebody so safely , safely lowered to the ground .

Speaker 1 15:25

Well , I am curious , now that we're talking about lowering them , how do you lower them ?

Speaker 2 15:31

Our guides have some climbing equipment that they carry that the guests don't carry . That's that's designed specifically for that purpose . So once they they get their climbing rope , they hook into the guests harness and then they have a device called an ID that kind of manages the rope for them . All right , it allows the rope only to travel in one direction . So , they don't really have to worry about balancing out the weight and that ID gets clipped into the lifeline . So the course is doing a lot of the workforce . But where it really becomes a challenge is and it doesn't happen to us very often , luckily but if somebody gets a point where they're completely , they're just completely spent . They can't even stand up , they're just hanging in the harness . They've used every bit of energy . They can't . We have to be able to lift them up enough to disconnect their safety lines and lower to the ground . So where we have that 275 Kind of that we say is is a comfort level . We've had some guides out there who have been relatively small . Females weigh a hundred and ten hundred and fifteen pounds and they have to be able to figure out a way of lifting 275 Standing on a little tiny cable . So we have equipment that allows them to use a little bit of mechanical advantage , set up a three-to-one system and then , once they learn how to use that it's it's great to see little hundred and ten pounds , hundred and fifteen pound guides Lifting up people that weigh two times as much as them . It's always fun to see guests say , oh , that that guy would never be able to lift me up , but we always kind of laugh about it like our training gets pretty intense , so we one of our guides gets to play our victim and he always shows up with a backpack and he throws them extra weights in the back when he goes out . There be the victim and he's a screamer . He's gotten so loud where one of the neighbors called the fire department one day and the fire department showed up because he was yelling help so loud they thought somebody was really stuck up on the course and but he does a great job of he does a great job of being a victim for training , that's great .

Speaker 1 17:30

Let's talk about the aerial

Challenges of Building an Adventure Course in the Trees

Speaker 1 17:31

adventure for ten years old and up our aerial venture for ten years old and up is kind of .

Speaker 2 17:37

There's two different options . There's the half course , which will include the safety demo , our green and blue course and our 650 foot zipline , and People in the half course can do as much of that as they want . Or our full course , which includes the safety demo , green and blue , but also our red and black course , our most difficult course , and the 650 foot zipline . Everything is challenged by choice , so we we don't force people to keep going . You know , if they hit their limit , they hit their limit . We try to encourage them to keep going , but once they decide that they're done , we can get them , you know , to the ground safely . Our half course takes about two and a half hours on average to do and our full course takes about four Hours to do . Okay , and pricing . Pricing for the half course is $50 per person and the full course , depending on if you go in the morning or in the afternoon , is 60 in the morning , 65 in the afternoons . Our kids course is A two-hour session . They get to do as many laps as they can in that two hours . Mm-hmm , and that's $30 for two hours . We do have a two-child minimum and the reason we do that is what we pay our guides . If we did less and we just did one kid out there , we would be operating in the negatives really would .

Speaker 1 18:48

Yeah , we gotta say that's a really good deal .

Speaker 2 18:51

It is a very good deal and I think that's very affordable .

Speaker 1 18:54

For what do you get for two hours of that adventure ?

Speaker 2 18:57

Yeah , and even even the full course at 65 . You're out there for four hours , I mean there's not a lot you can go do that . It's family friendly where you're out there for four hours with a guide and a Small group where you get to spend that kind of time in the woods . Yeah , our group maximums for the adult aerial venture is 16 people . We try not to let the group get any bigger than 16 . For our kids , course , we not try not to let it get any bigger than eight .

Speaker 1 19:24

Let's talk about your paintball .

Speaker 2 19:26

So our paintball course is a two hour session . It is $30 per person and includes all of your rental equipment , unlimited air we use compressed

Safety and their Auto Belay System

Speaker 2 19:35

air out there , unlimited air and 100 paintballs , include your referee , and then people can buy additional paint as they play . So we always get asked how long do 100 paintballs last ? And it really depends on the person . We've seen some people who are kind of timid , never played before , go out there with 100 rounds and they don't do a lot of shooting , and then we've seen those yeah there's 10 , 11 , 12 year old boys who spend a lot of time playing Call of Duty on Xbox and they'll go through 100 . in the first game we sell the additional paint on the field and as long as they have a credit card on file with this , they can play as much paint as they want , Absolutely . but with kids we always have . Make sure the parents are aware of that beforehand and find out if they wanna set up a cap on it , Cause sometimes the parents aren't really paying attention . They're kind of hanging out on the picnic tables , kids are playing paintball and they just say let them refill . Well , if we let them refill it as often as they wanted to , they could be rolling out of there with three or four cases , which is great for us . Then the parent has a surprise on their credit card at the end of the day . So we usually try to talk to them beforehand and say , hey , what do you wanna limit them ?

Speaker 1 20:39

to , and speaking of limits , how many people do you allow on that field all at once ?

Speaker 2 20:45

We usually try to keep it to 20 or less , and we have a minimum of six . With that Cause , less than six doesn't make for a good game and more than 20 on that field , that starts to feel a little crowded . So we still want that feeling like there's a lot of bunkers , the hide behind a lot of trees , the high-beline you can crawl around , you know great places to get cover and great places to go for a run and grab the flag . And if it gets too big it becomes a little less fun and if it's too small it's definitely a lot less fun .

Speaker 1 21:12

Yeah , you do offer where some people can come and do both your aerial course and paintball all in the same day . Tell me about that . All in the same day .

Speaker 2 21:20

If you have that bundled together , that is great to do one part of it in the morning , one part in the afternoon . We usually suggest doing the course in the morning and then in the afternoon do paint , or we carry it to the group . Okay , you know , it's just that sometimes if they play paint in the morning they get pretty hot and sweaty and tired , and then you get out on the course and they're spent already .

Speaker 1 21:41

Yeah , they're already spent .

Speaker 2 21:43

So it really depends on the group what they want to do and what their main focus is . We set that up with a little bit of discounted pricing and that depends on the number of people that they're going to have that discounted . That's one of those things that we try to make it so that almost all of our adventures can be booked without having to make a phone call or without having to email . But that's one of the things where

Finding and Training their Guides

Speaker 2 22:05

it's always best to call .

Speaker 1 22:06

Just do it all online on your website , Absolutely Okay . And talking about your groups , so you did . You already mentioned church groups , corporate team building . I think would be so much fun to be able to do this with my office mates , the USO , the wounded warriors you spoke of .

Speaker 2 22:21

Yes , ma'am , we've done a lot of military groups and look forward to doing more . Over the last few summers , our camps that come out have grown quite a bit . We have YMCA camps as well as some municipal camps , some church camps , church youth groups , boy Scout troops , girl Scout troops , right yeah . We do team building out there with corporate groups . We've had birthday parties out there , bachelor parties , bachelorette parties .

Speaker 1 22:49

Home schoolers in class field trips .

Speaker 2 22:51

Home schoolers in class field trips , home schooler groups . If you're a home schooler family and you can get 10 people together , give us a call and we'll set you up with an exclusive group . It's really important for the home schoolers too , because it gives them the social element that sometimes they don't always get in a home school environment and not just meeting other kids , but meeting other kids that are also being home schooled . And that's where we've seen with the home school groups where they found it to be important is they wanted to just be exclusive to their home school and groups .

Speaker 1 23:20

You mentioned picnic tables , but let's say I wanna have a birthday party there . Are we allowed to bring in our own food and just stay there for the party ?

Speaker 2 23:27

You can bring in your own food . We have a refrigerator in the office . Anything that needs to be cold can kept in there . You can roll in coolers . If you wanna bring out a barbecue grill and cook , that's fine . There's a Domino's Pizza not too far from where we are . You can order pizza . You can do whatever you want . Anything we ask is that no alcohol ? No alcohol .

Speaker 1 23:45

Before people go out on the courses , and you mentioned that there is a discount after 10 people , and I think you also mentioned there's a military discount , right ?

Speaker 2 23:53

We do a military discount for anyone who was in the military or has a veteran ID and that discount . We're pretty strict about it because we've had some people who have asked for a military or a military discount and we've given it to them and then they show up and you look at them and you say you guys aren't in the military . You have your military ID with you . No , we forgot it . So now we just ask if anybody wants the military discount and we give them the promo code for it . When you check in , just show us your military .

Speaker 1 24:22

ID or your veteran ID .

Speaker 2 24:23

No big deal . It doesn't have to be everybody in a group , it just has to be the person who booked it and that's fine . And then for groups , if you have a group of 10 or more , we do offer a 10% discount . If you have a group of 20 or more , we do a 20% discount . That's great . And for groups , that's the only other time it's best to call us first . If you have a group of 10 or 15 or 20 , it's always good to give us a call because we can make it kind of an exclusive group for you and not necessarily have you in with a group that's open to the public . But the only way we can do that and still give you the discount is if we kind of know about it ahead of time and you call us and say , hey , we have 10 people .

Speaker 1 24:58

Yeah , how far ahead of time would you need this information ?

Speaker 2 25:01

You know , it's really odd . The last couple of years we've noticed the buy cycle is getting shorter and shorter and we seem to do most of our bookings on Wednesday , Thursdays and Fridays now for the weekend it used to be a week out , sometimes a week and a half , sometimes two weeks out . Now the people who are booking two weeks or more out . They're always very prepared for everything and they're never disappointed with there's no availability left or I don't have the time that I want . So it's always best to book as far out as you can . But we understand people want to check the weather and especially here in the summertime right , keep an eye on the heat or keep an eye on when the rainstorms are gonna be . We always get asked you know , are we gonna get rain ? Our forecast is the same day in , day out , right , it's chance of thunderstorm and we go out , rain or shine , the anytime we don't go out is if we have thunder and lightning . So if we're out on the course and a thunderstorm rolls in , we have the ability to lower people anywhere on the course , just like with a rescue and an assist . If the storm moves in fast enough , we just lower everybody from where they are If we have notice . We watch a couple of different apps . We track the lightning , we watch the storms . If we have enough notice , we'll get people to the point where they're getting down off of one course and then we'll get them back to the building . And if it looks like it's gonna be a fast mover , we just let everybody ride it out . Ride it out or if they've gotten almost all the way through black and we have to lower them , we just say , hey , you know , that's just kind of what happens sometimes you know but otherwise we'll do a rain check for people . But most of the time this summer I think we had one or two days where we had to evacuate the course because it was thunder and lightning coming in and rode it out and then everybody leaves . But when it rains a little bit during the summer here on the course it's really kind of cool .

Speaker 1 26:40

It's pretty refreshing . It feels good , right , yeah , okay , regardless of whether you're open year round .

Speaker 2 26:45

We are open year round . This time of year we kind of roll into our Thursday , Friday , Saturday , Sunday , schedule .

Speaker 1 26:53

You know there's a lot of kids are back and the kids are all back in school and there's not as many tourists down vacationing .

Speaker 2 26:58

But if you have a group of four or five or more and you want to come out and do it on a Tuesday or a Wednesday , all you got to do is give us a call and we'll open up for you .

Speaker 1 27:06

Nice . Okay , we spoke about the challenges of getting the courses built when you first got here , but what about your ongoing challenges ? What do you face ?

Speaker 2 27:21

Two of the biggest things that we face really is , you know , the insurance industry itself is constantly increasing rates . So our insurance rates are always going up , regardless of whether there's , you know , any kind of a claim or anything . Every year it goes up . But our biggest challenge really is is that you know , we're in the South and we get hurricanes . Our course is built entirely in the trees and more times than not we're good , we're safe . We did have to do a rebuild twice . We had to do a rebuild when Hurricane Florence came through and it

Aerial Adventure for 10 and Up

Speaker 2 27:50

wasn't so much the wind itself that did damage to the course , but it was that constant rain and everything was soaked . And then when the winds hit , they were just knocking trees over at the root ball . Oh yeah , so it wasn't even like the trees were breaking or anything . They were just coming up , rooting up from the ground . And that's why , when we joke with people and say you'll tear the trees out of the ground before you'll break the zip lines , that's exactly what happened we had on our , our red course . We had four or five trees that came out of the ground and fell over and they were still connected by the lifelines and they never fell all the way . The lifelines were holding them up . And the dangerous part with that is now you have all that weight and all that tension on those steel cables and you can't just , you know , cut those steel cables when you have that kind of tension . You'll kill somebody . So we had a call on a special crew from Northwestern Pennsylvania , right on Lake Erie , who specializes in that kind of , so they had to mobilize and bring all their cranes and their equipment down to lift the trees and bring our builders back so that , once they lifted the trees and took the tension off the wire , our builders could get in there and make the cuts , and our builders aren't . You know , it's

Kids Aerial Adventure Course

Speaker 2 28:52

not just some guy from around the corner who builds these kind of courses , right , our builder . Most of those folks were based out of France and Canada , and so getting them back required visas and setting up a place for them to live , and what ? they do is they travel around the world building these courses . When people come out to tour the park , I always , I always love to show them this the way our course is built , so our builders , when they build , they're not coming in with heavy equipment and building it , they're running ropes up the trees and they're going up the trees on a sender , which are it's a piece of equipment that allows the rope to just travel in one direction , so they're not using spikes like you see on lumberjack contests or anything like that . They're going up and working off of ropes and doing all the building off of ropes . And so they have to have really good carpentry skills . But they also have to be really good climbers . So they're not rolling in scissor lifts or , you know , high lifts or anything like that , because they don't want to do any damage to the roots of the trees , you know , through compaction .

Paintball

Speaker 2 29:47

So when we have repairs that need to be made , it's not like we can just call some guy from around the corner . You can't do it , build yourself , because if you do a build yourself , you'll never get insurance on it . So there's there's some approved builders out there that you can use .

Speaker 1 30:00

And it's a redesign , because you're tearing down the trees that were once the part of the original design . Those trees are gone now and now you have to reroute things Like . I imagine it's a huge process .

Speaker 2 30:12

You can't just pick up everything up off of the tree that it was originally on to move it to another tree , because that cable is cut for a certain distance and the element is designed for a certain distance , and then the way our course is built . We don't have anything really invasive in the trees , so we're not running giant spikes in the trees to hold the platforms up . Everything is done through compression . The upside for us is that as the tree grows we can loosen up the compression a little bit , so the platform is still allowing the tree to grow and not grow around it . Right , everybody's seeing trees where you know the fence is grown into the tree and how funny that looks . Well , you the same thing could happen on a course like ours if you don't have a way of loosening up that compression system . But the other thing that people don't really think about is that sometimes tree shrink , you go through a drought trees like loblolly pine .

Speaker 1 30:59

Really .

Speaker 2 31:00

Absolutely . Trees like loblolly pines will start to shrink in diameter a little bit as the water , I have no idea . So we can tighten our , we can tighten our platforms up using that same kind of compression system and again without driving big spikes or light bolts into the trees .

Speaker 1 31:17

How is it watching people meet and overcome their fears ?

Speaker 2 31:23

It's a pretty amazing feeling and it's for Chris and myself . I think it's one of the main reasons that we decided to do this . You know , we could have done any kind of business and Chris tells us that to the guides all the time during training . We could have opened up

Aerial/Paintball Bundle

Speaker 2 31:36

anything . We could have opened up a bar . We really love seeing people come out and enjoy themselves , but really seeing the transitions , when somebody comes in and says , hey , I'm afraid of heights , I don't know if I'm gonna make it through this , and then suddenly they finish the course , or I'm 55 years old . I'm 60 years old and I'm recovering from cancer and I've never done anything like and this is on my bucket list .

Speaker 1 32:00

And if I ?

Speaker 2 32:00

can just finish green , I'll be happy and they make it all the way through , where they'll make it through blue and come out . Or having the wounded warrior groups come out and seeing how much those folks come out of their shells . And that's a special place for me right there With having folks come out and just be able to be themselves . The wounded warrior groups really do a great job . Military vets a lot of times kind of keep things closed and when they're around , people who aren't their own , people who were civilians , and they never really kind of open up completely . But you get them back out

Groups and Camps

Speaker 2 32:32

there with other vets . They've been through the other thing or the same things they've been through and it's a different world for them . It's great to see it . It's great to see it . And even small kids who get up there and the first time they go through they're struggling and then the second time it clicks for them and then they're racing through it . Or you have times where the kids start off in tears and then they get down and all they wanna do is go do it again . And the same thing with adults . I mean we've had adults in tears , didn't wanna do it , scared , and then they've had a great time .

Speaker 1 33:02

Along that same vein . Do you have any memorable moments with your customers that really stand out to you that you could share with us ?

Speaker 2 33:09

There's some memorable moments . We've had some guests that we've been able to take up on a more one-on-one experience like non-verbal autistics . We've had a blind gentleman that we were able to take up . We've had double-blind parties that we've been able to take up , and those are all great times . And then we have some not so great memories too . Sometimes the guests get themselves so worked up by we've been thrown up on and things like that . Oh , I'm sorry , those kind of things happen too right , but at the end of the day it all makes for great stories and it's a lot of fun . Our biggest thing really is watching , because we try

Picnic Tables - Area for Parties

Speaker 2 33:43

to make it as much experiential education as possible . So letting people go out there and hit their own limit and break through their own limit will provide as much coaching as they need , but really we want it to be all about them . So when they come back and they're like man , that's the best thing I've ever done . I never thought I'd be able to do something like that . I can't wait to come back . I can't wait to tell everybody and what I usually tell them is now that you've done it , don't tell anybody . You did it .

Speaker 1 34:06

Get some friends together and bring them out and act like you've never been here

Discounts

Speaker 1 34:10

before .

Speaker 2 34:10

You used to look like a rock star , yeah you go through you rock star and you're like what's taking you guys so long ?

Speaker 1 34:15

That's hilarious . I just remembered seeing this on your website . You offer pictures .

Speaker 2 34:20

We do . Our guides are up there taking pictures the whole time . It's a physical event , right ? So sometimes the pictures are great and sometimes they're not so flattering . The guide can only work with what they can work with , so if somebody's a hot , sweaty mess , the picture's gonna look like a hot , sweaty mess . But we usually tell people , if you notice the guide is taking pictures , at least kind of look in their direction and smile . Some people don't want to have their pictures taken and that's okay , but most people enjoy having their pictures taken and we try to get them in some of the better , more fun locations like our Tarzan swing and the zip lines Nice .

Speaker 1 34:52

Earlier , you mentioned about the Baka group . Can you tell me a little bit about that ?

Speaker 2 34:56

Sure . So one of the groups that has come out for a couple of years are Bikers Against Child Abuse and they have a certain time of year where they have their kids party and they bring the kids who are involved with their organization out to spend the day there . And anyone who's not familiar with Bikers Against Child Abuse , it's a great organization . They do a lot of great work for kids who are in the system , who have been abused , whether it's physical abuse or sexual abuse and they are the absolute roadblock to the person who's perpetrated those crimes coming back and interfering with that child again . I mean they take them under their wing and they treat them like they're their own . Bless on that , claire , if you ever get to see those folks and see how they interact with the kids ? It's amazing .

Speaker 1 35:42

And they are just amazing people .

Speaker 2 35:44

They give me the goosebumps every time .

Speaker 1 35:46

I see them , be sure to tell them I wanna

Weather

Speaker 1 35:48

interview them . I would love to talk to them .

Speaker 2 35:50

I sure will . I will absolutely pass along .

Speaker 1 35:53

So they bring the kids out to Cape Fearless Extreme .

Speaker 2 35:55

They bring the kids out to Cape Fearless Extreme . They let the families come out too , and a lot of these kids are in financial situations where they would never get to do something like this so they bring them out and their families and they get to go out there and have a great time and we've seen a lot of really positive improvements in the kids just from the short time we've seen them . But I've had some of the members of Baca come up afterwards and say we just saw this kid . He's always been in a shell or she's always been in her shell . She doesn't wanna talk to anybody , got up on the course and they're like a totally different person now and to me that's just amazing that the transformation can happen .

Speaker 1 36:31

That melts my heart , yeah , yeah .

Speaker 2 36:33

It's just amazing people . I hope that you are able to do an interview with them , because they are just a totally different breed of people and their mission is just so important .

Speaker 1 36:45

I will definitely be reaching out to them , ron . Where the last part of this is called Final Thoughts , and I always like to ask my guest what is the one thing that you really want the listeners to know about you , or you and Chris , or Cape Fearless Extreme .

Speaker 2 37:01

The biggest thing I would like to tell everybody about Cape Fearless Extreme is we are an

Open Year Round

Speaker 2 37:06

extremely safe , family friendly adventure . You'll make memories that will last a lifetime coming out to our park , truly . We are open year round . If you're somebody who doesn't like the heat , this is a great time of year to come out . Go on to our Facebook page , cape Fearless Extreme , and you'll see lots of pictures . You'll see lots of videos . You'll get a really good idea of what we're all about if you've never been out there before . If you've been out before , we'd love to have people come back again . It's a tough time financially for a lot of

Ongoing Challenges: Insurance and Hurricanes

Speaker 2 37:34

people right now . The economy is not doing so great . So we're going to do the entire month of October . If you get on our Facebook page , we're going to offer a discount code for 20% off for the entire month of October .

Speaker 1 37:44

Ron , I love that .

Speaker 2 37:46

Anything people book . We want people to get out there and be able to have fun .

Speaker 1 37:50

Yeah .

Speaker 2 37:51

And life is tough everywhere right now , and it's just . It would be a great time to get everyone out in the woods Again . We're the only aerial adventure that's built entirely in the trees in the coast of Carolina area . We don't have any telephone poles . There are some other parks in the area that are built on telephone poles and they're great parks , but ours is completely natural experience . You're in the woods . You don't hear anything but the sound of the forest . That's great .

Speaker 1 38:16

I can't wait to get back out there , actually . Okay , let's go ahead and talk about your location and contact information . Do you want to read that ?

Speaker 2 38:22

Sure , so we are located at 1571 Niels Eddie Road in Regalwood , North Carolina , 28456 . Our telephone number is 910-655-2555 . Our website is capefearlesscom . If you're looking for an email address info , info at capefearlesscom . But the best place to get all the information and keep up with all of it is on our Facebook page . We also have Instagram and we're just starting our TikTok page . Are you really You're not going to see Chris and I doing TikTok dances ? I can promise you that ? Oh , come on , Ron , Maybe well , I can't say , I promised you that , but probably not , probably not . But Facebook is really our big one . That's where we put our videos and we put out our discounts , and more times than not at least once a month we do a flash sale where we have some pretty discounted pricing for people who want to kind of wait till that last minute .

Speaker 1 39:17

But for the month of October .

Speaker 2 39:19

For the month of October 20% off Yep . October 1st , there'll be a post that goes out with a promo code where everything will be 20% off for the month of October .

Speaker 1 39:29

All right . Well , that was it for us . Thank you , listeners , for joining us today , and I want to just say thank you , ron . You've been a pleasure to speak with , I've really enjoyed our conversation and thank you for also being Topsoil Insiders' very first episode in our Wilmington series .

Speaker 2 39:42

We're looking forward to seeing more of the Wilmington series . We're hearing more of the Wilmington series , so we're excited to be here and thanks for having us . Thank you .

Speaker 1 39:51

Thank you for joining me today on Topsoil Insiders Wilmington series . If you enjoyed today's episode , please hit the follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode . If you're a business owner looking to be featured or interested in sponsorship or advertising , or if you simply want to offer some feedback or make recommendations , please don't hesitate to reach out . You can email me at TopsoilInsider at gmailcom , or call or text 910-800-0111 , and be sure to find and follow Topsoil Insider on Facebook , instagram , twitter and YouTube . So hey , let's do this again next week . I'll see you around Wilmington .