Actor Scott Wichmann appeared as Northrup 2,212 times, so you know he has some tales!

Before working for Busch, Scott fell in love with the show as a teenager.  In 1989:

I remember being soaking wet from the Roman Rapids, imploring my buddy Mike Conuel to forget the girls he was trying to chat up, dragging him and running as fast as I could to catch the last ‘LAB’ performance of the day. My light-up necklace had broken and the neon green colors spackled my soaked-through Danny Ainge character T-shirt. My lips were purple because of the air conditioning in the theatre, but once again I sat, spellbound and shivering as the truly incredible spectacle I had grown to love so much unfolded once again.

 

Flash forward to 1996. I’m a struggling actor working as a toy demonstrator at FAO Schwartz in Midtown Manhattan. My friend Heather tells me there are Busch Gardens auditions a few blocks away. So I go and do a Shakespeare monologue for Emile Trimble, the venerable director, and administrator. She asks me to take a look at a script.

 

Boom. She hands me “The Enchanted Laboratory.”