Al shares his thoughts on Legendary Escapes and reality TV. He says, “We didn’t want traditional programming, so we hired our own crew.” The team at Legendary Escapes shoots mini episodes so you, the viewer, can experience the entire process. It’s not about the end product; it’s about the experience.
We live in this world where everybody wants something now. There’s no sense of delayed gratification. There’s no sense of time. It’s all instant. We have one life to live, one chance, and yet we get so caught up, so caught up in everything that really doesn’t matter.
With 30 years’ experience in the pool industry and building swimming pools, I find myself now more excited than I ever was about doing what I do and the reason is the culture of who we are as a company and who we are as a grouping of people. We enjoy ourselves. We love the experience. We want to make an exceptional experience like none other in the construction world for our customer. We want it to not be about construction but rather about this roller coaster ride of emotions, the enjoyment, the fun, the teasing, the joking, and being something that we are authentically, not making up who we are, not pretending to be and not doing it for money.
Money is the byproduct of doing the thing that we love and that’s what our company is all about is enjoying all of the process, every little piece that we do, we enjoy from the mundane, quote unquote boring, to the coolest little detail, all of it is fun. That to me is the journey.
My name is Al Curtis. I am the lead designer and in-the-field artist/organizer of the project. Over the last probably 10 years or so, we’ve evolved into a full-on experience building pools. I do what I love every single day. It’s running a company, it’s owning a company, but beyond that it’s owning the experience of living it. I live what I do every day and if I can’t live authentically as me, if I’m not the same person in the field as I am in the office, as I am online, as I am in the world, who would I even be? So I get to be authentically me. I get to build and do what I love to do every day and I am so fortunate and so blessed to be able to do that.
A number of years ago we were approached by several different production companies about doing a pool show. None of it felt right to us because it’s not about the ups and downs of, “Oh, reality television, what could go wrong and what could’ve happened?” Our relationship with the customer is way more important than the pool itself or the project itself. What I’ve seen in most TV shows is it’s all about the end product. To me it’s about the journey, it’s about the experience. It’s about the interaction. It’s how the ebb and flow of the emotions between the people working and the customer that’s receiving.
So instead of going the traditional route of production television type of programming, we decided to hire our own crew, to shoot mini-episodes, and show the entire process. So what could you expect? You could expect to see every little detail that you may not expect to see on TV. We want to show you all of the how-tos, not just the sexy parts, not just the pretty parts, but all of it. What does the excavation really look like and what is that process about? What is pouring footings and pumping concrete and shooting concrete in and all these finishes, we’re going to show it all. By watching you’d have a history of how a pool goes together, not just what a pool looks like when it’s done.
The project that we’re showcasing here is a pirate theme, a shipwrecked pirate theme. The customer talked about loving shipwrecks and marooned on islands and pirates and skulls and treasure chests and that type of thing, so we decided to build the pool that way. It’ll have a shipwreck waterfall which we’ll show you as we’re building and how we detail it, how we find the cool items that will be involved in it. It’s as if this pirate ship was marooned on an island somewhere that just happens in this case to be in Michigan.
Here we go! Let’s get on this journey bus and go. Let’s have a good time and I promise you it’s going to be an amazing journey. *****
