A little more than a year ago, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus held its final show. With its elephants and clowns now a thing of the past, top executives for the Ellenton-based Feld Entertainment made a pitch this week to get into the theme park and attractions business.

At a huge industry trade show this week in Orlando, the company put out "thought starters" for titans in the attractions business to consider a Monster Jam roller coaster or more play areas like the Trolls Experience that Feld opened in New York this week. The attraction will occupy empty retail space for the next seven months and invite families to dress up as trolls — neon spiky-haired wigs included — and romp in an interactive play zone.

Changing tastes in entertainment, declining attendance and high operating costs had taken their toll on the Ringling circus, which had been around for 150 years. The circus closed in May 2017, but the company had developed lucrative partnerships with Disney, Marvel and other entertainment brands to produce live shows, including Disney on Ice, Sesame Street Live and Monster Jam.

On Wednesday, Juliette Feld Grossman, chief operating officer of Manatee County-based Feld Entertainment, made her first visit to Orlando for the annual trade show for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA).

With the towering Grave Digger truck from Monster Jam on her left and one of the original Ringling circus train cars on her right, Feld held a press conference to remind peers that Feld is the world's largest live family entertainment company with 3,000 employees. It puts on more than 5,000 live shows a year in 80 countries.

The circus may be shuttered, but the company still has a cavernous facility just north of Bradenton with two arena-sized rehearsal halls, a costume-making factory full of thousands of spangled circus frocks, a machine shop that builds monster trucks and a marketing and business operation that the company now offers to the industry as a whole, Grossman said.

Feld also released concept photos of what a Monster Jam roller coaster ride would look like. And executives talked of a "reimagined" circus similar to the Trolls Experience that would let families try on costumes and board a circus train.

Grossman said she could not yet announce if any theme parks or attractions had bought the idea, but said Feld is in talks with major purveyors.

Her father, CEO Kenneth Feld, has talked openly of his succession plan, preparing his three daughters to take over. The private company doesn't release financial records, but Forbes has estimated the company's revenue at $1.3 billion.

Grossman, 35, is the youngest daughter and lives in Florida. Alana and Nicole Feld, both executive vice presidents, live in New York and travel to Ellenton regularly. But it's Grossman, who has a business degree, who helms daily operations at Feld Entertainment Studios, the 580,000-square-foot building off U.S. 301.

She called this latest pitch the next step in evolving the company from its days peddling popcorn and parades of elephants.

"When you think about this business," Feldman said, "Ringling Bros., a 150-year-old iconic property, was truly the ethos of so much of what the attractions industry has grown up to become."

Contact Sharon Kennedy Wynne at swynne@tampabay.com. Follow @SharonKWn.