
AMUSEMENT PARKSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
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parks, visitors turned to new activities and attractions such as motion
pictures or more independent leisure travel. In addition, Prohibition
(of alcohol), some years of bad summer weather, the acquisition of
parks by private individuals, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the
Great Depression caused the closing of numerous parks. By 1939,
only 245 amusement parks still remained, struggling to survive.
World War II further hurt the industry, but the postwar baby boom
and the creation of ‘‘kiddielands’’ allowed for a short resurgence of
prosperity. Nevertheless, the radical cultural changes occurring in the
1950s made amusement parks obsolete. The industry could not face
the competition from shopping centers and television entertainment,
suburbanization of the middle class, intensifying racial tensions, gang
conflicts, and urban decay. Most of the traditional amusement parks
closed. The modern amusement park would soon appear. The new
concept was a fantastic dream of Walt Disney, which cost $17 million
to build.
On July 17, 1955, ‘‘Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom,’’ more
commonly referred to as Disneyland, opened in Anaheim, California.
The nation’s first modern theme park was born and would dramatical-
ly alter the future of the amusement park industry, despite the
skepticism it faced at its beginning. Featuring five separate fan-
tasy worlds—Main Street, U.S.A., Fantasyland, Adventureland,
Frontierland, and Tomorrowland—Disneyland attracted nearly four
million visitors in 1956 and has maintained its exceptional popularity
ever since. Isolated and protected from the intrusion of the real world,
Disneyland offers to its visitors the experience of a spotless and
idyllic universe without sex, violence, or social problems. The
attractions transport them into a romanticized past and future, provid-
ing maximum thrill and illusion of danger in a perfectly safe environ-
ment. Impeccably planned and engineered down to the smallest
detail, the park is a realm of permanent optimism and artificiality,
celebrating the American Dream of progress through high technology
within a carefully designed and bucolic landscape.
After many failures to copy Disneyland’s successful formula,
Six Flags over Texas opened in 1961 and became the first prosperous
regional theme park, followed in 1967 by Six Flags over Georgia.
Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, while traditional urban amuse-
ment parks continued to close, suffering from decaying urban condi-
tions, large corporations such as Anheuser-Busch, Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Marriott Corporation, MCA, Inc., and Taft Broadcasting
invested in theme parks well connected to the interstate highway
system. In 1971, the opening of what would become the world’s
biggest tourist attraction, Walt Disney World, opened on 27,500 acres
in central Florida. Costing $250 million, it was the most expensive
amusement park of that time. Less than ten years later, in 1982,
EPCOT Center opened at Walt Disney World and the permanent
world’s fair surpassed $1 billion. After the fast development of theme
parks in the 1970s, the United States faced domestic market saturation
and the industry began its international expansion. With the opening
of Wonderland in Canada (1981) and Tokyo Disneyland in Japan
(1983), theme parks started to successfully conquer the world. Mean-
while, a renewed interest for the older parks permitted some of the
traditional amusement parks to survive and expand. In 1987,
Kennywood, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Playland, in Rye, New
York, became the first operating amusement parks to be listed on the
National Register of Historic Places.
In 1992 Euro Disneyland, which cost $4 billion to build, opened
near Paris. Jean Cau, cited by Alan Riding, described it as ‘‘a horror
made of cardboard, plastic, and appalling colors, a construction of
hardened chewing gum and idiotic folklore taken straight out of
comic books written for obese Americans.’’ Though dismissed by
French intellectuals and suffering financial losses for the first three
years, by 1995 the park showed profits and has become among the
most visited attractions in Europe.
In 1993 the Disney Company announced plans for an American
history theme park near a Civil War battlefield site in Virginia.
Although welcomed by some for the jobs and tax revenues it would
create, the plans engendered much criticism. Disney was called a
‘‘cultural strip miner’’ and the project labeled a ‘‘Trojan mouse.’’
Leading historians took out large advertisements in national newspa-
pers asking, ‘‘Should Disney pave over our real past to promote a
commercial fantasy?’’ Ultimately, the plan was abandoned.
The intellectual community has endlessly criticized theme parks
and particularly the Disney versions. In 1958, novelist Julian Halévy
noted about Disneyland: ‘‘As in Disney movies, the whole world, the
universe, and all man’s striving for dominion over self and nature,
have been reduced to a sickening blend of cheap formulas packaged to
sell. Romance, Adventure, Fantasy, Science are ballyhooed and
marketed: life is bright colored, clean, cute, titillating, safe, mediocre,
inoffensive to the lowest common denominator, and somehow poign-
antly inhuman.’’ Most criticisms emphasize the inauthentic, con-
trolled and sanitized experience provided by the Disney parks.
Totally disconnected from reality, the parks offer a decontextualized,
selective, and distorted history, denying any components that could
potentially challenge the perfect carefree world they exemplify.
Ignoring environmental, political, and social issues, these ersatz of
paradise are said to promote an unquestioned belief in consumerism,
control through managerial hierarchy, and technologies to solve all
the world’s problems, and to supply permanent entertainment to
millions of passive visitors pampered by a perpetually smiling and
well-mannered staff.
A more critical aspect of theme parks is their heavy reliance on
the automobile and airplane as means of access. While mass-transit
connection to the urban centers allowed millions of laborers to enjoy
the trolley parks, its absence creates a spatially and socially segregat-
ed promised land excluding the poor and the lower classes of the
population. The customers tend to belong mainly to the middle- and
upper-middle classes. Since many visitors are well-educated, it seems
difficult to support fully the previous criticisms. Theme park visitors
are certainly not completely fooled by the content of the fictitious
utopias that they experience, but, for a few hours or days, they can
safely forget their age, social status, and duties without feeling silly or
guilty. The success of American amusement parks lies in their ability
to allow their visitors to temporarily lapse into a second childhood and
escape from the stress and responsibilities of the world.
—Catherine C. Galley and Briavel Holcomb
F
URTHER READING:
Adams, Judith A. The Amusement Park Industry: A History of
Technology and Thrills. Boston, Twayne, 1991.
Bright, Randy. Disneyland: Inside Story. New York, H.N.
Abrams, 1987.
Cartmell, Robert. The Incredible Scream Machine: A History of the
Roller Coaster. Bowling Green, Bowling Green State University
Press, 1987.
Halévy, Julian. ‘‘Disneyland and Las Vegas.’’ Nation. June 7,
1958, 510-13.