Amusement park

• 1. Introduction

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  An amusement park is a stationary place built to last, filled with rides, games, and events meant purely for entertainment. That permanence is the whole point. Unlike the funfairs and carnivals that fold up their tents and move on, these parks stay put and are built for long-lasting operation. They are more elaborate than a city park or a playground, with attractions for every age group. In Klampenborg, Denmark, a place called Bakken, which means The Hill, has been open since 1583. That makes it the world's oldest amusement park. How did a few European fairs and royal hunting grounds grow into an industry of over 475 parks in the United States alone? What pulled millions of working people toward beaches, boardwalks, and enclosed cities of light? And how did a roadside berry stand and a Danish garden each plant seeds that grew into something enormous?

• 2. Fairs And Pleasure Gardens

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  The Bartholomew Fair stands as an early ancestor of the amusement park, a descendant of traditions from the European Middle Ages. By the 18th and 19th centuries, fairs like it had become entertainment for the masses. The public could view freak shows, watch acrobatics, conjuring, and juggling, enter competitions, and walk through menageries.

  The pleasure garden offered a different ancestor. Vauxhall Gardens, founded in 1661 in London, charged an admission fee by the late 18th century and drew enormous crowds. Its paths were known for romantic assignations, while tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, concerts, and fireworks supplied the amusement. Designed first for the elites, the gardens soon became places of great social diversity. Marylebone Gardens put on public firework displays, and Cremorne Gardens offered music, dancing, and animal acrobatics.

  Prater in Vienna, Austria, began as a royal hunting ground opened in 1766 for public enjoyment. Coffee-houses and cafés followed, which led to the beginnings of the Wurstelprater as an amusement park. In many European countries, parks like these grew out of pleasure gardens by combining mechanical rides with landscaped spaces, live music, and seasonal festivities.

• 3. Steam, Steel, And Spectacle

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  A wave of innovation in the 1860s and 1870s gave fairgoers the mechanical ride. Thomas Bradshaw built a steam-powered carousel at the Aylsham Fair. Frederick Savage of King's Lynn, Norfolk, exported his fairground machinery all over the world, and his galloping horses innovation still appears in carousels today. As working classes earned surplus wages, they spent them on this new kind of entertainment.

  The world's fair carried the idea of a fixed amusement space further. The first World fair began in 1851 with the construction of the Crystal Palace in London, England, built to celebrate industrial achievement and to educate and entertain visitors. The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, became an early precursor to the modern park. It was an enclosed site that merged entertainment, engineering, and education, dazzling crowds with a blaze of lights from what was called the White City.

  To guarantee the Chicago fair turned a profit, planners built a dedicated amusement concessions area called the Midway Plaisance. The world's first steel Ferris wheel debuted there and captured imaginations everywhere, reaching the Prater by 1896. The midway itself became a standard part of most parks, fairs, carnivals, and circuses, holding shooting galleries, penny arcades, games of chance, and shows alongside the rides.

• 4. Beaches And Trolley Lines

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  Getting the public to the seaside was the real trick. At Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, a horse-drawn streetcar line began carrying pleasure seekers to the beach in 1829. A million passengers rode the Coney Island Railroad in 1875, and two million visited the next year. Coney Island installed its first amusement ride, a carousel, in 1876, and its first roller coaster, the Switchback Railway, in 1884.

  Blackpool in England rose on the strength of a railway. A branch line reached the town from Poulton in 1846, and the sudden influx of rail visitors pushed entrepreneurs to build accommodation and new attractions through the 1850s and 1860s. In 1879, large parts of the promenade were wired with lighting, the forerunner of the present-day Blackpool Illuminations. By the 1890s the town of 35,000 could house 250,000 holidaymakers, with annual visitors estimated at three million.

  In American cities, the trolley line itself created destinations. Companies that built electric trolley lines in the final decade of the 19th century also developed trolley parks at the end of them. Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Park and Reading's Carsonia Park started as natural leisure spots before streetcar companies bought them and added dance halls, sports fields, boat rides, and restaurants. In New Jersey, Atlantic City entrepreneurs built parks on piers over the ocean, beginning with the Ocean Pier in 1891 and the Steel Pier in 1898. William Somers installed the first Roundabout, a wooden predecessor to the Ferris Wheel, on the boardwalk in 1892.

• 5. The Golden Age

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  During the Gilded Age, many Americans worked fewer hours and had more disposable income, and they went looking for new places to spend it. Parks rose outside major cities and in rural areas to serve as fantasy and escape from real life. By the early 1900s, hundreds were operating across the United States and Canada, many borrowing famous names like Coney Island, White City, Luna Park, or Dreamland.

  Sea Lion Park, founded at Coney Island in 1895, was the first permanent enclosed entertainment area regulated by a single company. It charged admission to enter and sold tickets for rides inside. Steeplechase Park followed in 1897, designed by George Tilyou for thrills, then Luna Park in 1903 and Dreamland in 1904. By 1910, attendance at Coney Island could reach a million people in a single day. Frederick Ingersoll borrowed the Luna Park name and erected others worldwide.

  Fire haunted these wooden parks. Dreamland burned down completely in 1911, the first Coney Island park to do so, and Luna Park burned to the ground in 1944. Most of Ingersoll's Luna Parks were destroyed too, usually by arson, before his death in 1927.

  The roller coaster came into its own in this era. The 1920s is properly known as the Golden Age of roller coasters, a decade of frenetic building for rides with extreme drops and speeds. At Dreamland Margate in England, the Scenic Railway opened in 1920 and carried half a million passengers in its first year. The Golden Age also brought the kiddie park: the original Kiddie Park, founded in 1925 in San Antonio, Texas, still operates today.

• 6. Disney And The Theme Park

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  Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark, gave Walt Disney his spark. In 1951 he imagined an amusement park next to his studios in Burbank, to be called Mickey Mouse Park, but the Burbank city council rejected it for fear of a carnival atmosphere. He created WED Enterprises in 1952 to design the park, now set for Anaheim, and convinced bankers to fund it with help from studio artist Herb Ryman, who drew an aerial view of Disneyland. Disneyland opened on the 17th of July 1955, and welcomed its one millionth guest two months later.

  That financial success reinvigorated the whole industry. Busch Gardens Tampa opened in 1959 as a garden and bird sanctuary. Six Flags Over Texas opened in 1961, themed to the six countries that once ruled Texas. In 1964, Universal Studios Hollywood opened with a tour of its backlot, and SeaWorld San Diego opened the same year with aquatic and marine life.

  Walt Disney World opened on the 1st of October 1971, after six years of construction, as a larger east coast version of Disneyland and the most ambitious project Walt Disney Productions had undertaken. EPCOT Center followed in 1982, built around Walt Disney's futurist ideals with a Future World of new technologies and a World Showcase of cultural pavilions. Disney-MGM Studios opened on the 1st of May 1989, themed to 1930s Hollywood, with the Backlot Tour and the Great Movie Ride. In 1992, Euro Disneyland opened outside Paris, France, replacing Tomorrowland with Discoveryland themed to European thinkers like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. A French recession and public backlash put that park into debt.

• 7. Rivalries And Hard Lessons

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  Universal Studios Florida opened on the 7th of June 1990, to great fanfare and immediate trouble. All three major attractions, Jaws, Disaster!, and Kongfrontation, suffered severe technical difficulties on opening day. Disaster! and Kongfrontation were fixed by the end of June, but Jaws had to be rebuilt and did not reopen for three years. Universal learned fast, beginning exit surveys and special ticket deals.

  Disney's California Adventure became the company's harshest lesson. Built across from Disneyland on a 100-acre parking lot, it opened on the 8th of February 2001, set in the modern day with cheap, flat backdrops, an adult focus, and an overemphasis on retail and dining. When original Imagineer John Hench was asked his opinion, he reportedly said, "I preferred the parking lot."

  The Harry Potter series turned the rivalry decisive. J. K. Rowling signed a letter of intent with Disney, but she was disappointed by its small-scale plan for a single attraction at Magic Kingdom and the lack of creative control. She left for Universal, then took creative control there too, forcing a full-scale re-creation of Hogsmeade and Hogwarts rather than a refurbished area. Announced in 2007, the land opened in 2010. Tokyo DisneySea, themed to the ocean and nautical adventure, had opened on the 4th of September 2001, built at a cost of 335 billion yen with signature attractions based on 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Journey To The Center of The Earth.

• 8. The Many Shapes Of A Park

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  Knott's Berry Farm grew from a roadside berry stand. In the 1920s, Walter Knott and his family sold berries, then added a restaurant whose fried chicken dinners drew lines several hours long. To entertain those waiting crowds, Knott built a Ghost Town in 1940 using buildings relocated from real old west towns like Calico, California, and Prescott, Arizona. In 1968 the family fenced the farm and charged admission, and Knott's Berry Farm now claims to be America's First Theme Park.

  Family ownership shaped many parks. The Herschend family took over Marvel Cave near Branson, Missouri, in the 1950s, modernized it, and built a recreation of the old mining town above it that became Silver Dollar City. Santa Claus Land, opened in 1946 in Santa Claus, Indiana, is argued by many to be the first true theme park, while Santa Claus Town there in 1935 is considered the first themed attraction in the United States.

  The regional park model came from Angus Wynne Jr. After visiting Disneyland, he opened Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, Texas, in 1961, with subdivisions reflecting different lands. Because he disliked Disneyland's pay-as-you-go format, Wynne chose pay-one-price, reasoning a family would more likely visit knowing the cost up front. Disneyland itself had used the pay-as-you-go format, leading to its famous ticket books labeled A through E, where the E-ticket covered the biggest rides like Space Mountain before the practice ended in 1982. Today over 475 amusement parks operate in the United States, from immersive resorts to coaster parks, alongside Legoland sites aimed at smaller children and parks tucked inside places like the West Edmonton Mall and the Mall of America.