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Theme Parks

While not technically amusement parks, theme parks bear enough of a generic resemblance to note that since the first amusement park in the United States, the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, theme parks of various kinds have become a staple of U.S. community life and indeed community life all over the world. Especially popular among families with children, enclosed parks organized around specific themes now represent a multibillion-dollar industry.

Origins

The origins of theme parks are to be found in the pleasure gardens that began to spring up on the outskirts of major medieval cities in Europe. According to data provided by the National Amusement Park Historical Association (NAPHA) these parks featured “fountains, flower gardens, bowling, games, music, dancing, staged spectacles and a few primitive amusement rides” (National Amusement Park Historical Association 1999). Elaborate ice slides were popular in seventeenth-century Russia, and the first looped railway was created in France in 1846.

In the post–Civil War United States, electric utilities charged flat rates to trolley companies for electricity, and this led them to look for ways to increase the use of their cars on weekends. Amusement parks were built at the end of trolley lines, and the success of these popular diversions encouraged cities across the country to do the same thing. The Ferris wheel, introduced at the Columbian Exposition, was an instant success. As early as 1875, seaside resorts such as Coney Island were building pavilions to house such attractions as fortune tellers, vaudeville acts, and cabaret entertainment, as well as introducing small carousel rides.

In 1894, Chutes Park opened on Chicago's South Side. The brainchild of entrepreneur Captain Paul Boynton, Chutes Park charged admission to its water chute rides (forerunners of the popular “flume” rides seen in contemporary parks) and broke the mold of the entertainment center located at the end of a trolley line near a beach or resort. Boynton capitalized on the success of his Chicago facility a year later when he brought Sea Lion Park to Coney Island. This park had the distinction of being the first enclosed amusement park with an admission fee. By 1897, theme park pioneer and local business man George C. Tilyou had established Steeplechase Park at Coney Island, New York, where he consolidated a large number of mechanized amusement devises in order to create what the theme park historian Judith Adams called an “amusement extravaganza” (Adams 1991, p. 43).

The Emergence of True Theme Parks

By 1919, over 1,500 amusement parks were operating in the United States alone. But the Great Depression of the 1930s spelled the end of many of these parks, while others struggled to survive. However, the attractiveness of the concept made for a resilient industry, and by the 1950s, as the United States wrestled with new forms of social problems such as urbanization, racial conflict, rising divorce rates, crime, and violence, the old amusement park was about to get a makeover. The man to do it was Walt Disney.

Walter Elias Disney's genius lay in his ability to transform the old amusement park concept into no less than what Judith Adams has called “a sanitized, electronic actualization of the American dream” (Adams 1991, p. 87). The new form of park was a kind of utopian paradise, insulated from the cares of modern society and organized around a theme or themes. In 1955, Disney opened the first of what would become perhaps the most widely copied concept in entertainment: Disneyland. Totally enclosed and built around five themes, Disneyland quickly dispelled the concerns of detractors who blanched at the $17 million in building costs, for the public made Disneyland an instant hit. In its first year, 3.8 million visitors flocked to its gates. In the years that followed, people may have been unable to do much about crime, pollution, or racism, but taking the kids to Disneyland became a respite from these vexing problems.

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