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"Amusement parks -- History"
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Amusement parks and water parks
\"Today's amusement parks are filled with amazing, high-tech rides. Some even take the fun to the water! Amusement parks of the past were exciting places as well. Amusement parks have been around for hundreds of years. Readers discover the history of these fun-filled places!\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Global Theme Park Industry
Since the 1980s, the theme park industry has developed into a global phenomenon, with everything from large, worldwide theme parks to countless smaller ventures. From the first pleasure gardens to the global theme park companies, this book provides an understanding of the nature and function of theme parks as spaces of entertainment. Illustrated throughout by worldwide case studies, empirical data and practical examples, the book portrays the impacts of theme parks as global competitive actors, agents of global development and cultural symbols, particularly in the context of their role in the developing experience economy. In conclusion, this book is a practical guide to the planning and development of theme parks.
eBook
The amusement park : 900 years of thrills and spills, and the dreamers and schemers who built them
\"The history of amusement parks, from the middle ages to present day, populated by the colorful (and sometimes criminal) characters who built them, and the regular folks who sought their magical, albeit temporary, charms\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Playful Crowd
During the first part of the twentieth century thousands of working-class New Yorkers flocked to Coney Island in search of a release from their workaday lives and the values of bourgeois society. On the other side of the Atlantic, British workers headed off to the beach resort of Blackpool for entertainment and relaxation. However, by the middle of the century, a new type of park began to emerge, providing well-ordered, squeaky-clean, and carefully orchestrated corporate entertainment. Contrasting the experiences of Coney Island and Blackpool with those of Disneyland and Beamish, Gary S. Cross and John K. Walton explore playful crowds and the pursuit of pleasure in the twentieth century to offer a transatlantic perspective on changing ideas about leisure, class, and mass culture.
Blackpool and Coney Island were the definitive playgrounds of the industrial working class. Teeming crowds partook of a gritty vulgarity that offered a variety of pleasures and thrills from roller coaster rides and freak shows to dance halls and dioramas of exotic locales. Responding to the new money and mobility of the working class, the purveyors of Coney Island and Blackpool offered the playful crowd an \"industrial saturnalia.\"Cross and Walton capture the sights and sounds of Blackpool and Coney Island and consider how these \"Sodoms by the sea\" flouted the social and cultural status quo. The authors also examine the resorts' very different fates as Coney Island has now become a mere shadow of its former self while Blackpool continues to lure visitors and offer new attractions.
The authors also explore the experiences offered at Disneyland and Beamish, a heritage park that celebrates Britain's industrial and social history. While both parks borrowed elements from their predecessors, they also adapted to the longings and concerns of postwar consumer culture. Appealing to middle-class families, Disney provided crowds a chance to indulge in child-like innocence and a nostalgia for a simpler time. At Beamish, crowds gathered to find an escape from the fragmented and hedonistic life of modern society in a reconstructed realm of the past where local traditions and nature prevail.
eBook
Where is Walt Disney World?
\"In covering the history of the 'Most Magical Place On Earth,' Joan Holub takes readers both behind the scenes and underneath the park (there are secret employee-only tunnels that form one big circle under the Magic Kingdom). Loaded with ... facts, this book is a ... companion to Who Was Walt Disney?\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Disneyization of society
′Alan Bryman has expanded on his well-known work on Disney and Disneyization to create a fascinating, highly readable book... This is an important book about a significant social process. And, it manages to be fun, as well!′ - George Ritzer, author of McDonalidization and Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland.
eBook
Power and Paradise in Walt Disney's World
From the four corners of the world, parents gather their children, pack their suitcases, and make the journey to Disney World in central Florida. Honeymooners choose the destination over countless others. Its symbols-whether the three overlapping circles that create a mouse's head or Cinderella's Castle with a shooting star over the turrets-are recognized around the globe. It has had nearly one billion visitors since opening in 1971.
In this fascinating analysis, Cher Krause Knight peels back the actual and contextual layers of Walt Disney's inspiration and vision for the resort to explore the reasons why Disney World has emerged as such a prominent sociocultural force. Every detail, from the scale and design of the buildings to the sidewalk infrastructure to what items could and could not be sold in the shops, was carefully calculated to shape the experience of each visitor. Expertly weaving themes of pilgrimage, paradise, fantasy, and urbanism, Knight delves into the unexpected nuances and contradictions of this elaborately conceived playland of the imagination.
eBook