What’s behind your favorite regional park attractions? Rick Bastrup, forty-year veteran of the theme park industry, reveals all in his new book Adventures of a Theme Park Designer. Very few park-goers realize how their favorite rides and attractions actually got there—they just know they love ’em and miss them terribly when they’re gone. So how…
Everybody knows pretty much everything about Disneyland—how it got started, how the Imagineers do their thing, and so on. But nobody hardly ever talks about the parks that most of us across the country enjoy far more often. The regional theme parks, different from amusement parks, owe their existence to the magical land Walt built…
In 1972, one of America’s favorite playgrounds opened with great fanfare. Inspired by the post-Disneyland theme park boom, operators of a small amusement enterprise near Cincinnati realized they needed to go bigger—or go home. They chose big, and so they proceeded to design and build a magnificent property in conjunction with Taft Broadcasting, owners of…
In the early years, regional theme parks offered souvenir maps for sale. These were beautifully illustrated works of art with lots of fun details to discover. One of the ideas for the park history book was to include excerpts from these opening/early season maps to help visualize the walk-through descriptions. That would have made the…