The American Amusement Park Industry: A History of Technology and Thrills

Aron, Cindy. Business History Review 66. 2 (Summer 1992): 380.

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The American Amusement Park Industry: A History of Technology and Thrills. By Judith A. Adams--New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991. xvi + 225 pp. Charts, illustrations, tables, appendixes, notes, selected bibliography, and index. Cloth, $27.95, ISBN 0-8057-9821-8; paper, $11.95, ISBN 0-80579821-8. Reviewed by Cindy S. Aron In The American Amusement Park Industry, Judith Adams examines the emergence of amusement parks from Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893 to the recent efforts by corporations to export American-style themeparks all over the world. Her book pays attention to the demographic and economic conditions that contributed to the rise of amusement parks in the early twentieth century, that helped bring their decline in the years after the Great Depression, and that finally brought their replacement with theme parks in the 1960s and 1970s. She is also, however, concerned with the cultural meaning of amusement parks. According to Adams,amusement parks embodied America's utopian vision--its quest for a "city on a hill"--which, by the early twentieth century, had taken on a much less spiritual meaning. Amusement parks became visual symbols of America's technological prowess--its ability to harness industrial power to create enclosed, protected enclaves of pleasure and profit. The story begins with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, which, according to Adams, became the model for future efforts. The Chicago fair promoted uplift and education, but also served those who sought entertainment on the midway and thrills on the ferris wheel. The legacy of the Columbian Exposition included, as well, unprecedented uses of technology, electricity, and overall planning to create transportation and sanitation services that would guarantee the comfort and safety of visitors. Adams sees many of the seeds of Disney's later success in ideas that originated with those who planned the Columbian Exposition. The early twentieth century witnessed the growth of enclosed amusement parks that grew up at the edge of cities, often at the end of trolley lines. Such parks frequently emerged directly, in fact, from the entrepreneurial efforts of trolley companies that sought to increase traffic on week-ends when the number of riders was low. These amusement parks, easily accessible to the city, benefited from the growing urban population, declining hours of work, and increase in wages that characterized the early twentieth century. They catered to an urban clientele that sought excitement, titillation, and release. The Great Depression, however, brought declining numbers of people with resources to expend on such entertainment. At the same time automobiles became major competitors in the quest for recreational dollars. Moreover, the accessibility of these amusement parksto urban populations--the very factor that had once brought success--began to spell failure. By the post-Second World War years, parks that

abutted cities found themselves hampered by inadequate parking facilities and prey to the disruptions of urban youth and racial tension. The once-vital amusement park industrybegan to decline, leaving behind abandoned parks with peeling paint and rusting rides. It was Walt Disney, Adams maintains, who revived the nearly moribund amusement park industry in the late 1950s. Disneyland became the model for theme parks that would, in the 1960s, take Disney's vision of an enclosed, immaculately clean, perfectly maintained oasis of family pleasure and combine it with the thrill rides that had drawn crowds to the early twentieth century amusement parks. Adams discusses the business histories behind each of the major theme parks--both those owned by conglomerates and those owned by families or smaller companies. She also perceptively analyzes the cultural appeal of these parks. Theme parks, she explains, replicated television. They did so not only by displaying life-size versions of familiar television characters through audioanimatronics, but also by creating "a series of startling diverse environments" that a visitor could enjoy in about an hour--the same time spent watching a typical television program. Adams explains that, like television, theme parks had no need to provide transition from one segment to another; rather, guests were "perfectly content to roam from the seventeenth century to a future world or from Europe to Africa in a single step" (p. 110). The only requirement was that the visitor not be confronted with present reality, because it was the real world that the theme park visitor was hoping to escape. Based primarily on previously published studies or histories of individual amusement parks, Adams's book is an interesting combination of business and cultural history. She offers detailed discussions of the rise and fall of specific parks along with an analysis of the social and cultural conditions that made amusement parks in general either successes or failures. It may be the effort to combine these two themes that creates the ambiguity the reader hears in the voice of the author. The American Amusemsnt Park Industry seems to offer both praise for successful amusement park businesses and despair at the empty cultural message that these businesses purvey. Cindy S. Aron is associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Ladies and Centlemen of the Civil Service: Middle-Class Workers in Victorian America (1987). She is currently working on a book on the history of vacations in America from 1820 to 1940. Copyright Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field Summer 1992 Word count: 848

Indexing (details)
Cite Subject History; Amusement parks; Book reviews Classification 9190: United States, 8307: Entertainment industry Title The American Amusement Park Industry: A History of Technology and Thrills

Author Aron, Cindy S Publication title Business History Review Volume 66 Issue 2 Pages 380 Number of pages 2 Publication year 1992 Publication date Summer 1992 Year 1992 Publisher Boston Publisher Cambridge University Press Place of publication Boston Country of publication United Kingdom Journal subject Business And Economics, History ISSN 00076805 CODEN BHRVA6 Source type Scholarly Journals Language of publication English Document type PERIODICAL Subfile History, Book reviews, Amusement parks

Accession number 00738670 ProQuest document ID 274314407 Document URL http://search.proquest.com/docview/274314407?accountid=50247 Copyright Copyright Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field Summer 1992 Last updated 2011-07-20 Database ProQuest Central