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Institute
This book offers a comprehensive, multidisciplinary introduction to theme parks and the field of theme park studies. It identifies and discusses relevant economic, social, and cultural as well as medial, historical, and geographical aspects of theme parks worldwide, from the big international theme park chains to smaller, regional, family-operated parks. The book also describes the theories and methods that have been used to study theme parks in various academic disciplines and reviews the major contexts in which theme parks have been studied. By providing the necessary backgrounds, theories, and methods to analyze and understand theme parks both as a business field and as a socio-cultural phenomenon, this book will be a great resource to students, academics from all disciplines interested in theme parks, and professionals and policy-makers in the leisure and entertainment as well as the urban planning sector.
Theme Park Imitations
(2022)
Theme parks frequently draw not only on historical themes, from antiquity to the roaring twenties, but also on their own history – that is, the history of the medium of the theme park itself. This article uses the example of the Happy World ride at Happy Valley Beijing (China) to discuss theme park imitations, that is, the fact that theme parks frequently borrow individual elements (themes, technologies, visuals, layouts, names) and/or entire units (rides, restaurants, themed areas) from each other. Opened in 2014 in the Greek-themed Aegean Harbour section of Happy Valley Beijing, Happy World may upon first sight look like an almost exact copy of Disney’s ‘it’s a small world’ (opened at Disneyland in California in 1966) but turns out to be, upon closer examination, a complex refunctionalization of central elements of ‘it’s a small world’ that establishes meaningful connections between (ancient) Greece and the city of Beijing via the theme of the Olympic Games: drawing on the origins of ‘it’s a small world’ in the 1964–5 New York World’s Fair and the latter’s motto of ‘Peace through Understanding’, Happy World takes visitors on a journey from the ancient Olympiad to contemporary Beijing (the site of the 2008 Summer and the 2022 Winter Olympic Games) to offer a theme park rendition of the 2008 Olympic torch relay as an homage to ‘the spirit [of peace, respect, and friendship] in the people’s [sic] of the world’.
Spring Issue
(2022)