Leaderboard

Wow... that's a lot. Counterpoint: the reason that nobody goes to this place is that it sucks, there's no need to over-analyze it or make it a microcosm of anything greater than that. The Garden State Plaza mall is less than 15 miles away and every time I drive by it it's packed beyond packed (and often traffic spills out onto 17 and brings everything to a standstill). The major rides weren't closed because you were unlucky or because it was the offseason, the major rides were closed because you went to the American Dream mall and major rides are closed on any day of the week that ends with the letter y. They're also severely lacking in shops, they occasionally have shootings, the water park has theming elements that fall from the sky and try to kill you, their ferris wheel offers sweeping views of the Jersey Turnpike and the world's worst NFL stadium, but the promised "sweeping NYC views" can be better experienced from one of the 758 observation decks that are actually in NYC. Oh... and their ski slope catches on fire. It's the worst-run park in America by a lot and season passes (if you were to purchase one for each "season" are more expensive than they would be for any park or even chain of theme parks anywhere in America except for Disney...

wish we had a "hug" reaction. ..

Actually the post was on Facebook. Six flags themselves said they were in the general lot which is weird since the picture clearly shows them in the preferred lot. Either they made a mistake or the whole lot is general now.

I agree, but won't get on a soapbox about it.... Looney Toons has gotten the woke treatment but yet look at the FPS games out there and the violence in action movies and they label Looney Tunes as too violent, makes sense to me but I"ll hush.

I have to respectfully disagree. I really don't think the DOJ will take a merger between theme parks all the seriously and I don't think they will give it the same consideration as say merging airlines, or tech companies, or media companies. In other words they are not likely to consider the theme park industry as essential use. Also, SF/CF would have likely gotten some behind the scenes assurances that it's going to go through or they wouldn't be publicly touting it will be a done deal by summer. I could of course be totally wrong, we shall see; but I will be surprised if it is blocked.

You know, I started replying to try and explain to you what is different about zoos in terms of what their function is and the relevance of the transition for the developed world to service based economies on why we have all raced into the present day metamedia driven environment, but you're right. What's the point?

If you would have told me a few years ago that a park would open an hour from my house that was indoors, open every day of the year, had an Intamin multi launch, an air race, a drop tower, a record-breaking Gerstlauer, an Intamin half-pipe, a legitimately-kick-ass frisbee and a bunch of other kick-ass rides and I would never go there I would have never believed you. If this park was even operated moderately-well, I would spend $500-$600 a year on a season pass and not bat an eye. It's stunning how terrible this park is, and I want to love it. Sandy's Blasting Bronco operates less frequently than any other coaster in the region... even the ones at parks like Rye Playland that open in May, close in September and are often closed weekdays. And like, if I'm begging for your operations to be on the level of Rye Playland then you really, really, really suck.

If you really want to get into the nuts and bolts of this, there are three reasons for amusement facilities to exist in the modern world: 1) They are constructed as community projects by a local government. Most of these in the US are in the form of aquatics facilities or fairgrounds, but some will even possess and operate amusement parks like Bay Beach. This is by far the minority as it relates to us. 2) They are constructed as legitimate businesses intended to generate a profit primarily by selling things to people who paid to get in (which, I will note, is also actually the business model of movie theaters). This is pretty much everything you have ever heard of and attended. 3) They are constructed as money laundering exercises. When I interviewed Tom Mehrmann (the first President & GM for Universal Beijing) about 6-7 years ago, he basically stated that most Chinese theme/amusement parks were never intended to be legitimate businesses. Wonderland Eurasia is also generally accepted as being an example of this. "Sports" are many things beyond simply major league American professional sports franchises. It is also something which has appreciably seen research time and energy committed to it across the spectrum ranging from sports business, sociological concerns (particularly related to fandom, especially in Europe), advancing statistical models for analyzing the sports, et al, and it is accepted that all those directions of inquiry are worthwhile. Also the venues tend to be publicly owned and house many sorts of events at many price points. I'm going to cut you short here because many of these things (libraries???) are nothing like theme parks or are far too broad to be possibly compared to theme parks, which is a subset of a subset of a category of entertainment facility. There are public spaces which are controlled in the way theme parks are (this is actually part of the crux of the book I cited in my first reply), but whether or not that is inherently good is very much debatable. Let me save you some time and make it explicit where I most disagree with you: -"Serious" analysis of theme parks as art is an the unpretentious way to enjoy the hobby, unlike counting -Story telling through themed design is inherently good -Younger people don't seem to be occupying physical spaces constructed for them I find bullet point 1 the most self-indulgent for obvious reasons; "collecting is pretention" is wild. Bullet point 2 is a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright "a good roof leaks" thing. It's possible to have a fully fleshed out story that appeals to the hardcore brand fans, but has zero appeal outside that. Given that the point of the exercise of building rides/attractions is to generate increases in revenue, it is absolutely possible to say that some things are failures when they aren't able to outcompete other actors in the market or wind up closed/bulldozed. The last bullet point for me is because these spaces are really built first and foremost for the people who built them and their peers. People in my age category never gave up theme parks to be a hangout for teenagers and in fact - in fact! - look at this forum and every other theme park forum and see what people have to say about teenagers in attendance at parks. I'm not joking either: feel free to use Six Flags over Georgia as a recent example of how people react to the notion of theme parks being somewhere younger people can congregate together. Amusingly, I would identify as a capitalist, which is one of the reasons I'm sure any criticisms I lob at Disney Fan Studies would be completely ignored or lead to me personally attacked. The irony that I would be concerned of being slandered as some sort of pseudofascist by people who promote a multinational media corporation and generate apologia for its contributions on everything from human rights infringements to fossil fuels propaganda is not lost on me, but not something I want to waste my time with either. I do think the tech industry has benefited tremendously from destroying institutions like journalism whilst also collecting ad money from the worst actors imaginable and pushing the dumbest, most retrograde stuff it can to people who are basically media illiterate. I referenced QAnon earlier: it is obviously something that social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have helped to construct through the magic of algorithmically delivered content. I've abandoned almost all of it at this point from active use (clue to that should have been what I said about online communities). I did, and I have. Thanks.

I don't have any strong opinions about Nickelodeon Universe in NJ: I have never been, I have no desire to go. That said, I am extremely familiar with how it came to be and the entire history of the Xanadu project for the same reason my fingers still instinctively type out the TPR URL from time to time. It seems bound to fail like the entire structure that surrounds it, the reasons for which are legion. I don't want to dwell on that much, because it is almost incidental to my reply to you, which at various points does all of the things you wondered the post was intended to do. There are two books named Theme Park Design: the Younger book you referenced, and another by Steve Alcorn. I reference this because what I tend to see in theme park discussion is that which the former really is about. Rather than being an engineering tome intended to describe how the magic is made as Alcorn's book was, is about theme parks as art and the way in which the engineering affects the individual in a very limited way. If you have seen Dis-Net, then you have seen how this perspective has been carried very far academically in recent times, riding the crest of post-modernism and new materialism. I don't want to dwell on it much, but I do want to make you aware of it if you are already not, as it seems to be something that you would like. I personally find much of this...not to my taste. I have many feelings about this, but recognize that voicing them would make me a target of the entire ecosystem. Why then bring up the two books? One is more mechanistic and quantitative, and the other much more qualitative. The former process has become derided in lieu of approaches to Disney criticism founded on the likes of New Materialism in much the way you describe the "counters"; it strips the art of it's meaning. But what then of the meaning? If one asserts that the meaning is reassurance, that is fine. It is a thing said by the Imagineers themselves. But if once someone asserts that the meaning is reassurance for the purpose of consumption, trumpets sound, the heavens open up, and down comes the pestilence. Theme parks, as we know them, exist entirely to sell people goods at highly inflated costs. This raison d'etre as been extended ever outward, enveloping art outside the parks into them for the same goal (in the guise of "canon" for "immersion"), commodifying every emotion and human idea in its wake. This is not a cynical thought. This is objectively the reality. Consumption as collective, community building activity in fact is even the historical origin of Disney fandom. It is an offshoot of Disneyana collecting and grew up parallel to, but not directly interacting with, the ride-centered fan groups which emerged at exactly the same time in the 1970s. I know this, because I went out and interviewed the living examples of those who were there at the beginning. I hoped to do something with that work, but then I realized it was pointless and gave up. The truth couldn't defeat the lie, because the lie of this being some deep artistic statement was so much more romantic than the truth of Younger's book being about how to make people feel so safe that they are willing to spend anything to keep feeling that way or to take home some souvenir that can make them relive it. Nothing - nothing I can say at all - is more cynical than the notion that we need entities who can provide us safety and reassurance. It is the most anti-utopian and openly fascistic idea one can posit.

A short .02: What has come after post-modernism is hyperrealism: it is what animates VR and AR. WWOHP is real but it isn't: this is a difference that has been described and talked about plenty, but the effect of having such places with such immense escapism that also tries to lure in people to never stop being in them is not discussed. This is not the fault of young people. Where are young people? Frankly, many of them are indeed home, existing in insular self-administered realities that were constructed by GenX and Millennials with the specific intent of trying to establish a virtual world they don't feel the need to leave (leaving means a loss of engagement, which means a loss of ad revenue). This hyper real world doesn't require people to be themselves or even real, and it has also ensnared plenty of older people. QAnon is a hyperreal, immersive, multimedia experience (also completely unhinged) that many have opted to take on as reality. QAnon is preferable to them compared to dealing with a world that lacks meaning as all things are reduced to merely the manner in which it is personally true to everyone at an individual level. Also to be frank, the young people don't exist. They weren't born. We are in the midst of a generational decline in population in the west that has been academically understood to be happening for multiple decades. Those who have been born are often put on trajectories by their parents which may lead them to avoiding certain activities unless it is meaningful to their parents. Keep that in mind long term about what it is these theme parks contain for content. Who are the Muppets there for at Disney? Finally, in regards to the notion of "counters" being those who have reduced the hobby in some way to a digestible format: LOL. I would posit that this is what happens when people have decided to spend all their time navel gazing about themed entertainment rather than interact with the reality of what excites people. Video gameification of theme parks has been an absolute disaster by and large, culminating in the complete failure of the Galactic Starcruiser. The opposite of Theme Park Design is Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space, a book written by Parsons School professor and architect Miodrag Mitrašinović. It appears in virtually zero format anywhere on any theme park forum or college program's reading lists, in part because it is a criticism of theme parks as an all encompassing ("totalizing", as that author states) experience linking notions of recreation and imagination to capitalism and the privatization of space, consumption, et al. "Counters", in my experience, are people who want to engage with many different ideas and concepts around what outdoor amusements can be. I don't believe "theme park fans" (it's just the Disney fandom, no such classification exists) have any interest in different ideas. They have their idea and find it beyond criticism as an idea. In any case, and if you should care (I don't expect this), I rode >1000 roller coasters, visited hundreds of theme parks all over the planet, wrote and podcasted about theme parks, blah blah blah. I arrived to my 40s realizing that without a child in tow that this wasn't for me anymore. I haven't been to a theme park for nearly 2 years. I find art and nature having filled this gap for me but have no desire to be evangelical about this. I also no longer care about being part of any internet communities after multiple iterations have all dissolved and proven far inferior to real-life interaction. I expect many things I enjoyed to get much worse but hope to continue to be open to new experiences and ideas that can replace them. I don't believe this is true about theme park fans. I believe they want new experiences, but only in the context of it existing in a gated theme park where they can feel "safe." I feel that is infantilizing and has depoliticized potentially millions of people who now cannot actively be involved in the sorts of collective action that we need at this moment. I don't have any desire to typically say this on theme park forums because that is kinda mean, but in situations like this, I feel as though it is justified. edit: As a side note, last year I went looking for a place where I could donate my library of amusement ephemera and literature. Ultimately, I wound up emailing Penn State, who I knew even before I started that process were home to the Charles Jacques collection, the only Amusement industry/theme park collection held by an academic institution in America. They informed me that they were not seeking additional donations to join it as no one was currently using the materials in that collection. For all the journals and academic works produced in the last 5-6 years on this topic, none involved use of the one collection of this material specific to the fandom of theme parks and amusements. That, along with my correspondence with some of the academics working in this field, informed me that none of that information and history matters. The only thing people want to do is validate their fandom of Disney's theme parks or at minimum the concept of "immersion" as projected through the prism of Disney's theme parks. I was deeply disappointed but have accepted it and moved on. I only say this now because it seems like I should provide context.

So... Last Tuesday I had oral surgery to remove two lower teeth. It will be 4-8 months before permanents can be put in place. Therefore no food that requires biting for me (sandwiches, fruit, pizza) unless it's cut into very small pieces and then placed at the back of my mouth. Thursday our older dog has a seizure. 48 hours and $2500 later not sure what's going on. Sunday my husband gets in an auto accident and his car is totaled. We go the ER and he has bruised ribs and some cuts on his side from the airbag deployment. I take the day off from work but had purchased St. Patrick's Day cupcakes for my cast. I called another cast member who brought them to work for me. Two days later and not one of the people I work with called or texted or asked how we are doing. Not one thank you or anything. So over ungrateful people. It's been a horrible week.