Travel Time: Freedomland 1963

[speedracer]

Stumbled across this cool little vid of Freedomland circa 1963:

 

http://weirdovideotoo.blogspot.com/search/label/Carnies

[Homer]

Oh god, the horribly cheesy dubbing/narrating on that documentary.

 

This place used to fascinate me when I found the concept on the net a few years ago, unfortunate the park barely churned a profit even in New York City.

 

EDIT: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/robfriedman/ -Good Freedomland link.

[Ccron10]

It's suprising how a park that looks almost like Disneyland close. I mean, the park looks really great and I wonder what the park would look like if it continued operating.

[Homer]

No wonder why it is so close to Disneyland. According to Wikipedia;

 

Freedomland was conceived by Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood (1922–1992), a young Texan, who had previously worked in the planning, construction and management of Disneyland. Hired by Walt Disney in 1953, Wood was the person who selected the orange grove site in Anaheim, California where Disneyland was eventually built.

 

Wood became very close to Disney during the next two years, but eventually the two men had a falling out. Reasons for this are unclear, but three theories exist: Wood was embezzeling money from the park[citation needed]; Wood was taking too much public credit for Disneyland or Wood betrayed Disney by planning his own amusement parks, effectively stealing Disney's original concept.

 

By January of 1956, Wood had been fired from Disneyland. To this day, The Walt Disney Company refuses to acknowledge any role played by him in the creation of the Magic Kingdom.