Posted by Ensign Smith (not sure why my screen name isn't posting):
Rob, I've expressed your sentiments on here before. I can understand why folks who don't frequent amusement parks are indifferent to their fate. But I thought we, at least, were supposed to appreciate the importance and specialness of these places.
It seems like there is a lot of short-sighted parochialism among enthusiasts. If it's not happening to the two or three parks I visit, it's not important. I guess this is natural and human, but when it reaches the level where people are actually gloating about the rides that a park like MiA or KD is going to receive at the fatal expense of a park like GL, that's where it becomes nonsensical to me.
I especially dislike when an administrator for one of the foremost amusement park enthusiast web sites can only produce an indifferent response about a park closing when questioned by members of the media. There, I said it. Somebody in that position ought to have a better understanding about their responsibility. Such a personage is regarded by the media as representative of all enthusiasts, and as such he or she speaks for all of us. It doesn't matter if the park in question was complete crap. It's still an amusement park, and still deserves affection and support from the enthusiast community. And most especially by people in leadership positions.
I know that the demographics among coaster fans tend to skew toward teens and young adults, and that may play a factor in this phenomenon. I imagine there's a dearth of awareness about the history of amusement parks, or how many parks there once were.
Here where I live, in Cuyahoga Falls, once upon a time we had our own park (Glens), while neighboring Akron had five parks all to itself. In Ohio there were over 80 parks, not so very long ago. I think that without an appreciation of the past, it's more difficult to understand where the industry is going in the future. It's easier to write off the loss of an Erieview or a Conneaut Lake or an Astroland when you don't understand the long view: that these landmark treasure are disappearing, one by one.
When someone here mentioned the disappearance of the family owned amusement park, and somebody else responded that Koch down in Holiday World would be surprised to hear that, there wasn't a whole lot of correction by posters that I noticed. But the truth of the matter is that for every Holiday World or Beech Bend, there are probably 5 or 8 or 10 Bushkills or Lesourdsville Lakes. (That ratio is probably actually declining of late, mostly because most of the damage has been done already, and there simply aren't that many of that kind of parks left to close.) Despite the boom period from about 1960 to 1985 of large theme parks and large theme park companies, the greater trend from the Depression to the present has been the retrenchment and loss of these small, traditional, independently owned parks. That is the battle facing enthusiasts today, and they can't fight it -- or at least speak up about it -- if they don't understand the nature of that battle.
So what I would like to see is more enthusiasts taking an interest in parks far from their home base. I'd like to see folks begin to understand that amusement parks are not a zero sum game. If one park loses, to a degree, all parks lose. And it would be good to see more people aware of the storied and glittering past of these places, to understand that their remnants today are just that -- remnants, that need to be nurtured and preserved.
*Packs away soap box*
*** This post was edited by 10/11/2007 12:33:54 PM ***