Amusement Parks

This comprehensive guide profiles 16 major amusement parks in the Empire State and offers information on smaller parks as well. Offers complete information on rides and attractions, a history of each park, and best times to go. Features vintage photographs and postcards scenes.

A comprehensive guide to 13 parks in the state, complete with information on rides and attractions. Packed with vintage postcard images and photos.

This comprehensive guide profiles 17 major amusement parks in the Garden State. Complete information on rides and attractions is accompanied by dozens of vintage photographs and postcard scenes. Featured parks: Steel Pier, Atlantic City; Keansburg Amusement Park, Keansburg; Clementon Amusement Park, Clementon; Jenkinson's Boardwalk, Point Pleasant Beach; Casino Pier, Seaside Heights; Playland, Ocean City; Bowcraft Amusement Park, Scotch Plains; Land of Make Believe, Hope; Storybookland, Cardiff; Funtown Pier, Seaside Park; Wild West City, Netcong; Gillian's Wonderland Pier, Ocean City; Morey's Piers, Wildwood; Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson; Fantasy Island, Beach Haven; Blackbeards Cave, Bayville.

From Ferris wheels to roller coasters to tunnels of love, everyone has a favorite amusement park memory. For nearly 130 years, many of those memories have been made at Maryland's amusement parks. Today, only five exist, but throughout history, nearly three dozen have been part of Maryland's landscape. Images of America: Maryland's Amusement Parks offers a glimpse of those parks and how they helped millions quench their thirst for recreation. Maryland's first recorded amusement park, Cabin John Park in Montgomery County, opened in 1876, serving as a training ground for such industry luminaries as Scenic Railway and roller coaster pioneer L.A. Thompson and carousel carver Gustav Dentzel. More than a century later, Maryland's oldest park, Trimper's Rides and Amusements in Ocean City, is a virtual museum of amusement park history with operating rides dating to 1902. Some favorite parks, including Glen Echo, Gwynn Oak, Pen Mar, Tolchester Beach, and The Enchanted Forest, did not last as long, but their memories live on through more than 200 images in this volume.

From the first pleasure gardens to the global theme park companies, this book provides an understanding of the nature and function of theme parks as spaces of entertainment. It portrays the impacts of theme parks as global competitive actors, agents of global development and cultural symbols, in the context of their role in the developing economy.

Introduces readers to some abandoned amusement parks around the world that are believed to be haunted.

By 1912, there were 54 amusement parks in Ohio. The parks came in all sizes, and featured such attractions as the Flying Ponies carousel, the Chute-the-Chutes water ride, and the Cyclone, Racer, and Dip-the-Dips roller coasters. Some, like Cleveland's White City, seemed to be courted by bad luck from the beginning, and folded after only a few disappointing seasons. Others, like Youngstown's Idora Park, enjoyed long lives and fostered beloved memories, but eventually closed down in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. A few, like Sandusky's Cedar Point, have grown to be considered among the greatest amusement parks in the world. But most are now forgotten.

From Jones's Woods, America's first amusement resort, to Coney Island during the golden age of the mid-1900s, and well beyond into the twenty-first century, the thrills of the amusement park have been a treasured part of childhood for Americans from coast to coast. Though many of the country's grand amusement treasures have now vanished, and many other parks are struggling for survival, their memory and legacy are very much alive: there will be a fascination with these American classics as long as the clatter of the old coaster cars and the thumping of the carousel band organ remains. Through thoroughly researched text and historic images, Amusement Parks author and park enthusiast Jim Hillman captures the sights, smells, and continuing vitality of a grand American tradition.