Amusement Park and Attractions Industry Trivia

• A European invention: "amusement parks" and "theme parks" are often regarded as typically American – however, amusement parks were first created in the “old world."

• The world’s oldest operating amusement park is Bakken in Klampenborg, Denmark, which dates to 1583. The oldest continually operating amusement park in the United States is Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut, USA, which opened in 1846.

• Many people believe that America’s fascination with amusement parks began with the opening of the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island, New York, in 1927. Originally costing only $175,000 (Є146,000) to construct, the coaster still operates at Astroland amusement park in New York, USA.

• “Rides” are the number one reason Americans visit amusement parks, according to an IAAPA survey. Of the many rides available, 46 percent of people say that their favorite ride is the roller coaster.

• There are more than 1,300 roller coasters in the USA. At 456 feet tall and reaching speeds of 128 miles per hour, Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, USA, is the world’s tallest and fastest coaster.

• The Colossus Roller Coaster located in Thorpe Park, Chertsey, Surrey, UK, as ranked as the coaster with the most inversions at a total of ten inversions.

• The oldest operating Ferris wheel is located in Europe at The Prater, Vienna, Austria. It was built in 1897.

• The popular amusement park ride, the Tilt-A-Whirl, can accommodate 500 people every hour.

• The first carousel-like rides were used in the 1600s to train European princes for horse competitions.

• The first “roller coaster” was invented in Russia in the 1600s. People hopped on carved-out blocks of ice and careened down snowy hillsides for fun. Technology has since improved!

• The word “fun” appears in more amusement park names than any other descriptive word.

• The largest amusement park, by acreage, is Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, which encompasses 47 square miles.

• Former Today show host Dave Garroway’s popular chimp, J. Fred Muggs, spent his retirement performing at Busch Gardens Tampa, earning $50,000 (Є41,000) a year.

• Disneyland in Anaheim, California, USA, was based loosely on Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark. The park’s Sleeping Beauty Castle, an icon of Disneyland and the entrance to Fantasyland was reputedly replicated from Schloss Neuschwanstein, a castle in the southern state of Bavaria in Germany and built by Ludwig II, King of Bavaria in 1869.

• Paramount ’s Carowinds Park has the state line of North and South Carolina running right through it.

• Spaceship Earth, the star spangled geosphere at Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center weighs 16 million pounds and is 180 feet tall. It can be spotted by aircraft flying along the Eastern Coast of Florida!

• Favorite amusement park foods: Cotton Candy was invented in the late 1800s and made its international debuts at the 1900 Paris Exposition and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Americans consume 7 billion hot dogs between Memorial Day and Labor Day. There are six different types of corn, but only one type (called “popcorn”) can be used to make popcorn.

• According to an IAAPA survey, 94 percent of people that visit amusement parks have a favorite amusement park food. 28 percent of those surveyed prefer funnel cake, 17 percent prefer ice cream, 14 percent prefer pizza, 13 percent prefer hot dogs, and 12 percent prefer cotton candy.

• The popular amusement park and family entertainment center game Whac-A-Mole has been around for more than 25 years and Hasbro even sells home versions!

• The top four attractions at a family entertainment center include kids' games, miniature golf, coin operated games and redemption games.

• The first patented game of miniature golf was called "Tom Thumb Golf" and was built on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, USA, by Garnet Carter in 1927 to draw traffic to the hotel he owned.

• The first popular "arcade games" were early amusement park midway games such as shooting galleries, ball toss games, and the earliest coin-operated machines, such as those which claim to tell a person their fortune or played mechanical music. Although none of these were coin-operated games themselves, the old midways of 1920s-era amusement parks (such as Coney Island in New York, USA) provided the inspiration and atmosphere of later arcade games.

• The earliest coin-operated pinball machines were made in the 1930s. They were made of wood, did not have plungers or lit-up bonus surfaces on the playing field, and used mechanical scoring. Around 1977, most pinball machines in production switched to using solid state electronics for both operation and scoring.

• Between 1976 and 2005 the German Dorothea Spohler-Claußen visited amusement parks all over the world 1,108 times which consequently earned her a place in the Guiness Book of World Records. Her favorite park is the Hansa Park in Sierksdorf, Germany which she visited 200 times