Present Day Amusement Parks
The amusement park industry's offerings range from large, worldwide type theme parks such as Disneyworld and Universal Studios Hollywood to smaller and medium-sized theme parks such as the Six Flags parks and Cedar Fair parks. Plus, countless smaller ventures in many of the states of the U.S. and in countries around the world. Even simpler theme parks directly aimed at smaller children have emerged, including Legoland opened in 1999 in Carlsbad, California (the first Legoland opened in 1968 in Billund, Denmark).
Examples of amusement parks in shopping malls exist in West Edmonton Mall, Alberta, Canada; Pier 39, San Francisco; Mall of America, Bloomington, Minnesota.
Family fun parks starting as miniature golf courses have begun to grow to include batting cages, go-karts, bumper cars, bumper boats and water slides. Some of these parks have grown to include even roller coasters, and traditional amusement parks now also have these competition areas in addition to their thrill rides.
As of 2008, the Walt Disney Company accounted for around half of the total industry's revenue in the US as a result of more than 50 million visitors of its U.S.-based attractions each year.
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“The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Thanksgiving Day—A day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)