UK Theme Parks
History
A collection of rides and other entertainment attraction which are assembled for the purpose of entertaining a generally large group of people is called amusement parks or theme parks. An amusement park is more than just a simple city park or playground because an amusement park is meant to cater variety of people from different age group from adults, teenagers, and small children, different social class, different life styles and different gender
An amusement park has two types. It may be permanent or temporary, usually periodic, such as a few days or weeks per year. The temporary amusement park with mobile rides is called a funfair or carnival.
On the other hand, a permanent amusement park is termed as a theme park which is a more narrowly defined category of an amusement park. Theme parks are permanent facilities that use architecture, signage, landscaping to help convey the feeling that people are in a different place or time. Often a theme park will have various ‘lands’ or sections of the park devoted to telling a particular story. In other cases, an amusement park often has rides with little in terms of theme or additional design elements. Most significantly, theme parks are the highest quality form of an amusement park since it has more to offer than other parks and entertainment.
In Europe, amusement parks evolved from Pleasure Gardens which used to exist for the recreation of the people, while charging a fee.
Amusement parks have existed for hundreds of years as fairs, festivals, carnivals, circuses, expositions, and pleasure gardens. They have often existed in city & town squares and in public and private gardens. Although these venues provided pleasure seekers with leisurely activities and family settings, many provided curiosity & thrill seekers with oddities, freak shows, and even public executions.
Amusement parks have been around a lot longer than way back their roots which date back to the 1300′s. Around this time ‘pleasure gardens’ began appearing on the outskirts of major European cities. They are most likely the same with the modern amusement parks which offers live entertainment, fireworks, dancing, games and some small gentle rides. Dated back, they are extremely popular however, with the emergence of political unrest many of these parks had closed. There have been a few which has survived though and some are still thriving today, such as Bakken Park, north of Copenhagen, is the world’s oldest operating amusement park pleasing crowds since 1583.
Theme parks have become a symbol of a new wave of leisure places. Especially designed and built with leisure in mind these provide a ‘complete’ experience in terms of facilities for all ages and a particular storyline to the whole site. The geography of theme parks can be summarized by considering the three kinds of places where these have been developed: city fringes, holiday areas and historic estates ( 1995; 1991).
A number of theme parks are sited on the fringes of cities and their urban motorway peripheries, exemplified by Chessington World of Adventures and Thorpe Park, in the south and west of London and just off the orbital M25 motorway. Other theme parks have been located in traditional holiday areas sometimes as part of the revamping of these areas as the more traditional sites such as piers and sea fronts became less popular, as in the example of Pleasurewood Hills in East Anglia.
In the south-west of England there are several theme parks, including Flambards, which capitalizes on the TV series of that name and is located without any particular local reason other than to capture the market of people in the area on holiday. Another type of theme park location is that attached to a historic landed estate, which is the case of Alton Towers in Staffordshire although the house has been demolished.
These theme parks have a landscape that combines children’s stories with history and fantasy. Sometimes they draw upon local landscape features. This is especially the case of Center Parcs. These are larger than theme parks and provide ‘complete’ holiday places, including residential facilities. In general these are located in attractive countryside but where they can be hidden from ‘spoiling the view’, although all are imaginatively designed ( 1993). The first two Centre Parcs were built in Thetford Forest, Norfolk and in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire during the 1980s. Further parks of this kind have been developed at Lockinge Forest in Kent, near Bath and in the southern approach to the Lake District.
A theme park is a term which is an abbreviation of themed amusement park which essentially offers amusement rides and other entertainment which includes unique themes and story.
In Great Britain, entertainment which primarily offered and provided amusement rides are usually found in the seaside resort. Even today, there are still many important attractions in the seaside resorts which has still amusement rides that ranges from small temporary collections of rides or fun fairs to permanently established parks of all sizes including both historic and modern sites.
However, traditionally the concept of a “theme park” only refers to inland locations that have charge an admission fee that allows both access to the place and on the amusement rides and entertainment and facilities exclusively and seaside parks are in exclusion. People’s perception also of theme parks should be a place which is permanently established and there are no rides that are mobile and travel as part of a carnival. The term also contains the word “park” which implies that the venue will mostly be of an outdoor nature.
As well as rides a “theme park” must also offer some attempt at having themes, where visitors enter non-natural environments and atmospheres which have been purposely created to offer a particular experience. Whether it’s on the basic level of presenting clusters of rides and amenities grouped by a common topic or subject, or a more sophisticated level of fully immersive artificially created scenery or sets.
A “theme park” must also be of a relatively large scale and include adequate amenities to support day visitors, including catering and retail outlets, as well as guest facilities such as toilets, storage lockers, trained medical staff and cash machines.
Definition of Commercial Leisure
Currently, commercial leisure is predominantly applied to the core uses of this sector characterized by multiplex cinemas, bingo halls, night clubs, tenpin bowling, health and fitness center, pubs and restaurants and casinos. Commonly, in this sector ownership lies predominantly in the private; users tend to occupy new, purpose built developments in similar types of bulky, box like buildings; and the industry is both innovative and quick to adopt new trends.
Conventionally, one or more of these activities are found grouped into leisure parks or smaller leisure boxes, usually with a multiplex forming the anchor development triggering the footfall that attracts other complementary uses to the location. Also, it is extremely unusual to find a leisure park or center that does not have some kind of food offer.
Generally, theme parks are the same with commercial leisure. Theme parks like commercial leisure offers entertainment in which people is expecting when going in the places. It also offers food for the people enjoying around. Theme parks are identified as under in this sector.
Illusion of Choice
Choice is a term referred as an alternative or an option. Choice allows you to channel the natural contrariness of the human organism into safe and non-threatening channels (). Having a choice gives someone an option for what works for him and what does not.
However, in this rapidly changing and dynamic marketplace we have today, companies gives an illusion of choice to their customers in order to gain their loyalty and gain competitive advantage. The basic goal of offering all these illusionary choices is to distract you from the big picture and prevent competition from arising ().
For example, one can buy 50 different breakfast cereals which are all made by the same two companies. One can buy 50 different soft drinks which are also all made by the same two companies (). By overwhelming the market with all these different products, they basically make it so that any new competitor that arises will be able to get only a percent of the market at best, and that’s if the new competitor is able to get shelf space. But since all the shelf space is already filled with different products from the oligarchists, new entrants would have difficulty in establishing a competitive advantage and hard to get shelf space.
Point of departure for market regulation is that enhancing competition helps maximizing social surplus since consumer discipline stimulates innovativeness, quality improvements, and cost effectiveness. These effects however, can only take place if several conditions are met. One of these conditions is consumer rationality.
Such rationality is determined by the interaction of consumer psychological characteristics and environmental conditions under which consumers have to make choices.
With the illusion of choice, one is deceive from what really works because one would never know. Others may have notice but because of social interaction one would rather buy in on the illusion and do what others do.
Influences like social class, gender, age, life cycle. etc
Gender
Gender and women’s issues have been discussed to some extent in leisure research during the past ten years. The value of acknowledging the empowerment of women through leisure as well as a greater understanding of a broader construct of leisure has become evident (1990a). The studies published about women’s leisure and gender issues from feminist perspectives have given visibility to the value of the study of women’s leisure. In addition, the meaning of gender is beginning to inform the leisure literature, not just as another demographic variable to add to the list to be studied, but as a framework for analyzing the impact of socialization and gender relations in “everyday life” for both women and men (1990).
The entitlement or right that an individual has for leisure has been assumed in the study of leisure. Researchers have assumed, for example, that if leisure is to have any valence in women’s lives, they must first believe that they are entitled to it (1986; 1991; 1988). Entitlement to leisure, however, is often highly situational (, 1991).
Life situations, like motherhood and paid work status, appear to be factors that differentiate women’s views on the values associated with and entitlement to leisure. Even though women often say they want and deserve leisure, they may not see the lack of leisure as a significant problem in their lives.
A growing literature has addressed the perceived benefits and outcomes of leisure and recreation (1991), but little of this research has examined the role of gender.
Henderson (1990b) found, for example, that the American farm women she studied had difficulty describing leisure, and subsequently their motivations for involvement in leisure. Similarly, (1987) also discovered in their Sheffield, England study that women had difficulty discussing leisure because it was a vague and amorphous concept. The notions, however, of enjoyment, pleasure, and the opportunity to “please oneself” were central ideas suggested. The concepts of relaxation and sociability were also frequently mentioned by British women.
Similarly, one of the pervasive outcomes that appeared when American women described their leisure was the chance to recuperate/recover or to just “do nothing” (1991). Feminist researchers (1986;1990;1989) suggest that women’s lives can be made more visible through involvement in leisure. The outcome of empowerment that women experience in having the opportunity to control their bodies, and ultimately their lives through leisure, can result in a heightened sense of control in other aspects of life (1989). The elimination of gender-imposed roles is potentially an important outcome of leisure for both males and females.
Leisure is experienced differently by people in diverse life situations. For example, most working class women have leisure experiences which are significantly different from most middle class women (1985). The individual differences that exist among groups of women or among groups of men may be far greater than the differences between men and women. Thus, the understanding of leisure is highly dependent on the social context in which individuals experience leisure.
Social Class
The tensions around leisure space brought to, the fore two distinct and conflicting definitions and perceptions of the park. While the middle class emphasized passive leisure pursuits, cultural improvement and refined manners, the working class sought active, outdoor recreation, fun, and games ( 1979).
By identifying with a particular social group, an individual often embraces what is valued and rejects what is not acceptable or wanted. According to (1949), “the status and role of the individual in relation to the means of production and exchange of goods and services gives rise to a consciousness of membership in some social class which shares attitudes, values, and interests.”
Class awareness, or subjective social class, refers to the “individual’s perception of his own position in the status hierarchy” ( 1973). Those occupying a similar class position also subscribe to a similar configuration of attitudes, values, and interests. Among the multiple criteria around which social groups are formed, class distinctions are also potent in the construction of social identities (1983). Hence, one would also expect class-based identities to exert some influence on leisure preferences.
Leisure activities are largely defined by class. Individuals with different incomes and lifestyles have different choices in their selection of leisure activities. But, there are other factors that affect the role income have on leisure preferences, two of which are occupation prestige and education. A high level of income by itself does provide or promote high class leisure activities. Income level, on the contrary, makes no independent contribution toward explanation of variance when the other two measures of social stratification education and occupational prestige is kept constant. Lifestyles are learned through personal experience in a given niche in a given class. What this means is that lifestyle cannot be bought. In winning the state lottery, the lower working class individual does not suddenly become a high class citizen with high class ideas about leisure.
Life cycle
Leisure behavior is a dialectical process, according to which an individual seeks both stability and change, structure and variety, familiarity and novelty in his or her intrapersonal and inter-personal encounters throughout the life cycle (I1980).
Human development is seen as a process of continuity and change, suggesting that “the leisure self” develops throughout life, adapting and renewing itself (1987).
The study of patterns of leisure behavior (starting, ceasing and replacing) over the life-span is important from both the individual and societal standpoints. For one thing, such research helps shed light on active versus passive leisure lifestyles and their impact on the person and society. Prevention of a sedentary lifestyle is an important individual and societal issue (1987) and provides an economic rationale for health-promotion programs and active leisure lifestyles. Besides its economic benefits, an active leisure lifestyle seems to have positive effects on human health (1992;1993).
Research in this area has led (1984) to her famous axiom, “use it or lose it.” In other words, if people are not active physically, intellectually and socially, they start losing their faculties and capacities. For example, dendrites that connect nerve cells in the brain stay extended with use, but begin shrinking without use: “Some people like to do crossword puzzles. Some go back to school. Some like to visit neighbors. The main factor is stimulation. The nerve cells are designed to receive stimulation. And I think curiosity is a key factor. If one maintains curiosity for a lifetime, that will surely stimulate neural tissue and the cortex may in turn respond” (, 1984).
Although arguments for the benevolence of an active leisure lifestyle are strong, there is evidence, too, that participation in leisure activities declines with age (1981; 1988). (1976) found that the percentage of people reporting active leisure participation went down from about 80% in the first stage of the adult life-span (age 20-29) to about 20% in the last stage of the life-span (age 75-94). The same study showed that engagement in high-intensity and outside-home activities declines, whereas participation in “home-centered forms of sociability and media-based interaction” remains relatively stable across the life cycle.
A different line of research has shown that there is considerable stability to leisure behavior in general ( 1986; 1988). But, by the same token, there appears to be room for experimentation and new experiences as well. It is well established in leisure research that roughly one half of adults’ current leisure activities are begun in childhood. For example, it has been reported that outdoor recreation participation in youth is directly related to adulthood participation in the same activity (1987; 1987). If roughly one half of adults’ leisure activities are begun in childhood, it follows that the other half is begun later in life, and therefore reflects people’s tendency to seek new leisure experiences.
It has been theorized (1980) that these tendencies vary as a function of life stages. More specifically, it was hypothesized that the search for novelty and new leisure experiences grows steadily from childhood to adulthood until it levels off and starts to decline in late adulthood. The opposite has been proposed for the tendency to seek familiar and stable leisure forms. This theorizing has received some empirical support (1989) and therefore provides a useful framework for analyzing patterns of starting, ceasing and replacing leisure activities over the life-span. Starting and replacing leisure activities, which reflect the tendency to seek novelty and new leisure experiences, should be at their highest in early adulthood and then decline with age. In contrast, it may be expected that the proportion of people who continue to engage in the same activities indicating stability would increase with age, a pattern which would also be reflected in the proportion of people who cease activities. In other words, given people’s greater tendency toward familiarity and stability with increasing age, more of them may be expected to do the same activities as they get older and consequently, fewer people should cease activities with advancing age.
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