While the phrase “urban recreation” may not be part of today’s lexicon, its outcroppings fused with culture as early as the 19th century when New York City’s Central Park and Chicago’s Columbian Expedition opened their gates to the public.
And while urban recreation began “free of cost” it soon underwent a lucrative metamorphosis: people began eagerly paying for their entertainment, buying experiences and memories in the form of admission tickets to amusement parks. Leading the pact in this paying phenomenon was Coney Island.
Though Coney Island’s first hotel was built in 1829, the Island did not take off until after the Civil War when investors believed it could be transformed into a resort. Whereas Disneyland was created by a single man with a variegated vision, Coney Island’s parks comprised a series of collaborators – from Corbin’s lavish resorts in Manhattan Beach to Boyton’s Sea Lion Park and Tilyou’s Steeplechase.
This variation gave Coney Island the uniqueness, flair and cultural significance that made it irreplaceable. Steeplechase, for example, offered a wacky world of activity while Luna Park presented a colorful palace of play, replete with minarets, columns, lagoons, and lofty aerial flights, creating an environment that John Kasson, author of Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century, describes as “effervescent lightness, heightened symbolism, and festive gaiety.”
Coney Island’s success reaffirmed that people would pay for amusement. As Island Reformer George Tilyou remarked, “‘Americans want either to be thrilled or amused, and we are ready to pay well for either sensation.'” Yet, looking back at it all now, Coney’s ten cent entrance fee was a small price to pay to exchange city life or a rather nice beach respite. Such modest prices have come and gone.
Disney theme parks capitalize on consumption, selling experience and memories as commodities. Entrance fees make up 50% of theme park revenues. In fact, visitors are encouraged to stay longer at the parks because of the steep entrance fees, further boosting revenues from longer hotel stays, other resort activities, food, and merchandize purchases.
Moreover, while Coney Island was revolutionary for its day, openings its doors to all social classes and offering a visible sign of the shifting sexual mores associated with the 1920s, Disney isn’t so generous. Disney’s theme parks may intimate a rather peaceful and pristine atmosphere where one roams freely, plays freely, but Disney’s creation is actually quite synchronized – part of Disney’s magic comes down to controlling almost every aspect of a visitor’s actives and experiences.
Regulation seeps into every Disney crevice from the way the park is laid-out with its carefully landscaped, picture-perfect paths leading the itinerant to a specific destination to the draconian code of conduct for park employees. And while Disney is also open to all ethnicities and classes, the steep price f admission tickets reduces guest demography to upper-middle class families.
The first true theme park’s allure began to fade as its uniqueness became quotidian in the wake of other more amusing parks As Kasson writes, it lost “its distinctiveness by the very triumph of its values.” The times caught up to, then smothered, the appreciation of the simple pleasures Coney Island accentuated.
Walt Disney came along with a grand vision and some experimental ideas and created a “wonderful world.” But those who came after Walt – Michael Eisner, for example, went on to capitalize on everything Disney. Coney Island, that resort on the shore, certainly made a splash in its day, but in this day Disney has soaked the guest in a tsunami of commodities. Happy Birthday Disney. How much are you charging for a slice of cake?
Reference:
- Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century by John F. Kasson Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy by Janet Wasko
