Image: bryanh/Flickr

In the Mangyongdae funfair, riding that white knuckle ride can actually be your last. Kuriositas blog explains why in this North Korea amusement park, having fun can be a deadly business:

The rides at the park are so ramshackle that repairs are done on an as and when, ad hoc basis. To avoid the deaths of important North Koreans or overseas visitors (whose foreign currency is rather more important) local farmers are often recruited to test the rides for safety. This must be the only place in the world where a knock on the door and the words you’re going to the funfair are met with dread.

The place that gave Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe the crazy idea that happiness was just a few subway stops away.

Between about 1880 and World War II, Coney Island was the largest amusement park in the United States. But back in 1609, when Dutch explorer Henry Hudson became the first European to arrive on the premises, he found nothing more than barren sand dunes and very unfriendly Native Americans. After his petty officer was killed in a skirmish, Hudson moved on to a much calmer and peaceful island later known as Manhattan.

At some point the island (which is five miles long and up to a mile wide) was named Konijn Eiland, which is Dutch for “Rabbit Island.” Konijn became “Coney,” possibly during the days of Lady Deborah Moody, a London widow in her mid-50s, who brought a group of religious dissenters to the island during a lull in the Indian Wars. It was rough going -the local Native Americans still weren’t all that friendly- but the plucky group stayed on.

EASY ACCESS

Coney Island remained an island until 1829, when it was connected to mainland Long Island by Shell Road, a road made of -you guessed it- shells. It’s been a peninsula ever since. But linguistically, it’s still an island: one is said to be “on” Coney Island, not “in” it.

Hotel Brighton

HOLIDAY INN

Five years after Shell Road was built, a large hotel, Coney Island House, opened for business in hopes of drawing a summer crowd to the seaside. The hotel’s success encouraged builders of even more elegant hotels. What started as a genteel resort recommended by doctors (sea bathing was considered to be healthy and invigorating), quickly became a hot spot with the upper classes. Before long, hotels along the seashores welcomed such distinguished guests as P.T. Barnum, Daniel Webster, and Washington Irving. Visitors lingered on the the hotels’ long porches, ate their meals in posh dining rooms, and took dips in the Atlantic.

BATHING SUITS AND OTHER PURSUITS

The completion of Plank Road (made of planks, we assume) in 1850 made access easier and encouraged entrepreneurs like Peter Tilyou to set up shop: Tilyou not only sold beer for a nickel, but he also built bathhouses, so that visitors could change into their swimsuits right there on the beach -or, in those days of casual hygiene, rent them for the day.

Women’s bathing costumes of the day were about the size of a modern-day conservative dress and, stockings included, weighed 15 pounds when wet. (A dress code was strictly enforced for 100 years. For instance, in 1918 a hundred women were arrested for not wearing stockings on the beach. And in the early 1930s, men who exposed their chests on the beach could get a $50 fine and spend 10 days in jail.)

CONEY’S GREATEST GIFT TO HUMANITY

Frankfurters came to the United States via German immigrants. But they didn’t really become popular until the 1880s, when Charles Feltman, a German banker, settled in Coney Island and decided to sell boiled frankfurters on heated buns from a cart. Each frankfurter sandwich was sold for a dime and was loaded with traditional German toppings -mustard and sauerkraut.

Feltman was so successful that after a few years he opened his own restaurant, Feltman’s German Beer Garden. In 1913, he hired Nathan Handwerker as a part-time delivery boy. But for $11 a week, Nathan wasn’t too happy with his earnings. He began to plan for his own concession stand. In 1916, when he had saved $300, he made his dream a reality.

Nathan’s stand offered a unique spiced meat frankfurter made from a recipe his wife, Ida, created. As a way to market his product, he promised free franks to the local doctors. His only condition was that they had to eat them in front of his stand wearing their white lab coats and stethoscopes. So when people saw the esteemed doctors eating Nathan’s frankfurters, they automatically assumed his franks must be of much better quality than his competitors. And they were cheaper than Feltman’s, since Nathan only charged a nickel apiece.

By the time Nathan opened his concession stand, frankfurters were commonly known as hot dogs -all because of an American cartoonist who couldn’t spell. The story goes that one night in 1906, with a deadline looming, Tad Dorgan sketched a drawing of a dachshund smeared with mustard and squished in a bun. When it was time to caption the picture, poor Tad didn’t know how to spell “dachshund,” so he wrote, “Get your hot dogs!” instead.

LADIES AND GENTS OF LEISURE

But it was back in the late 1870s that island business really started booming: Five railroad lines ran to and from the island by then, bringing 50,000 to 60,000 visitors in 1878. For the first time in industrialized America, people were taking advantage of leisure time. Wearing their comparatively skimpy bathing suits and splashing in the surf was somehow liberating. Reporters of the day mention (and an early Edison Company film shows) the “jubilation” on the faces of Coney Islanders. The poor, working-class slob was learning how to have fun!

THERE GOES THE NEiGHBORHOOD

Gamblers, hookers, and card sharks were soon giving Coney Island a dubious reputation. Local residents were outraged. In hopes of cleaning up the place, they elected John Y. McKane as their police chief in 1868. But McKane ignored the misconduct (for a fee) and ended up behind bars himself when he was convicted of fixing elections.

TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT

In 1884, MaMarcus Adna Thompson opened the world’s first roller coaster, the Switchback Railroad. It had 600 feet of wooden tracks, but unlike roller coasters of today, workers had to push it up to its highest point to get it going. Passengers paid a dime for a ride.

VIVA LUNA PARK!

Captain Paul Boyton had an even better idea. In 1895, he opened Sea Lion Park, the world’s first enclosed amusement park. It featured a colony of sea lions and the ever-popular Shoot-the-Chutes, a waterslide that landed its riders in a man-made lagoon.

Sea Lion Park was redesigned in 1903 and transformed into Luna Park, the Las Vegas of its time. Besides the elephant rides, camel rides, and a circus, the park featured the Dragon’s Gorge, a tunnel ride that included a waterfall and scenes from the North Pole, Africa, the Grand Canyon, and the River Styx.

There was a simulated trip to the Moon. A live-action show, Fire and Flames, had the New York City fire department rescuing trapped residents of burning tenements, some of whom had to jump into nets to escape. This was an attraction that New Yorkers could identify with since a lot of them lived in real tenements. A real fire claimed Luna Park during the 1940s, and the site was eventually turned into a parking lot.

MEET ME TONIGHT IN DREAMLAND

Coney Island’s most famous park, the completely white Dreamland, opened in 1904, and it duplicated a lot of Luna Park’s ideas. Fighting the Flames was copied directly from Fire and Flames. There was a ride called Maxim’s Flying Machine, a miniature railroad, a ballroom, and a Japanese teahouse. All watched over by the Dreamland Tower which stood 375 feet high and was covered with 100,000 lights.

Dreamland’s most unusual attraction was the fully functional Incubator Hospital, which displayed actual premature babies in their incubators. This sounds a little less freaky when it’s revealed that real doctors and nurses provided round-the-clock care for the little newborns. That’s a relief, huh?

In 1911, a fire leveled Dreamland and all its spectacles in a matter of hours. The babies in the hospital were saved.

DAY-TRIPPING

By 1910 or so, the big hotels were closing, and the guests who used to come for weeks and months now only visited on weekends. And then they did not come at all. The island now belonged to the masses. The subway station built in 1918 cemented it. By the 1920s, one million people crowded the island on a single sunny day and walked the two-mile boardwalk, which had been completed in 1923.

During the Great depression, Coney was the perfect escape; crowds averaging 35 million came each summer, but now the beaches were the primary draw because the masses couldn’t afford the fifty cents it took to by a ride. Eventually the prices dropped to a nickel -for a hot dog, a ride, and the subway. But without an infusion of cash, the island started to decay.

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP -AND DOWN

On July 3, 1947, 1,300,000 people -one fifth of the population of New York City- spent the day enjoying not just the beach and the rides, but also a fireworks show and an air show put on by the New York Daily Mirror and the U.S. Air Force. It’s estimated that one in one hundred Americans visited Coney Island that weekend.

But that couldn’t keep the decay away. By the 1950s, it looked like the island was doomed. Even while modern-day entrepreneurs were trying their hand at revitalizing the amusement parks at Coney, the island continued to decline. New amusement parks were going up around New York and the rest of the country, including Coney’s biggest competitor: Disneyland in faraway California.

Image from the 1979 film The Warriors.

Some historians describe Coney as a ghost town in the 1970s. All of New York seemed a dangerous place then. On Coney Island, the bathhouses closed, and the big hotels were torn down.

CONEY, REBORN

But you can’t keep a good Coney Island down. In 1980, the New York Parks Department reported that concession revenues at the beach had been steadily rising for several seasons in a row.

(Image credit: Flickr user André)

Today, the rides and amusements are run by Astroland Amusement Park. The attractions include the Cyclone roller coaster, Go-Karts, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Water Flume (a waterslide), and Dante’s Inferno (with Spook-A-Rama, one of the park’s two “dark” rides).

And let’s not forget Astroland’s Sideshows by the Seashore, featuring Insectavora, Serpentina, Bambi the Mermaid, Eak (the Illustrated Man), Scott Baker (the Twisted Shockmeister), Ravi (the Scorpion Mystic), Ula (the Rainproof Rubber Girl), and Todd Robbins (Amazement Is His Business).

______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

“It was a blast!” said Benny Vasquez, a Visalia, Calif., welder who was regaining his bearings after a dizzying turn on the Spider, an arachnid-shaped contraption with blazing green bulbs lining its black legs. “It’s exciting for people to be able to sit on something that he owned.”

Over the years, Jackson acquired about 18 rides for his 2,600-acre ranch in Santa Barbara County. Some gradually were swapped out for newer models and hit the carnival circuit without fanfare. But most stayed in place even after Jackson, acquitted on child molestation charges in 2005, left Neverland for good.

Several big amusement companies purchased what remained in 2008, repainting and sprucing up rides run down by weather and lack of use.

Link -via Fark

(image credit: Tomas Ovalle/LA Times)

Hyperactive children and those with attention-deficit disorders can now queue jump at theme parks because they cannot cope with the stress of waiting.

Tourist boards are offering the privilege so that they can skip the queue with their friends.

Teachers have criticised the scheme, saying that it undermines their efforts to encourage patience and it would be better for children with ADHD, attention deficit and hyperactive disorder, to learn how to wait.

Link

Due to open in 2010, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter will be a theme park at Universal Orlando based on the world’s most famous scar-faced boy. 

The 20-acre park will be located in Universal’s Islands of Adventure, which are themed "islands" built around a lagoon and currently comprises Seuss Landing, Marvel SuperHero Island, Toon Island, Jurassic Park and The Lost Continent. 

Universal isn’t saying much yet about what the Wizarding World will include, but so far it looks like there will be a Hogwarts Castle, a village of Hogsmeade, and a Three Broomsticks Pub.  I hope they serve butterbeer.

Link – via darkroastedblend

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

Kelsey Timmerman, author of Where Am I Wearing? – a book about the countries, factories and people that make our clothes and a similarly named blog, was in Dhaka, Bangladesh, when he discovered a local amusement park named Fantasy Kingdom.

There Kelsey got a crazy idea: get as many kids, many of whom live just outside of the park but couldn’t afford the ticket price, into the Fantasy Kingdom for a day of fun!

Sixty Dollars admits one child for one day to Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

Sixty dollars admits 20 people for one day to Fantasy Kingdom, near Dhaka, Bangladesh.

I discovered this not long ago when I was in Dhaka. Now all we have to do is find those 20 Bangladeshi children to take to Fantasy Kingdom, I thought.

Behind us were the gates of Fantasy Kingdom, the brightest, cleanest, and most out-of-place sight in all of Bangladesh. The walls are plastic but look like sandstone. Standing atop them are two very happy cartoon kids – sentinels looking out to the crowded streets and the surrounding garment factories.

"One girl and one boy would be best," Ruma said. She is a 20-something Bangladeshi sportswriter who had taken the day off to help me with my crazy idea: Take as many kids as we can – who live in the park’s shadow but haven’t been inside – into the amusement park. Riding a roller coaster is a luxury they’ll probably never know otherwise and, as a lifetime roller-coaster enthusiast, something I hoped to change.

"I want 20," I replied.

Ruma approached three boys. As she talked, they stared at me before running off to find more kids. It wasn’t long before we had a crowd.

Read more of Kelsey’s fascinating account of the day trip at The Christian Science Monitor: Was it a frivolous gift or a lifelong memory?