"Elray (female) is a child whose parents Barkley (female) and Jack (male, amazingly) take her to an amusement park for a sixth-birthday treat. In a freak accident in the Tunnel of Love, both parents are electrocuted. Orphan Elray is left in the care of one maternal and one paternal uncle. Harwood (male) is relatively normal. Ajax is a transvestite. They're joined by a lawyer called Rena whose job it is to get Elray to 'remember' the accident so they can sue the amusement park. It helps that Elray's dead parents are soon chatting away to her whenever she touches the scar left by the accident, although sadly what they say doesn't always cohere into courtroom sense: 'PHAMPAM BIHRAM BACTI PIMPIM BAHRIM BICTI POM PAM POM BAD BAD STOP STOP DON'T!' "

Australian Bill Trow initially thought the flashing lights and buzzers that went off as he and his family passed through the gates of Disneyland were due to new U.S. security checks. "There was security everywhere and lots of cameras, they were filming everybody as they were walking through the gates, so we thought there was a security check,'' Trow told an Australian television station.

The Disney Cruise Lines are apparently not the worst places in the world, because one can experience a "loss of enjoyment of life" after working on one. At least this is the claim of Eric Ford. Ford played Goofy, and is suing Disney for $300,000 after an ill-designed headpiece and lack of markers on the state prevented him from seeing the curtain as it fell on his head. Ever since he has experienced "disabling injuries to his back and neck," "mental anguish" and the previously mentioned damages.

Cartoon historian Leslie Cabarga interviews famous animators from beyond the grave. You-know-who has a bit to say about the parks [1] [2].

Hi all -
just wanted to brag a little - my first website is now live on the net. I redesigned the website for The "E" Ticket Magazine, which deals with mainly Disneyland, but also other theme park (i.e. Knott's, Pacific Ocean Park, etc.) attractions.
It's my first site & I kinda taught myself (which may be obvious) - but I'm (mostly) happy with how it came out...
Check it out at:
The-E-ticket.com
& Tiki Room/Adventureland fans may enjoy this page.

The Little Chef cafe at Markham Moor in Nottinghamshire has a hyperbolic paraboloid roof designed by the architect Sam Scorer. For this reason, it may be saved from the threat of demolition to make way for a motorway junction.

The virtual playa is a digital Burningman enviroment using Microsoft Flight Simulator as a platform.

Watch transit systems in the US and abroad via webcam at the Kavianagh Transit System. Train freaks will go WOO WOO!

Tibetian rights activists wordwide are saddened at the permanent closure of Florida Splendid China on 12/31/03...

Publish or Perish!




Printed $ 7.37
CD-ROM $ 7.00
Browser $ 2.00
PDF file $ 2.00

Today I decided to test the waters of publishing-on-demand with my first online zine. Yes, it's a real zine. Kind of expensive if you want a printed copy, but just about zine-priced if you buy the PDF and print it yourself, or the browser version just to look at it. While the page breaks are a little random, the formatting of this simple little zine is tough to screw up, so it's not half bad.

Title: Dome and Domer: The Increasingly Stupid Story of the Millennium Dome
Author: Dan Howland
Category: Books > Humor

Description: This is a story of honest mistakes, bad design, hubris, stupidity, greed, corruption -- but above all, it’s a tale of something so monumentally awful that it takes on a sort of soggy grandeur. It's the story of the Dome, a World’s-Fair-like exposition in London, created to celebrate Britain and the new millennium. It was a disaster from start to finish, and almost everything that happened was funny. Designers of amusement parks and expositions can read Dome and Domer as a sort of "How-Not-To" guidebook. Everyone else can just sit back and enjoy reading about something going gradually and completely wrong. (42 pages)

My next project is to scan all the back issues of the zine, plug them into this format, and release The Journal of Ride Theory Omnibus.

1920s monorail video.

Look, up in the sky! It's a monorail! It's an automobile! It's MONOMOBILE!

A bike-based mass transit system.

What does this tie...

...have to do with monorails?

Find the answer here.

More Amusement Park Fine Art



Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) was a painter of the "Ashcan School," whose favorite subjects included Coney Island and the Bowery. Here is a GoogleGallery of some of his work; here is an online collection from UC Davis.