Brief History of Amusement Parks: Trolley Parks, Pleasure Gardens, World's Fairs and More!

George takes a deep dive into the history of amusement parks. No, they didn't start out in Coney Island, but cant trace their roots back to England and Europe before making their debut in America.

Mention the phrases theme park or amusement park, thoughts will generally drift towards Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom or a regional park, like Six Flags, Cedar Point or Kings Island. The story of amusement parks reflects the general history of humanity, through culture, technology, economics and race.

Let’s take a look at the rich tapestry of amusement parks.

Amusement parks didn’t just appear, but like most societal and cultural organizations, evolved over time. It’s hard to pinpoint when the idea of an amusement park truly came into focus; by looking at the community antecedents, we can create an educated timeline. This pulls in religious, political and economic concerns to lay the groundwork.

In short order, a theme park can be considered an amusement park, but an amusement park can’t be considered a theme park. An amusement park is an enclosed or gated area with rides or attractions. A theme park is an amusement park that is highly themed to an idea or time period. Most of us would think of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World as a theme park, which would be correct. It’s a gated park with various themed areas where the outside world does not intrude. A park like Cedar Point is more of an amusement park, even though it does have themed areas. For most of this video, I will simply use the term amusement park.