Days 5 & 6: Home Sweet Home

After two long days at Cedar Point, I had the luxury of spending the next few days right here in Toledo. As much fun as it was to be at Cedar Point, I would not miss the hour-long drives in the early morning!

That said, I've spent most of my time doing a lot of reading. I've been scouring each branch of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library for books on amusement parks and roller coasters. The GateKeeper messenger bag that was gifted to me by the Cedar Point marketing interns is now stocked with no less than 11 books and 3 DVD's that I am steadily making my way through.

Most of this research is for the iBook that I'm planning to publish, which focuses on the evolution of the American amusement park. Currently, I have the book broken down into several chapters starting from the earliest Russian ice slides and going all the way to the present. The original book was actually a school project I completed a couple of years ago. However, that product is by no means worthy of publishing. So, I've been doing some heavy research and revising what I have, as well as expanding some chapters and adding new sections altogether.

In my research, I've come across a lot of great Disneyland history as well. Disneyland is a major force in the amusement industry and the park itself is widely credited as the first "theme park." Disneyland truly was a turning point for the industry, and I've greatly enjoyed reading about its development process, all the way from Walt Disney's original idea until its opening in 1955. For anyone who's interested, I would highly recommend checking out Disneyland: Inside Story by Randy Bright (with a great foreword by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner). It's full of great information and anecdotes from Disneyland's creation, as well as hundreds of fascinating photos. You can find it here on Amazon or at the Toledo Library (as soon as I return it!). However, because this is an iBook - meaning it's built specifically for all of your iDevices - I can add cool things like photos, interactive flyouts, and videos. Which lead me to find these great old commercials from Kennywood, a historic little park in Pittsburgh. Even if you haven't been out to Kennywood, the vintage commercials are cute - at least I think so!




Anyway, I'm continuing to work on this iBook but I'll be at Cedar Point again tomorrow (Tuesday). I'll have a lot more to share in the next few days, so stick around!

-Wynn