Keira Giacometti

29 October 2024

This past summer, a Vulture.com article recirculated among rumors that Jim Henson’s final project, Muppet*Vision 3D, would be closing soon to make way for the new Monsters Inc. roller coaster in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The article, titled Muppet*Vision 3D should be a National Heritage Site by Rebecca Alter delves into why this particular Muppet Show is worth saving and notes that, with some policy driven decisions, the seventeen minute show from 1991 could be protected nationally [1]. This made me wonder why more theme parks–whether whole lands or singular attractions–haven’t been designated National Historic Landmarks. The only one I can think of with national protections is Kennywood [2]. It is just as important to preserve historically important themed entertainment as it is to protect another significant location in America’s past. Therefore, we should consider making certain theme park attractions National Historic Landmarks. 

Paying Admission: How Can Something Become a National Historic Landmark? 

A National Historic Landmark is a place–generally more than fifty years old– recognized by the United States Government as having some significant, national value. This special classification prevents the property from being permanently closed or subjected to major changes [3]. There are six reasons why something can be designated a National Historic Landmark, or NHL for short. They are listed as such below: 

1. A place needs to have the strongest connection to an important event in America’s history [3].
2. Tells a story of an individual who played a significant role in the history of America [3].
3. Showcases a broad theme or trend in American history [3].
4. Is a brilliant example of architectural style or engineering. A building can also meet criteria four if it is one of the best types of construction in terms of make, period, form, or engineering [3].
5. A group of properties is composed of multiple parts that are integral to its environment and doesn’t have significant historic or artistic association if only one building is named a NHL [3]. 
6. Properties that have a chance of showing or have shown archeological evidence that affects knowledge about different cultures and times of occupation in America [3]. 

If a property is eligible for NHL consideration, it must be nominated by the owner, a preservation organization, or interested member of the general public. The NHL staff, a part of the National Park Service, will review the nomination and, upon approval, send it to the Landmark committee. Once the Landmark Committee approves the nomination, they send a recommendation to the Secretary of the Interior, who has final approval on if something can be designated as an NHL [4]. This process takes anywhere from two to five years [4]. 

Let’s All Listen to the Birdies Sing…Using Real Words!

In 1963, Walt Disney’s newest attraction opened in Disneyland: a live bird show.  Except none of the birds were alive. They couldn’t fly, they couldn’t move from their perches, and they talked instead of chirping. This exceptional show is Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room, and was the first time audio animatronics were ever used anywhere [5]. 

This show blew people away. Wait times would climb upwards of an hour as many waited in eager anticipation of the engineering sensation. At the mouth of the queue, passersby would pause and watch a chatty Barker Bird, an animatronic parrot dressed in a tiny hat and bow tie who advertised the show, consequently crowding the entrance to Adventureland [6].

The Tiki Room building itself is reminiscent of a Polynesian tower. Inside, roosts, lighting, plants–both fake and real–and different robotic mechanisms come together to create a cute seventeen-minute attraction the whole family can enjoy. The difference between past Disneyland attractions, though, was in how the animatronics worked. Instead of the robots just moving, with no sound attached to them, the Imagineers (Disney’s engineers) were “trying to synchronize sound to animation…and that was first done by having audio tones on a tape…that would eventually be converted back into motion” [5].  Because the birds functioned best in cold weather, air conditioning was installed, making the Tiki Room the first Disneyland attraction with AC [5][6]. 

The popularity and ingenuity of the Enchanted Tiki Room paved the way for next level attractions across the world. And though Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room has an average wait time of one minute in 2024 [7], its technological advances in robotic design necessitates its designation as an NHL.  Yes, parts of the show are outdated and stereotypical, especially in its portrayal of the Mexican and German Macaws [6]. But Walt Disney desperately wanted to show a type of society that honored different nationalities and treated everyone as equals [5].  Using what they learned here, the Imagineers were able to implement improvements on cultural celebration in future attractions, such as It’s a Small World.  Without the lessons learned for the Tiki Room, the progression of theme park engineering, from little birds and a creepy Abraham Lincoln animatronic to the new Donkey Kong roller coaster opening in Epic Universe next year, would have never happened. To ignore the Tiki Room’s national value would be to ignore one of America’s hallmark inventions. 

America’s Longest Running Stage Show

Using the mechanisms developed for the Enchanted Tiki Room, Walt Disney created three attractions for the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York. All were immensely popular, but the most notable one is Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress. Located today in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, this twenty-minute play solely consisted of audio animatronics with one new feature: a rotating theater [5][8].

The show, which has been stated by many Imagineers to be Walt’s passion project (5), highlights America’s past and wonders about the future. Each five-minute section is set in relatively calm periods of America’s history–1927, the late forties, and “sometime after 1967” [9]–with the final segment set during an indeterminate amount of time in the future (though most likely sometime in the mid-twenty-first-century, as the last major update to ‘the future’ was in 1994). The Carousel of Progress is a mini lesson that touches upon American technology, economy, and history [9]. Electricity is a big component of the show–due in part to General Electric’s sponsorship of the attraction until 1995–but it also delves into transportation, advances in home improvement and food. The cast is the quintessential American family; a father, mother, two and a half kids, and a dog, all packaged behind white picket fence. The theater rotates counterclockwise on its own, which allows the sets to remain up while also making for great capacity; each of the five theaters seats 226 people [9]. 

Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress is still the only operating rotating theater in the world, despite its 60 years of success. Every part of the building is an engineering marvel that should be showcased as a National Historic Landmark. It displays America in a positive light and is an artistic product of the 1960s that only a man like Walt Disney could’ve built. From its name down to the gears that make the theater move, the Carousel of Progress is the thesis of many people’s dream for America: progress. And though the show is not perfect, as it fails to acknowledge that the relationship between past and progress is often nonlinear, and excludes other perspectives–marginalized and otherwise–from its conversation, it is still an important lesson through a 1960s perspective of America’s greatest strengths and distinguished advancements. There is no other love letter to America like this one. 

From Fried Chicken to an Accurate(?) Depiction of the Gold Rush

In 1934, as a means of combating the financial hit her husband’s berry farm took during the Great Depression, Cordelia Knott started selling fried chicken dinners for sixty-five cents [10]. Her dinners quickly became locally famous, with many people waiting in the streets of Buena Park, CA for upwards of three hours [10]. To mitigate the agonizing waits, Walter Knott built little roadside attractions. As the years passed, the crowds didn’t diminish. Eventually, Knott decided to build a recreation of California’s old gold rush towns for people to explore. In 1947, he created a pan for gold attraction, which was a way for people to reenact the same job done by many men during the mid nineteenth-century. In 1960, he opened the Calico Mine Train, which showcased both the beauty of California mines and the day of a miner [10]. In 1969, the first ever log flume ride in America, Calico (now Timber Mountain) Log Ride, opened, detailing what a miner’s life might look like on their day off [10].

John Willis says of Ghost Town’s development, “[it] reflected a wider, arguably generational desire in the mid-century to preserve and protect western heritage…actively moving to solidify, and celebrate, the frontier as the heyday of American Exceptionalism” [11]. 

Many schools in Orange County, California take their elementary school students to Knott’s to teach them about the Gold Rush [12]. This is mainly owing to Knott’s dream of Ghost Town proving “real tangible educational advantage and a lasting monument to California” [13]. 

In many ways, Knott’s Ghost Town accomplishes this. However, the edutainment value is not the only reason this should be a NHL. 

Walter Knott was a very conservative man, attributing the detriments of the Great Depression to the government’s interference in commerce  [11][13]. He scorned government aid, believing it would cause Americans to lose their self-reliance and independence [11][13]. His Ghost Town is reflective of such, teaching part of a whole story; whitewashing the material and ignoring that government aid was crucial to getting California’s gold mines off the ground. Former U.S. presidents, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, both spoke kindly on the beliefs Knott taught through his land [13]. Ghost Town underscored the ideas of many midcentury Californians on how life should be; work for your own wealth without relying on governmental aid. After all, in Knott’s eyes, if miners pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and made their own fortune, there’s no excuse why others can’t do the same. 

Yet, the inaccurate education Ghost Town establishes should not discount it from the opportunity to be a National Historic Landmark . We can still learn history from an inaccurate depiction of the past, even if it’s not the history the place intended to teach. Aside from teaching children the basics of the Gold Rush, Ghost Town also, “memorializes mid-twentieth- century conservative values rather than nineteenth-century California” (13). If a child visits Ghost Town, they’ll learn how to pan for gold and how a miner may have spent their day. However, as they grow older and visit again, they might begin to notice the historical inaccuracies in the land, making it an ideal location to learn. They’d observe different policies and ideas people had about the Great Depression and recognize the romanticism of ‘simpler times’ is a weapon often used to combat their negative feelings about life around them. Naturally, not everyone will feel the same about life-changing events, and the Great Depression is no different. So, why would we pretend those with differing views never spoke up about them? 

As iterated above, Ghost Town is so important. It’s wonderful for history lessons, and it’s crucial to the development of critical thinking and warning about the dangers of nostalgia. Was Walter Knott making a smart decision when he built an ultimately erroneous depiction of the Gold Rush to argue against FDR’s policies? Is that a question we can answer? Do we act similarly today when we’re frustrated with the present, turning to our warped memories of the ‘good old days’?  Don’t we form groups online that solely discuss when something was ‘better’? By making Ghost Town a NHL, we’ll have a nationally recognized physical entity we can use to analyze these big questions and attempt to find a conclusion. 

Can These Attractions Become NHLs? 

Both Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room and Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress fall under criterion three, and the latter falls under criterion four as well. Ghost Town falls under criterion five. Additionally, each approved nomination earns financial compensation for the property owner, whether it be in grants directed towards the upkeep of the property or tax credits [14]. So, why haven’t they been nominated as NHLs yet? 

Every attraction I have listed in this article is privately owned. Disney owns Enchanted Tiki Room and the Carousel of Progress, and Cedar Fair owns Knott’s Berry Farm. Private property owners have to agree with whoever is nominating their attraction to become a NHL, and they have the full right to deny the nomination at any time [1]. 

As Rebecca Alter acknowledges in her Muppet*Vision article, “Because Walt was the earthly godhead of the parks, attractions close to his heart like the Disneyland Railroad and Carousel of Progress get treated within the company like historical sites…”[1]. For all of their flaws, private companies like Disney and Cedar Fair do have plenty of knowledge on how important attractions like these are, and tend to keep them around. However, if for some reason Disney and Cedar Fair had to close or sell their parks,  there would be no protections in place to preserve the attractions with cultural and historical significance. 

Additionally, with the upcoming closures of beloved Disney attractions like Dinosaur and Magic Kingdom’s Rivers of America, there’s an increasing call to preserve attractions deemed “historically significant.” Pursuing these efforts will keep these theme parks from turning into I.P. based attractions, or in Cedar Fair-type parks, a new roller coaster. 

Most National Historic Landmarks are churches, national monuments, older buildings, and battlefields. While these are all great ways to learn about history, there seems to be an absence of ‘fun’ ways to learn about significant themes, events, or advancements from America’s past. History can and does exist outside the context of trauma and war. It’s up to private companies like Disney and Cedar Fair and the National Parks Service to ensure that the joyful parts of America’s history are celebrated.

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Image by Nick Giacometti

Works Cited

[1]: Alter, Rebecca. “Muppet*Vision 3D Should Be a National Heritage Site.” Vulture, 17 July 2024, http://www.vulture.com/article/muppet-vision-3d-national-heritage-site.html.

[2]: Bahl, Arthur. “National Historic Landmark Parks and Attractions – CoasterBuzz.” Coasterbuzz.com, 6 Oct. 2006, coasterbuzz.com/Forums/Topic/national-historic-landmark-parks-and-attractions. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.

[3]: National Park Service. “Eligibility – National Historic Landmarks (U.S. National Park Service).” Nps.gov, 2016, http://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/eligibility.htm#:~:text=Properties%20that%20are%20associated%20with. Accessed 16 Sept. 2024.

[4]: Heffern, Sarah, and Jamesha Gibson. “Historic Designations 101 | National Trust for Historic Preservation.” Savingplaces.org, 2023, savingplaces.org/stories/preservation-tips-tools-how-to-save-a-place-apply-for-historic-designation#:~:text=To%20designate%20a%20site%20as. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.

[5]: Iwerks, Leslie. The Imagineering Story. Disney+, 2019, http://www.disneyplus.com/play/93cb8700-3d03-4ad2-bc85-1bca33117a46, disc 1. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024. TV Documentary.

[6]: For Your Amusement. “Is Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room a World Class Attraction? • FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT.” YouTube, 9 July 2024, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azQFjXWZCgo. Accessed 12 Sept. 2024.

[7]: “Thrill Daya.” Thrill-Data.com, 2024, http://www.thrill-data.com/waits/attraction/disneyland/waltdisneysenchantedtikiroom/. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.

[8]: ​​Funlife. Travel. “Carousel of Progress- Magic Kingdom POV 4K.” Www.youtube.com, 2019, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo4jnlvJmrk. Accessed 12 Sept. 2021.

[9]: Field, Alexander. “What Can We Learn from the Carousel of Progress?” researchgate.net, Apr. 2010.

[10]: Ellis, Janey. “The History of Knott’s Berry Farm.” Www.knotts.com, 31 Mar. 2020, http://www.knotts.com/blog/2020/april/the-history-of-knotts-berry-farm. Accessed 12 Sept. 2024.

[11]: Wills, John E. “Nostalgia for the Old West in Knott’s Berry Farm, Orange County, California.” Comparative American Studies, vol. 19, no. 4, 11 Nov. 2022, pp. 341–358. tandfonline.com, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14775700.2022.2143744, https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2022.2143744. Accessed 14 Sept. 2024.

[12]: For Your Amusement. “Is Timber Mountain Log Ride a World Class Attraction? • FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT.” YouTube, 28 May 2024, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy97AQ4ato. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.

[13]: Magazine, Smithsonian. “The Wild West of Knott’s Berry Farm Is More Fantasy than Reality.” Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Sept. 2017, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/wild-west-knotts-berry-farm-is-more-fantasy-than-reality-180964798/. Accessed 16 Sept. 2024.

[14]: “Grants and Incentives – National Historic Landmarks (U.S. National Park Service).” Www.nps.gov, http://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/grants-and-incentives.htm. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.