in addition to this post. The first site I will address, as it is unique in my findings, is the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions website. The IAAPA (logo, left) "represents more than 4,500 facility, supplier, and individual members from more than 90 countries, including most amusement parks and attractions in the United States." IAAPA's excellent website is extremely comprehensive in its offering of information for industry professionals, however, its weakness is interactivity. It is a great source for information, but that is it. Next up is Webby Award finalist, Theme Park Insider. The site's main attractions are the reader ratings and reviews that help travelers plan their next theme park vacation. Despite the site's usefulness, there are too many advertisements that blend in with the site's substance interfering with easy navigation. Theme Parks Online is another excellent guide site that offers a unique interactive "virtual tour" of the parks which includes photos of each ride, restaurant, shop, and attraction. You can even change the year in which you "visit" the park. Because the site is so interactive, loading times are longer than desired. Also, the site is still a work in progress, so many parks' "virtual tours" are still in development. Ultimate Rollercoaster is a unique guide site that focuses on roller coasters and thrill rides. It contains extensive reviews and stats for coasters across the country as well as a nice feature chronicling the history of roller coasters across the 20th century. This great site has very little weaknesses, I might suggest enhancing the park guide section to compliment the coaster section. Moving on from the guide sites, we have the news and community sites.My favorite theme park news site is Screamscape: The Ultimate Guide to Theme Parks. The name is deceiving as it is not really a guide so much as it is a daily listing of theme park related news, constructions reports, and rumors. The visual design could definitely be enhanced, it is very minimalist, but the quality and expansive daily updates more than make for its shortcomings. Coaster Buzz is a visually pleasing and easy to navigate site offering the latest roller coaster news as well as providing stats and basic information for roller coasters and parks across the world. Though nicely presented, the site's information could be a bit more comprehensive. For the Disney fanatic, there is Laughing Place, an expansive site "Connecting Disney Fans Across the World." News, park guides, blogs, special features, games, podcasts, a radio, and much more make up this diverse site. While the content is great, it could definitely benefit from a better organization of information and links to keep the reader from getting overwhelmed. Theme Park Review and Westcoaster are two community sites with the main feature of an active, high traffic, discussion forum. Both sites also provides trip reports, photo updates, and videos. Theme Park Review also contains news updates and park reviews, but has a bland visual design. Westcoaster, on the other hand, has excellent visual design and includes original blog entries, but could be improved with news updates and park reviews. The two sites could learn from e
ach other's strengths and weaknesses and become two superior web destinations. Another unique site is Coaster Fanatics which contains a detailed roller coaster database and allows users to rate and keep track of their favorite coasters (user rating profile pictured, right). This is an excellently constructed site and I see little room for improvement except for the fact that it's news archive appears to stop at March 2008 and is in need of updating. Thrill Network is another diverse community site with a forum, news update, park database, and the unique features of an industry job listings section and a feature where members can share virtual roller coasters designed in programs such as Roller Coaster Tycoon. This is another site, though, that seems to have too much going on and could benefit from cleaner visual design and better organization. Bordering on news site and blog is About.Com: Theme Parks where the writer, Arthur Levine, offers his own commentary on industry news. I commented on this blog in a previous post. The strength of this site is Levine's personal commentary, everything else could use improvement, especially the structure and interactivity. Mouse Planet is a nice site offering basic Disney park guides, news, trip reports, blogs, a podcast, a forum, and more. The visual design is bland and the pages load slowly, but the jewel of this site is the large blog section offering original articles written by a diverse team of industry professionals and enthusiasts. That will lead us in to a series of outstanding blogs I discovered while searching the web.The first blog I found is Coaster Radio Blog. It is the companion blog to the internet's first theme park related podcast. Though aesthetically pleasing and covering a wide variety of theme park related topics, many of the posts are a bit too short and lacking in substance. Less visually appealing is Jim Hill Media. This blog offers excellent, original, mostly Disney related posts. Jim Hill must have inside Disney connections because the blog is often first to report significant Disney news. The Disney Obsession is one of my new favorite blogs. The focus of this site is not news based. The writer, a self-proclaimed "Disney obsessive compulsive," passionately posts on personal observations about the Disney parks which makes for an interesting and often emotional read. Another excellent Disney blog is, appropriately titled, The Disney Blog, a source of Disney news and information for fans by fans. Despite being timely and informative, there are too many advertisements on this site for my taste and the posts do not promote reader discussion. Rounding out the Disney related blogs is Re-Imagineering. This is a unique forum where Disney and Pixar professionals discuss imagineering missteps and solutions. The posts are often controversial and lead to passionate debates on the site. Thrill Holder is a blog where writer/park enthusiast, Will Holder, offers his unique commentary on the theme park industry. The posts are excellent, however, it is not updated with frequency, in fact, the last post is from June. The last blog I found is the award-winning The Coaster Critic. The Coaster Critic offers his opinion on recent theme park news while also providing reviews of parks and coasters. It is a well-designed blog, however, I think the posts could be a bit longer and meatier. Overall, I hope this will be a useful supplement to my blog and will peak readers' further interest in the online theme park community.
3 comments:
Brian,
First off, great job. I imagine that it is difficult to find scholarly resources regarding amusement parks, and you successfully uncovered several sites that exude credibility and legitimacy, such as the IAAPA, "Ultimate Rollercoaster", and "Screamscape". All of these sites are excellent links that will provide readers of your blog and fellow theme park enthusiasts with a comprehensive array of news and information. Many of the sources you included in your post were visually stimulating as well. I especially enjoyed "Theme Parks Online" and "Roller Coaster Tycoon" and the virtual roller coaster experience and interactivity each site provided for its visitors. "Coaster Fanatics" is another resource that caught my attention. I found the Roller Coaster section to be most fascinating, and was impressed by not only the extensive list of contributors naming their preferred rides, but also in the specific categories of coasters employed, such as "steel", "wood", and "lost by builder".
In addition, your post was written in a clear and comprehensive manner, and I liked how your introduction was concise and to the point, but articulated your goals and criteria for each site's evaluation. This entry was also logical in its structure, as you worked your way from the more well-known and broad sites, to the personal accounts and testimonies found in individual blogs. The only question that lingers in my mind after reading this post is regarding the high volume of Disney links and news. Is most of the information on the internet related to Disney theme parks? Was it challenging to find credible sites that were not linked to the Disney corporation? Overall, excellent job, your post was very well-written, and I immensely enjoyed the content as well as the visual components of the sites you provided.
Great idea for a blog Brian. I'm looking forward to your future posts. I just created a site that has tons of links to theme park related sites. Check it out: Coaster Portal Keep the posts coming. I'm looking forward to your analysis of theme parks and pop culture.
Oh, just saw this comment. Thanks, Coaster Portal is super sweet man.
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