amusement parks

Seasonal amusement parks are gearing up for another few months of fun, thrills, fried decadence and wallet gouging. However, with a little planning and research, you can enjoy the first three without the last one.

If you haven't had enough of roller coasters after the ups and downs of the stock market this month, you might consider adding an amusement-park operator to your portfolio. Between Six Flags and Cedar Fair, which stock has the potential to deliver the smoothest ride for investors?

How do you deal with a thief that's 230 feet tall and robs you at 80 miles per hour? Hordes of Americans will descend on amusement parks this weekend, so this is a good time to remind everyone of Murphy's Law of Roller Coasters: If your stuff can get loose, it generally will.

The holidays drew sell-out crowds to Disneyland. Could this be a sign that its all-important parks and resorts may turn into money makers in 2011? That would be a big change from last year, when they pulled down overall earnings growth.

In an accident sure to strike fear in vacationers worldwide, a 15-year-old girl was killed and 2 other seriously injured after an amusement park ride in Barcelona, Spain broke in mid-air. The names of the victims have not been released. The mechanical arm of "El Pendulo" (The Pendulum) broke at...

With the unveiling of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Universal Studios Orlando has officially raised the bar for vacation attractions in summer 2010. The bold move is only one of many strategies that theme parks are using to turn around an industry that has been brutalized by the recession.

There are 8.3 million disabled children in the U.S. between the ages of 5 and 17 (NHIS, 2007) who have limitations on their physical abilities, and exactly one innovative, 100% wheelchair-accessible theme park designed for special needs. Morgan's Wonderland, the new, 25-acre attraction in San...

Disney Parks has announced that it has met its promised goal of giving away 1 million free passes to people who donate a day of volunteering. Now that the target has been reached, the program will end. And what a massively successful program it was. As our incisive sister site Gadling pointed out,...

If you plan on visiting any theme park more than once this year, you'll probably save money buying a season pass. That's because the major parks, in an effort pack their parks full of souvenir-buying, fried dough-scarfing hordes all year long, have adjusted their pricing so that a one-day ticket...

Shamu, the first female orca ever captured, has been dead for 38 years. Isn't it time the world's most famous performing killer whale got her own wax figure? With private-equity firm Blackstone Group, which owns Madame Tussauds wax museums, reportedly in talks to buy SeaWorld and Busch Gardens...