''Great Old Amusement Parks'' is a 1999
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
television documentary
Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries.
Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film.
* Television documentary series, sometimes called d ...
produced for
VHS
VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s.
Ma ...
and
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...
produced by
Rick Sebak
Richard Sebak (born June 5, 1953) is an American public broadcasting television producer, writer and narrator who lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States.
Early life and education
Richard Sebak was born on June 5, 195 ...
of
WQED Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
which aired on PBS, on July 21, 199
Traditional amusement parks are presented by discussing their origins. Unique rides for each park are profiled such as the oldest surviving roller coaster, and the only surviving Noah's Ark walk-through attraction. Most parks are family owned and are interviewed along with each park's attendees. Subjects include Connecticut's
Lake Compounce
Lake Compounce is an amusement park located in Bristol and Southington, Connecticut that opened in 1846. It is the oldest continuously operating amusement park in the United States. It spans , which includes a beach and a water park called Croco ...
, California's Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Whalom Park in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania's Idlewild Park and StoryBook Forest, Kennywood's Thunderbolt, Deno's Wonder Wheel at
Coney Island
Coney Island is a neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to the south and west, and Gravesend to ...
and San Diego's Giant Dipper, where a local radio station held a Roller Coaster Riding Contest.
Not covered here are vintage "traditional" amusement parks no longer with us. Having aired in 1999, the program has not been updated to indicate if the parks are still around, although most are.
Rick Sebak is known for producing local interest documentaries for the Pittsburgh area with a heavy emphasis on food. This is one of four documentaries he produced of that has been shown throughout the PBS network.
American documentary television films
Amusement parks in the United States
Films set in amusement parks
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