Walt Disney opened the original Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., 50 years ago this summer. The Magic Kingdom, in Orlando, will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2006.
Will the magic last another 50 years?
If history is any guide, the answer will depend in big part on Disney's ability to keep up with the times.
Here's a look at three famous destinations and how they have fared over the years.
Coney Island, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Claim to fame: "The Poor Man's Paradise"
Bottom line: Coney Island couldn't keep up with changing tastes
Coney Island's old roller coasters cast a long shadow across the American summer. Long before Walt Disney made the amusement park business respectable, this strip of Brooklyn beach was drawing New Yorkers with cycloramas of great disasters and displays of premature babies. Unable to convince hospitals that incubators could save lives, a real doctor demonstrated the devices at a popular sideshow beginning around the turn of the last century.
Coney Island's name is still synonymous with amusement parks -- it's the inspiration for Walt Disney World's BoardWalk Inn -- and families and free spirits still pack its beaches, but times and tastes change, and Coney Island isn't the draw it once was.
In the 1800s, carousels and horse tracks, hotels and disorderly houses sprang up along the 5-mile peninsula, earning Coney Island the nickname "Sodom by the Sea."
But it wasn't until 1897 and the opening of Steeplechase Park that Coney Island entered its golden age. One of Steeplechase's big draws was "A Trip to the Moon," an illusion staged in a theater that looked like a big winged rocket ship. "The whole thing was mysterious and spooky and made your gal hold onto you," one visitor said in a 1941 history of the place.
When the park's owner tried to renegotiate with the show's creators, they responded by starting their own amusement park. Luna Park's then-novel 250,000 electric lights awed visitors including the Russian writer Maxim Gorki, who described the park as "fabulous beyond conceiving."
Dreamland, the last of Coney Island's three classic amusement parks, came in 1904. It boasted a dazzling 1 million electric lights, but it was faulty wiring for these lights that would spark the fire a few years later that would destroy the park, marking the beginning of Coney Island's slow decline.
In a separate incident, Luna Park burned down in 1946. Steeplechase survived until the 1960s, when it was sold to real-estate developer Fred Trump, Donald Trump's father.
And as the parks disappeared, so did Coney Island's pull on people's imaginations.
Today, "Coney Island is grimy and authentic, honest and straightforward," photographer Harvey Stein says in a 1998 collection of photographs, Coney Island.
"It's the poor man's Riviera, the real Disneyland … a fantasyland of the past with a seedy present and an irrepressible optimism about its future."
"If only the rest of the world could be a little more like Coney Island."
Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio
Claim to fame: World's largest roller coaster park -- and one of the oldest
Bottom line: Century-old park endures by reinventing itself
Cedar Point's white sand beaches made it a popular "bathing" spot in the years following the Civil War, but it took a roller coaster called Blue Streak to bring the park into the space age.
Compared with some modern marvels, Blue Streak is practically poky, reaching speeds of only 40 miles an hour, but it launched a building boom that has made Cedar Point the 30th most-visited amusement park in the world with 3.2 million guests a year.
It's a fairy-tale ending few could have imagined a half-century ago.
Open since 1870, Cedar Point had developed into a full-scale resort by the 1920s.
Its owners understood the secret to persuading guests to spend more money was persuading them to stay on property longer, so they added hotels, restaurants and even a convention center -- the same strategy the Walt Disney Co. has used at its resort in Orlando.
But business at Cedar Point fell sharply with the Great Depression and World War II, and by the 1950s there was talk of new owners razing the park and building luxury homes on the land overlooking Lake Erie.
Cedar Point's owners backed down after the state threatened to take the park by eminent domain to save it.
Unable to develop the site, the owners decided to try improving the park's performance, and in 1960, they announced plans to spend $16 million -- equal to $100 million today -- saying they wanted to turn it into Ohio's answer to Disneyland.
They spruced up the aging property and add expensive new attractions, including the wooden Blue Streak.
It's a strategy the park's current owner, Cedar Fair LP, still lives by.
In 2003, the park opened its 16th coaster, Top Thrill Dragster. Standing 420 feet and reaching speeds of 120 miles an hour, it will be the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster until Kingda Ka opens this spring at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.
In December, the park announced plans for maXair, a spinning pendulum that will swing guests 140 feet above the ground. MaXair is described as the centerpiece of a $10 million capital improvement project for the park's 2005 season.
"It's vital we give our guests a reason to come back," spokesman Robin Innes said. "It's a competitive industry. If you don't strive to constantly improve your package, you could lose visits."
Greater Miami
Claim to fame: Sun, sizzle and celebrities
Bottom line: City changes image to attract a new generation of tourists
Once a sanctuary for middle-class snowbirds, Miami was a paradise lost by the 1980s. It was overwhelmed with Cuban and Haitian refugees, high unemployment and hopelessness. A 1980 riot in Liberty City, sparked by the acquittal of five police officers in the beating death of a black insurance man, left 18 people dead and hundreds injured.
Miami also became a front in the government's war on drugs. In 1981, drug gangs armed with machine guns funneled a reported 70 percent of the nation's cocaine, 80 percent of its marijuana and 90 percent of the counterfeit quaaludes through the city.
But a strange thing happened on Miami's road to ruin.
Its intrigue and foreign accents made it appealing again. In 1984, a story in The New York Times declared it "the new Casablanca."
That same year, a network TV show about Miami's "cocaine cowboys" helped the city shed its stodgy image and attract a younger generation of tourists.
Miami Vice, about sweaty drug dealers and cops who dressed like pop stars, played like a prime-time commercial for Miami's beaches, nightclubs and jai alai frontons.
Greater Miami's rebirth continued in the 1990s, with fashion designer Gianni Versace and pop-music star Madonna buying mansions and helping turn Miami, once dismissed by the comedian Lenny Bruce as the place where neon goes to die, into one of the country's most fashionable destinations.
In 1984, greater Miami drew just 5.4 million visitors. Last year, it attracted about 11 million.
Will the magic last another 50 years?
If history is any guide, the answer will depend in big part on Disney's ability to keep up with the times.
Here's a look at three famous destinations and how they have fared over the years.
Coney Island, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Claim to fame: "The Poor Man's Paradise"
Bottom line: Coney Island couldn't keep up with changing tastes
Coney Island's old roller coasters cast a long shadow across the American summer. Long before Walt Disney made the amusement park business respectable, this strip of Brooklyn beach was drawing New Yorkers with cycloramas of great disasters and displays of premature babies. Unable to convince hospitals that incubators could save lives, a real doctor demonstrated the devices at a popular sideshow beginning around the turn of the last century.
Coney Island's name is still synonymous with amusement parks -- it's the inspiration for Walt Disney World's BoardWalk Inn -- and families and free spirits still pack its beaches, but times and tastes change, and Coney Island isn't the draw it once was.
In the 1800s, carousels and horse tracks, hotels and disorderly houses sprang up along the 5-mile peninsula, earning Coney Island the nickname "Sodom by the Sea."
But it wasn't until 1897 and the opening of Steeplechase Park that Coney Island entered its golden age. One of Steeplechase's big draws was "A Trip to the Moon," an illusion staged in a theater that looked like a big winged rocket ship. "The whole thing was mysterious and spooky and made your gal hold onto you," one visitor said in a 1941 history of the place.
When the park's owner tried to renegotiate with the show's creators, they responded by starting their own amusement park. Luna Park's then-novel 250,000 electric lights awed visitors including the Russian writer Maxim Gorki, who described the park as "fabulous beyond conceiving."
Dreamland, the last of Coney Island's three classic amusement parks, came in 1904. It boasted a dazzling 1 million electric lights, but it was faulty wiring for these lights that would spark the fire a few years later that would destroy the park, marking the beginning of Coney Island's slow decline.
In a separate incident, Luna Park burned down in 1946. Steeplechase survived until the 1960s, when it was sold to real-estate developer Fred Trump, Donald Trump's father.
And as the parks disappeared, so did Coney Island's pull on people's imaginations.
Today, "Coney Island is grimy and authentic, honest and straightforward," photographer Harvey Stein says in a 1998 collection of photographs, Coney Island.
"It's the poor man's Riviera, the real Disneyland … a fantasyland of the past with a seedy present and an irrepressible optimism about its future."
"If only the rest of the world could be a little more like Coney Island."
Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio
Claim to fame: World's largest roller coaster park -- and one of the oldest
Bottom line: Century-old park endures by reinventing itself
Cedar Point's white sand beaches made it a popular "bathing" spot in the years following the Civil War, but it took a roller coaster called Blue Streak to bring the park into the space age.
Compared with some modern marvels, Blue Streak is practically poky, reaching speeds of only 40 miles an hour, but it launched a building boom that has made Cedar Point the 30th most-visited amusement park in the world with 3.2 million guests a year.
It's a fairy-tale ending few could have imagined a half-century ago.
Open since 1870, Cedar Point had developed into a full-scale resort by the 1920s.
Its owners understood the secret to persuading guests to spend more money was persuading them to stay on property longer, so they added hotels, restaurants and even a convention center -- the same strategy the Walt Disney Co. has used at its resort in Orlando.
But business at Cedar Point fell sharply with the Great Depression and World War II, and by the 1950s there was talk of new owners razing the park and building luxury homes on the land overlooking Lake Erie.
Cedar Point's owners backed down after the state threatened to take the park by eminent domain to save it.
Unable to develop the site, the owners decided to try improving the park's performance, and in 1960, they announced plans to spend $16 million -- equal to $100 million today -- saying they wanted to turn it into Ohio's answer to Disneyland.
They spruced up the aging property and add expensive new attractions, including the wooden Blue Streak.
It's a strategy the park's current owner, Cedar Fair LP, still lives by.
In 2003, the park opened its 16th coaster, Top Thrill Dragster. Standing 420 feet and reaching speeds of 120 miles an hour, it will be the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster until Kingda Ka opens this spring at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.
In December, the park announced plans for maXair, a spinning pendulum that will swing guests 140 feet above the ground. MaXair is described as the centerpiece of a $10 million capital improvement project for the park's 2005 season.
"It's vital we give our guests a reason to come back," spokesman Robin Innes said. "It's a competitive industry. If you don't strive to constantly improve your package, you could lose visits."
Greater Miami
Claim to fame: Sun, sizzle and celebrities
Bottom line: City changes image to attract a new generation of tourists
Once a sanctuary for middle-class snowbirds, Miami was a paradise lost by the 1980s. It was overwhelmed with Cuban and Haitian refugees, high unemployment and hopelessness. A 1980 riot in Liberty City, sparked by the acquittal of five police officers in the beating death of a black insurance man, left 18 people dead and hundreds injured.
Miami also became a front in the government's war on drugs. In 1981, drug gangs armed with machine guns funneled a reported 70 percent of the nation's cocaine, 80 percent of its marijuana and 90 percent of the counterfeit quaaludes through the city.
But a strange thing happened on Miami's road to ruin.
Its intrigue and foreign accents made it appealing again. In 1984, a story in The New York Times declared it "the new Casablanca."
That same year, a network TV show about Miami's "cocaine cowboys" helped the city shed its stodgy image and attract a younger generation of tourists.
Miami Vice, about sweaty drug dealers and cops who dressed like pop stars, played like a prime-time commercial for Miami's beaches, nightclubs and jai alai frontons.
Greater Miami's rebirth continued in the 1990s, with fashion designer Gianni Versace and pop-music star Madonna buying mansions and helping turn Miami, once dismissed by the comedian Lenny Bruce as the place where neon goes to die, into one of the country's most fashionable destinations.
In 1984, greater Miami drew just 5.4 million visitors. Last year, it attracted about 11 million.
