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Companies may spend capital and effort to ensure the survival within their niche but have limited capacity to expand into other niches or broaden their target segment. This paper aims to provide insights into how they can overcome this niche entrapment – companies becoming trapped in the very niche they have cultivated, the weight and inertia of their investment shackling them to its continued existence.

Cedar Fair’s acquisitions and its organizational structure are carefully examined to illustrate the need for considering niche entrapment as a concept. To understand the complexities that firms face in their attempts to overcome the niche entrapment, this paper analyzes Cedar Fair using the concepts of categories and inherited identities.

The following important lessons are elaborated for helping business organizations overcome niche entrapment: embrace the organizational complexity; use gateway and complementary identities; consider brand disassociation; and achieve ambidexterity through a portfolio of offering.

This paper deviates from the traditional treatment of niches as a focus strategy that firms can select to build competitive advantages but instead provides insights into how those very niches can become constraints. It also conceptually evaluates the attempts to overcome these constraints from an organizational perspective instead of an industry perspective. Apart from using categories in a novel way, it also introduces a new concept of inherited identities, which are the organizational identities that firms inherit as they acquire and assimilate other firms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dimensions and practices that have shaped the present global theme park industry. The reader is first introduced to the characteristics of the global theme park industry. Following a historical review of the evolution of theme parks, the paper reports on the scope of the global theme park industry, according to major geographical regions. The overview continues with an explanation of how themes are created and communicated to guests and finally, addresses the impact of theme parks on the economic sustainability of destinations.

The paper provides an overview and historical examination of key concepts and phenomena. The paper is more descriptive than analytical.

The paper concludes that continuous growth of the global theme park industry will be influenced by the quality and amount of marketing and advertising campaigns, development of new products and guest experiences, as well as external variables that the parks have no control over like competitors' strategies, weather, economic conditions, gasoline prices, government regulations, and so on.

The paper reports on several secondary research, scholarly as well as industry and government publications. Some of the original research quoted is conducted by the author.

The theme park industry has generated a wide circle of social, economic, and political influences ranging from town planning, historic preservation, building architecture, shopping mall design, and landscaping. Its impact extends further to video and computer‐assisted education, home and office design, exhibit design, and crowd management.

The paper provides a general overview of the theme park and attraction industry.

The aim of this paper is to explore the amusement park industry and its evolution during the 1990s. The primary causes of change in this industry are determined and their impact on the companies operating in this business is investigated. The assumption to be ascertained is how currently operating amusement park firms have been able to effectively respond to the threats and opportunities created by the environmental changes occurring in the 1990s. The analysis is framed into three main sections: first, it offers an overview of the amusement industry; second, it examines the environmental trends affecting it; and third, it attempts to delineate the future development of the amusement business.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dimensions and practices that have shaped the safety of amusement rides and devices in the US amusement park industry.

The paper provides an overview and historical examination of key concepts and phenomena.

The paper concludes that continued amusement ride and device incidents resulting from a lack of nationally accepted and recognized standards will potentially lead to or cause additional negative guest perception and possibly result in regulation from an external agency. This paper identifies areas of concern and makes recommendations to address the potential consequences resulting from staying the current course. It determines that the industry needs to find a collective voice and establish consistent self‐regulating policies in order to curb the incidents rates and avoid federal regulation.

The paper reports on several secondary research, scholarly as well as industry and government publications and personal communications.

The safety of patrons visiting amusement parks has become paramount during recent times. Over the last decade or so, the amusement park industry has struggled with the fallout from numerous serious injuries and ride related deaths. This has generated a great deal of interest from patrons, media outlets, and politicians alike. With the continued operation of amusement parks and attractions and the competition of external entertainment options, it is important for the industry to project a solid and evolving image of safety in order to attract and retain patrons.

The paper explores the evolution of amusement ride and safely in the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to put modern history of theme park developments in Japan in perspective and identify the challenges associated with theme parks in Japan.

Amid the structural lack of theme‐park related operational and financial data, the authors approached the issue from the analyses of limited information on theme parks in Japan, where most, if any, of the available data are in Japanese only. This precluded the authors to conduct quantitative analyses of the parks in Japan.

The authors found that two of the comparable large‐scale theme park developments in Japan led to dramatically different operating results and that continued innovation of the contents of the park is one of the notable differences when the two parks are compared.

The paper highlights the dramatic failure of one park, while in contrast the other thrives; underscoring that theme park investment is subject to embracing high‐risk, high‐maintenance and constant innovation efforts by the operator.

The paper may be valuable to readers in the East Asian region and other nations which have plans to host large‐scale theme park development in the near future, as this presents the rare cases of success and failure in theme park operations in Japan.

The purpose of this paper is to review the contribution made by this theme issue to the question: how far do theme parks and attractions contribute to social and economic sustainability of destinations?

The paper reviews some of the key contributions emerging from this theme issue.

Theme parks and attractions will continue growing globally. There seem to be many internal and external reasons that may lead to success and failure of theme parks and attractions. It is evident that theme parks and attractions contribute greatly to sustainability of destinations in many areas including investments in infrastructure, job creation, tax revenues, tourism revenues, donations, and community support. However, it is also evident that failure of a theme park may result in a major decline or failure of a destination.

It also emerges that more research is needed into development and management of theme parks and attractions globally.

There are many stakeholders in developing theme parks and attractions in destinations. It is essential to ensure active participation, coordination, and support from all stakeholders to ensure that theme parks and attractions deliver intended outcomes. Careful and long‐term planning and coordination are necessary to ensure that theme parks and attractions created and managed well so that they contribute to sustainability of destinations.

This current theme issue is perhaps one of the first journal issues that specifically focus on theme parks and attractions and their impact on destinations. This final paper highlights emerging conclusions from this theme and offers practical and theoretical implications to the theme park industry.

The recreational benefits of urban parks and gardens have been documented in the literature. However, the extent to which the mechanism behind this is reliant on demographic variables and sites' quality, among others, is not clear. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impact of these variables on recreational experiences in Ibadan, Nigeria, towards recommending the best practices.

A questionnaire was carried out with a random sample of users (n=232) of the three most prominent parks and gardens in the city. The content was grouped into three broad themes – the overall design of urban natural landscape, meeting people's needs, and the nature of space management. These three streams of parameters were investigated on a five-point Likert scale. The questionnaire was designed to elicit information on personal, physical and psychological issues.

Based on the hypotheses that recreational experiences do not depend on the variables, results indicate no correlation between recreational experience and age, education, marital status, income and schedule of visits. However, there are positive significant correlations with gender, sites' quality, company and frequency of visit.

The results of the study suggest policy indication that planning for parks and gardens in cities should consider gender, sites' quality, company and frequency of visit variables further beyond age, education, marital status, income and schedule of visits.

The study was carried out in May 2011, and it has capacity to guide planning for urban eco-recreation places in developing nations.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of how the child consumer has been constructed in experience advertising in a historical perspective, how the view of the child has changed and how the presentation of the “good” experience has developed.

The study is based on ads in the Danish children's magazine Donald Duck. The study is a historical overview drawing on both quantitative and qualitative approaches, drawing theoretically on consumer, childhood and experience theory.

The results show that the “child consumer” has moved from being invisible on the backstage to the very front of the stage in experience advertising during the four decades examined. Moreover, the idea of what an experience is for the child has changed radically and a move occurs from a focus on aesthetic experiences to experiences of immersion and challenges of the senses. The most recent ads promote the child as not just the co‐creator but the actual creator of the experience.

It is a limitation that the study is based on a Danish sample only, and findings cannot be generalized to other national markets. It would, however, be interesting to compare with other national markets.

Marketing implications of the findings could be to go further into the direction of user generated experiences as suggested in the most recent ads, e.g. in the direction of online games where the consumer is him or herself writing the storyline of the experience unlike the pre‐planned rides most amusement parks offer today.

This study draws on child experience professionals, who have been found to be more proactive in recognizing the child consumer than, e.g. academics, and in translating the view of the children as actors to advertising copy and imagery. These marketing professionals have from early on addressed children in their own language clearly perceiving them as consumers in their own right. The most recent ads staging the consumer as creator of experiences challenge Pine and Gilmore's experience realms and call for a new way of conceptualizing and offering experiences. This is interesting for researchers working with perceptions of childhood and actors working with commercial conceptualizations of experiences.

Chinese began to arrive in Florida at the turn of the 20th century. Currently there are more than fifty thousand Chinese living in Florida. This article provides information resources for scholars and students of Chinese studies, and for people interested in the history of Chinese Americans and Southeast regional studies. It consists of archive papers, books, journal and newspaper articles and Internet resources containing information on Florida and China. The list is arranged by authors’ last names when available.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how to plan and provide for people's relaxation and engagement, cognitive and aesthetic needs. Symbolic of this is the green city image, which is obtained through planning and management of parks and green areas.

The approach here is to note that Bangalore has gained all‐round importance as an administrative, trading and industrial center and a location for premier educational institutions along with large IT and BT industries. Also, it is a center of strategic importance, due to a concentration of defense establishments. The study observes the abundance of parks and avenue trees and green areas along with green median and traffic islands all through in the city, which provide shade and meet the purely ecological and aesthetic needs.

The study reveals the beneficial impact of green areas on the microclimate of the city, which also serve as outdoor recreation areas to the city people. The parks and green areas need serious rejuvenation as centers of social activity and they should cater to peoples' active and passive recreation needs and abate the stress of urban living.

The implication of this study is the manifest importance of different local government authorities, institutional arrangements, NGOs with expertise to maintain parks and green areas in and around the Bangalore Metropolitan Area and of growing more trees and developing greeneries within the city of Bangalore.

This paper's value is to promote awareness regarding the complexities and importance of parks and green areas and their vulnerabilities and management.