The artificial and buzzy organ music that plays from California’s Great America’s blown out speakers has been ringing in my head ever since the amusement park gave my baby-faced high school self his first ever job at the ripe age of 15, punching tickets and selling parking spaces at the front of the park.
As my cheap Payless tennis shoes melted onto the searing blacktop that is the Great America parking lot, I looked down to realize I had made my first ever paycheck of $200 after working a week for nine dollars an hour.
To a teenager, this was life-altering money, and I remember the excitement in my chest I felt of finally being able to buy whatever every 15-year-old boy wants, video games, iTunes credits and cans of Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
This rite of passage of getting my first job there was shared amongst several of my closest friends and peers in my high school’s theater department. About 10 of us were able to apply our technical knowledge of theater to end up working 40-pluus hours a week running shows and building stages for the entertainment department.
It was a dream come true.
This amusement park that I grew up trotting around in since my shoes were the size of credit cards, was now my own playground. I’m whipping around cars and golf carts where I used to walk around with my family, scaling roofs and hanging lights that I used to peer at from the gondolas and operating heavy machinery like forklifts and scissor lifts; making me feel like Joe Cool himself. Funnel cake with ice cream and strawberries for lunch? Oh yeah. Stomach ache for dinner? You bet!
The experience of making an honest living around the roaring rails of roller coasters and the aroma of overpriced popcorn is a tangible reality for many workers across America, but in entertainment-heavy California.
As of May 2022, California stands as the state that employs the most amusement and recreation attendants nationwide, with 48,510 and is closely followed by Florida with 44,680, according to a United States Bureau of Labor Statistics webpage.
Each amusement park across the Bay Area, from the salty Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk to the smelly Gilroy Gardens takes a copious amount of labor to operate efficiently for the thousands of patrons these attractions see during their peak months. Locals around each park end up becoming the employees, fueling and stimulating these places’ economies.
These amusement parks aren’t perfect however, as the price to enter, eat and shop modestly grows higher and higher every year. The price of going to Disneyland has increased 5000% since it opened in 1955, according to a 2019 Orange County Register article.
A 2018 San Francisco Chronicle article states that it used to cost $7 to enter Great America, compared to today’s $40 to $80 price range of admission depending on where you buy your ticket.
But regardless of an obscene price tag for admission, an arm and a leg for some cotton candy or tapping into the 401k for a stuffed Charlie Brown from a carnival game; people will always visit these monuments of labor on the daily.
Disney adults will always run rampant in the streets of Anaheim — happily hundreds of miles away from me — and people will always visit Great America until it closes. Why? Because we love tradition.
Many families including my own have envisioned themselves years in the future bringing the different additions to their family that the future has to offer — whether that be children or the love of your life — to the places that made them happy when they were a child.
I didn’t go to Great America when I was a kid because I loved a good funnel cake or the way a certain roller coaster made me feel, I went because my family brought me; it’s just how things work when you’re a kid.
The memories and experiences I got with my family will live on much longer than the theme park itself; and that to me is incredibly special.
It’s why I’ve come to appreciate places like Great America and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk; the memories will always be worth more than the price tag, as the cost of a great day with your family of the past, present and future, is priceless.
