Sunday Special: The Enduring Power of Amusement Parks

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amusement parks are enduring vacation destinations for American families. The rides, the long lines for rides, the concessions, the long lines for concessions — these are practically familial rites of passage. Theme parks are also enormous moneymakers, with industry leaders such as Disney and Universal earning billions of dollars each year from their parks. In this episode, Gilbert Cruz chats with Brooks Barnes, who writes about show business (including theme parks), and Mekado Murphy, a film editor and thrill-seeker who reports on roller coasters. They talk about the state of the contemporary amusement park and the ups and downs of roller coasters around the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everyone to the Sunday special.
0:05.0	I'm Gilbert Cruz.
0:08.8	I'm excited because today we're talking about one of my secret favorite things.
0:14.4	It's not movies or books or TV, all of which honestly are some of my favorite things in the world.
0:20.6	Instead, we are talking about amusement parks.
0:24.9	All year round, Americans travel to Orlando and Los Angeles and Anaheim to go to some of the most famous theme parks around, and those who don't go there are likely going somewhere close to home, like the six flags that I used to go to in New Jersey.
0:41.1	With me today to talk about amusement parks across America is Brooks Barnes, who writes about Hollywood for the times.
0:48.6	He's visited all 14 Disney theme parks around the world.
0:52.3	And he also traveled with a carnival when he was younger, which is totally normal.
0:56.8	No big deal.
0:57.7	I have so many questions about it.
0:59.3	Welcome, Brooks.
1:00.3	Hello.
1:01.4	Across from me is Mikado Murphy.
1:03.5	Officially, he is a movie editor here unofficially.
1:06.8	He is the Times roller coaster correspondent.
1:09.7	He has published more pieces about roller coasters than any other writer in Times history.
1:14.9	I have not fact-checked that, but it has to be true.
1:17.7	Welcome, Mikata.
1:18.9	Hey, Gilbert.
1:23.6	Okay, Brooks, first things first, we have to get this out of the way.
1:27.8	We need to talk about this.
	...

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