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AMUSEMENT PARK by Robert Stuart Nathan

AMUSEMENT PARK

By

Pub Date: Oct. 15th, 1977
Publisher: Dial

Disaster in Disneyland, only now with a new fun village called Olympic Adventure in New Jersey. Olympic Adventure has the world's largest Ferris wheel, the incredible Sky Chariot that hauls guests from one side of the park to the other, the Bobsled, a safari, a Wild West, and a reconstruction of ancient Rome. But the place is not in the black, and a giant stock battle is rearing, with ownership about to be lost by Cole Cunningham, megalohead of a credit conglomerate. Meanwhile Cole is losing his wife Alexis to his general manager Brad Hawkins. Alexis, choosing between two gods, Cole and Brad, is. . . ""bewildered."" . . . As stock deals thrash, a crazed electrician shorts the entire park's power system (it's Memorial Day with a record crowd of 111,000) and--shades of Con Ed--plunges the madhouse into pitch darkness. Fires and looting break out, and over 200 die in the night riot. The inside machinery of the amusement park business has seldom been exposed more keenly--but the humans are more plasticized, and not amusing.