June 17, 2025, 12:41pm
What’s behind a theme park? Often as not, a good yarn.
When I was little, my family sometimes found itself at Story Land in New Hampshire. This park—and many others like it around the world—loosely celebrates fairy and folk tales, in a people’s Disney sorta way. At Story Land, Hans Christian Anderson’s work got a lot of love from the art department. But if memory serves, so did Mother Goose.
This commitment to narrative and character left strong impressions on my dreamy child psyche. But also, a craving for specificity. As we creep toward summer, I’m reminded of this connection between play and story. This dreamy adult wondered if there might be something extra impressionable about a park that commits to one specific yarn. (Or character.)
On a lark, I went looking. Here are a few such dorky destinations.
Avonlea Village on Prince Edward Island celebrates the world of L. Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.
A big station on literary tours, Avonlea Village is home to several replicas from Anne Shirley’s universe. Free to enter, it’s also a big dining and shopping destination. One can buy Anne-centric souvenirs at the artisan market, then enjoy—I assume—a raspberry cordial and plum pudding. Just like our favorite lit-kid redhead.
Excuse me, I misspoke. There is another contender for favorite lit-kid redhead. If you’re a Pippi stan and find yourself in Småland, you might check out Astrid Lindgren’s World. There, visitors can board Captain Efraim Longstocking’s ship. Or go creeping around Villa Villekula, home to the coolest emancipated child you’ve ever encountered.
This theme park is also home to live shows and a great deal of careful world-building. Diehard Lindgrenites can immerse themselves in the rest of Astrid’s canon, via strolls through the Tiny Tiny Town or down Troublemaker Street.
Pinocchio Park in Tuscany sprouted around a monument—Emilio Greco’s stunning bronze, “Pinocchio and the Fairy.” Conceived as a sculpture park appealing to children and adults, the park is now home to a “pathway of surprises” capturing episodes in this little wooden puppet’s brief and wondrous life.
The park includes an interactive museum, retro rides, a zip line, and—you guessed it—a puppet show. And other great works of art are peppered throughout the grounds.
In France, the hyper-detailed PuyduFou places visitors at the center of an Arthurian legend. This hundred year old forest ruin was reclaimed in 1978, when some real niche entrepreneurs hatched a plan to stage open-air amateur history plays explaining “the brutal story of the Vendée civil war.”
Today the park immerses visitors in a live recreation of King Arthur’s first quest. After visiting the Round Table, guests can stroll through a Medieval Village.
A word to Connecticut Yankees? Visitors suggest you take France’s second most-trafficked theme park with a grain of historical salt. Some have chided PuyduFou for its era inaccuracies and a “reactionary” agenda.
Vermonters and older children-at-heart can enjoy Jane Austen Weekends at the Governor’s House in Hyde Park. No rides here per se, but attendees can immerse themselves in Austen-tivities, and are lightly encouraged to dress in costume. Meaning, Regency garb.
This theme experience does not a cheap adventure make. Regular JAW rates start at $495 a pop, and that is if you’re willing to share a suite. But tickets include “two nights’ lodging, Friday evening’s talk with dessert, full breakfast on Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon tea, Saturday dinner party with book discussion, whist, or English country dancing, early Sunday Continental breakfast, and the Jane Austen quiz during Sunday brunch.”
Weekends are arranged around particular novels. Watch this space for details on the upcoming Emmapalooza.
Some other literary parks have flamed out. A Dickens World went defunct in 2016, perhaps because rides like “the workhouse” couldn’t hold the children’s interest. But this excursion tripped my mogul wire. So many books seem ripe for the theme park treatment.
One skim through my trusty manual, Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi’s The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, yields several possibilities. Where, for instance, is the Kingdom of Azaz, after Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth?
What if one could get lifted on a summer Friday at an IRL Borgesian library? Or, in that negging Dickensian spirit, visit Kafka’s Castle? Where’s the theme park Middle Earth? The theme park Narnia?
Shrewd Redditors remind us: the answer to all our problems is, as usual, IP law. Many estates have been loath to relinquish ride rights. So it looks like we must hold our breaths for #KafkaSummer.
Oh, well. In the meantime, we’ll always have Avonlea.