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What Is an Indoor Amusement Park?

B. Miller
B. Miller

An indoor amusement park is an attraction in which the rides, games, or events typically found at larger, outdoor theme parks are installed indoors. This may take place in a large building or in some cases just a giant, permanent tent, and allows patrons to enjoy the amusement park all seasons of the year, rain or shine. This is becoming an especially popular option for water parks; heated pools and water rides are just some of the most common features found in an indoor water park. For families or people of all ages, an indoor amusement park can be a great way to spend a day.

Some places that advertise themselves as being an indoor amusement park do not actually feature any of the larger rides found at traditional amusement parks. They may feature smaller games and amusements that are more frequently found indoors, such as bowling, putt-putt golf, laser tag, or rock-climbing walls. Video games are also common as well. These parks may be a less expensive option because they typically do not require an admission fee, though it will generally require a small fee in order to play each game. These places are popular hangouts for teenagers.

Woman holding a book
Woman holding a book

A true indoor amusement park will typically feature larger rides that might be found at a fair or carnival. Some of the biggest indoor amusement parks might even have a roller coaster indoors; in addition, some larger shopping centers around the world also feature an indoor roller coaster. These types of amusement parks typically require visitors to pay an admission fee, but this will generally entitle them to a day pass that will allow them to go on different rides as many times as they desire throughout the day. Though it may initially be more expensive for a company to build an indoor amusement park like this, the fact that it can be open all year round, no matter the weather, is often well worth the investment, especially when connected with a retail facility.

An indoor water park is another type of indoor amusement park that is becoming fairly common. These feature things like water slides, tube rides, and pools inside a building, and are particularly popular with families. Some of these are actually built in to a resort, allowing patrons to stay at the resort and spend a few days at the water park; typically, the cost to enter the water park is included in the fee for a room at the resort.

Discussion Comments

bythewell

My favorite thing to do in an indoor amusement park is to play laser tag. There's one not far from my home town where I take my nephew sometimes so we can have a fun day out.

He's always pretty excited by the rides like bumper cars and go karts and things like that and it's a lot of fun to go on those with him.

But, my favorite is the laser tag, particularly when we can team up against another couple of players.

It doesn't really have any bigger rides although I think they are talking about putting in a "4D" ride that could be cool. I think they are only really good the first couple of times though, so I hope they change the movie regularly because we go there every couple of months.

pastanaga

@browncoat - I think I've been to that one as well. It's called the Adventuredome and the building that contains it is large enough that it might as well be a small outdoor amusement park.

I think the only reason it is indoors is for the air conditioning, although I shudder to think of how much it costs.

There are quite a few indoor amusement parks in Las Vegas, since many of the casinos have them as an additional attraction for families. I know one of them has a roller coaster that starts inside the casino but travels out to the outside of the building.

And of course many of them have the video games and carnival games so that kids have something to do while their parents are playing the slots.

browncoat

The best indoor amusement park I've ever been to is the big one in Las Vegas. It had a dinosaur theme when I went there as a child, but they took all the mechanical dinosaurs out by the time I went back as an adult, which is too bad because they were my favorite part.

But the rides were still pretty good. I actually think the ideal ride for an indoor amusement park is a bunch of 3D motion masters, but they only ever seem to have one or at the most two of those.

And in this case they had a huge roller coaster that went all around the park and another one that basically dumped you into a huge splash of water.

Then they had a bunch of things like laser tag and so forth.

I think I liked it so much because we went on a family vacation there and just had a really good time.

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      Woman holding a book