Kansas City Strip
Surrender, Dorothy: Anyone who thought the great and terrible Johnson County Commissioners wisely and mercifully killed the Wonderful World of Oz theme park in November can stand in line for a brain behind the Scarecrow. The Oz Entertainment Company announced last week that Richard Ferguson had been appointed new head wizard, replacing the cagey Robert Kory, who had failed to win the hearts of commissioners Annabeth Surbaugh and Johnna Lingle. Ferguson’s mission is to “assemble the resources necessary to promote a full and open dialogue with community leaders and residents so that everyone” — i.e., Susie Wolf, who replaces Lingle on the commission next month — “completely understands the benefits.”
And why wouldn’t people be excited about a glowing, gigantic Emerald City rising from the contaminated old Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, complete with “unique rides” (as if parks everywhere didn’t already have rides called The Tornado) and 150 acres of parking, a man-made lake, a 350-room hotel, a golf course, a campground, and an RV park? The project’s creative accounting is just one reason. But our biggest problem is that the idea’s just so damn 20th century.
Kory first proposed the idea in 1992. Back then it seemed simply nostalgic, like Branson; now it seems much too archaic to sustain an entire theme park. That stuff the Wizard did behind the curtain? Big deal — just virtual reality. That universal emotional tug about a lost girl trying to get home? Give the kid a Web-enabled cell phone, and she can download a Yahoo! map.
But perhaps we’re too cynical. Professor Michael Johnson of the English Department at the University of Kansas specializes in popular culture, technology and humanism, and Western American culture (among other things); he says the story still resonates. “I don’t like the idea of the theme park very much,” he admits, “but it might happen anyway. The nostalgia angle is really crucial. It seems to me if you put somebody in there with some technological imagination, they might be able to pump that Oz doodadery. It might seem futuristic — but also a 21st century realization of a 20th century idea. It does seem anachronistic.”
That high-tech wonderland — the type of world that used to seem just over the rainbow — is exactly what the park’s developers are promising. But the world doesn’t need another outdated Tomorrowland.
