Not to have a dig at these fan awards but
@TakeYourMedicine highlights a good point.
At the start of this year I was stood next to one of Merlin creative's, overlooking the new areas in Legoland's Miniland. We could see Theme Park Worldwide recording their vlog. The guy turned round to me and said "I'm in the wrong job. His videos are making more money than I was paid to work on this project".
Yeah! And not trying to have a dig either, if some people genuinly want to be like that then go ahead. But it seems to me that the influence of 'the enthusiast community' at parks has shot up so massively in the last few years.
If you're a young person today with a growing enjoyment of parks, then it's now so easy to be sucked into this 'community' online and lose track of what you enjoyed about parks in the first place. All this weird agenda, statistics, 'Enthusiasts VS The GP' ideology benefits nobody.
The articles on that blog especially have a weird subtext, with things like "Embracing Enthusiasm" where they say how happy they are to feel smug and entitled to know more than others, and call it a sub-culture. "What Not To Say To a Coaster Enthusiast","Dating A Coaster Enthusiast", "10 Signs You're An Enthusiast" etc. I think are meant to be witty and some actually call out your stereotypical geek way of thinking, but it just comes across as the flipside to the same coin.
If you really enjoy something, why do you have to become part of a sub-culture? It's pretty much turned into its own industry. I was a big nerd once too, but realised all this stuff was nothing to do with the bigger picture of why I love parks.
Theme parks are for everybody, to just go out and have a day of surprises. Wonderful. If done right, the public will love a good ride just as much as enthusiasts. We are
all the public, but some have really lost sight of the forest for the trees.
Sorry to derail this article! It's just something Ive seen growing for a long time. That so many people who think about theme parks this way work in parks now too seems dodgy. Don't get me wrong, it would be fantastic to have people who love
the industry working in parks, like I know many more open-minded enthusiasts do and are great at their jobs. But I cant see much good coming of people who love 'the fandom' coming into parks. I can see it turning into the comic book culture in the US, where it loses that simple touch and turns into a massive fan service machine, tailored to the demands of enthusiasts.