I think part of the art of theme parks is their ability for environmental storytelling.
The map of a city can tell you many things about how a city developed, it is organic and how a city is structured is based on the stories we tell ourselves, whether that be with literal storybooks or even scientific data. This video on the development of New Orleans was recently of interest to me.
The difference between theme parks and cities is the ability to craft and invent stories that people will enjoy. The limitation is the boundaries of the parks themselves and the budget that they are given. You can organise the environment from planting and theming and introduce ride mechanisms that create illusions and use physical sensation to convey a story. Kinetics can also play a pivotal part in adding a sense that a space is truly lived in. It's what makes it immersive.
I was recently listening to a podcast, and they were talking about how the book Dune conveyed religious psychology so accurately, despite being sci-fi fiction far grounded from religion. The world-building was done to reflect how religions organised and developed, long before contemporary academic literature "discovered" this. Theme Parks are a medium in which we can tell stories that aren't always conveyed easily through other forms of art such as film, theatre or painting. Although, given that they are still in their relative infancy as an art form (the modern theme park still being less than 100 years old), the stories that are told are made for mass audiences to credit easily digestible 'wow' moments, simplistic morality tales that you'd expect from a Disney film, and enable people to experience some resemblance settings and cultures that aren't easily accessible for the public or represent a time that they can no longer experience.
It's why themes such as the Wild West, Steampunk and as we all know, The Apocalypse resonate so well. The Wild West areas tell the story (often very inaccurately) of a time before robust law enforcement and a stable social system. Steampunk explores the concept of positivism, as if science was the only way forward, and if it existed within a vacuum isolated from social context. Finally, as we've done to death in the UK, The Apocalypse represents the loss of social fabric and being exposed to a harsh, bleak reality which enforces a feeling of existential dread.
Given time, no doubt we will see theme parks evolve beyond the profit-driven business orientated model that gave birth to them. Not that they won't continue to exist, but someday we will see a concept of theme park emerge and become more commonplace that exists to expand the perspectives of those who visit, enabling people to get a more holistic perspective of life and live lives that are ultimately more fulfilling.
Finally, I'd like to end on an example of a community-driven immersive environment which aims to simulate a video game-like environment of a post-apocalyptic wasteland that thousands of people travel into the desert to experience. Just to give you a tiny slither of what sort of holistic immersion that theme parks could provide.
