udios, visitors can experience a wide variety of escapist thrills such "burning" buildings or earthquakes. Amusement parks like Knott's Berry Farm feature Old West themes. Theme parks are sanitized versions of past or present phenomena. By going to Disneyland, for instance, the visitor learns nothing of American heritage such as would be experienced in a history museum, for example. However, a visit to a history museum requires too much thinking. A person might have to read interpretative literature to understand an exhibit, whereas, at Disneyland, the visitor merely pays his or her admission and puts their mind on "automatic." At theme parks, the idea is to have fun, while, at museums, the idea is to learn, and Americans clearly prefer the former to the latter. As Beatty explains, the goal is "to st
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