There’ll be some ups and downs: The politics of theme parks

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. Welcome to a new occasional section of this column — Inappropriate Theme Park Ride of the Week! The inaugural winner is Graveley Fruit Farm in Hertfordshire, England, which has just come under fire for its Titanic-themed children’s slide. On the one hand, some 1,500 people perished when the Titanic sank into the icy waters, so the choice might be deemed somewhat inappropriate. On the other hand, what better way to prepare our children for the difficulties of life than by sitting them on a taffeta mat and sending them down a polyethylene slide decorated to look like the ship in the most famous disaster of all time? At least the slide isn’t as bad as the movie, which is so bad I was rooting for the iceberg (too soon?). Anyway, there are also links between theme parks and politics — and not just because spending too long doing either can make you vomit. Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron sought Saudi investment to turn what was once the country’s biggest theme park into a manga-themed attraction. The site used to be home to Mirapolis, which celebrated French literature and culture (“c’mon kids, let’s go ride a rollercoaster based on Proust’s ‘À la recherche du temps perdu.’ The queues are short, but the ride lasts 200 hours”) but closed down in 1991 due to financial difficulties. Then there’s the Puy du Fou theme park, which has one location in France and one in Spain, and now wants to open another in the U.K. Philippe de Villiers, its founder and president, has been linked with Russian President Vladimir Putin and previously proposed the construction of a theme park in Crimea after Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula in 2014. Next comes Thierry Breton, the former European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Getting Into Fights With Elon Musk, who helped come up with the idea for a high-tech theme park called “Futuroscope,” just north of Poitiers in western France. Its tagline is: “Expect the unexpected,” which was very much the theme of Breton’s time in Brussels. Theme parks aren’t just occasionally political though; they can also be weird. There’s Wunderland Kalkar in Germany, which is on the site of a former nuclear power plant — one that was never operational, as the entire project was abandoned due to safety concerns. There’s South Korea’s Loveland, an adult-only sculpture park that features explicit artwork (maybe President Donald Trump found out about it just before cooling diplomatic ties with Seoul). And then there’s Colombia’s Parques Temáticos Hacienda Nápoles, a theme park on the grounds of former drug baron Pablo Escobar’s ranch (sounds like a wild ride). POLITICO is currently waiting for planning approval for an EU-style theme park to be built on the site of the Schuman roundabout called EUland. It will feature rides such as Qualified Majority, which only starts spinning when 15 people agree to take part; Trilogue, where three bumper cars go into a dark tunnel and never come out; and the Strasbourg Express, where hundreds of people make a very slow journey once a month for no reason whatsoever. That last ride was inspired by a train carrying hundreds of European Parliament members and officials, which accidentally ended up in Disneyland Paris when on the way to Strasbourg in 2023. Rumors that the name of the vehicle in question was called “the Gravy Train” were strenuously denied by all involved. CAPTION COMPETITION “Russia’s military recruitment struggles continue as Putin’s body doubles forced to sign up.” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last time, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferab