Gods and Rollercoasters: Religion and Theme Parks Worldwide

The aim of this paper is to decipher ways of experiencing religiousness through tourist performances, intersecting textual approaches with the essential embodiment and materiality of the tourist world. Exploring the diversity of religious tourists’ practices within the Greek Orthodox context, two dimensions underpinning religious tourist experience are highlighted: institutional performances and unconventional performances. Focussing on the embodied experience and drawing upon theories of performance, the paper critiques the interplays of body and place to re-conceptualise current understanding of the pilgrimage/tourism relationship. In doing so, the paper proposes that tourism and religion are not separate entities but linked through embodied notions of godliness sensed through touristic performances.

Tourism Recreation Research, 2003

Two ways in which the commodification of religion and religious built heritage occurs are discussed: (1) through tourism pressures on sacred sites and customs; and (2) and when religious groups commodify their doctrines, customs, and beliefs for economic gain (eg, the selling ...

Journal of Vacation Marketing, 2002

Religions, 2021

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

This paper explores the visual culture of recreated temple structures in the entertainment settings of international exhibitions and Disneyland. It examines the material and conceptual construction of temple mythology in world's fairs and amusement parks through the reproduction -or rather, simulation -of Egyptian, Mayan, Aztec, Cambodian and Hindu structures. Disneyland in southern California has been interpreted as the hybrid descendent of the world's fairs and colonial expositions, the result of continuities and ruptures within the exhibitionary and entertainment traditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the architecture in the Adventureland section of the park can be likened to the pavilions of the colonies in French and British expositions, especially those from the late nineteenth century through to 1939. The creators of the Temple of the Forbidden Eye in Disneyland's Indiana Jones Adventure ride from 1995 have claimed they were directly inspired by images of temples published in National Geographic magazines of the 1930s. A skim through these attributed sources of information turns up period photographs from world's fair temple-pavilions.

Global Perspectives on Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, 2018

A vast array of studies focuses on religious tourism as the promising segment of tourism growth for next decades, this is a really prominent theme concerns many scholars today. However, our chapter is on the opposite direction, tourism is an expression of religiosity enrooted in Western Culture. this chapter explores the religiosity of tourism in order to expand the current understanding we have of this complex phenomenon. Far from representing a radical critique to some scholars or some position, this chapter aims to become in a contribution to expand the current paradigms in tourism-led research.

Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2012

Synthese Library, 2021

In this chapter I address the concern that UNESCO World Heritage designation leads to unregulated tourism. I argue that heritage tourism not only has a negative impact on the site but may adversely impact local populations and descendant communities. I detail two related worries, UNESCO-cide and the Disneyfication of cultural heritage. The term ‘UNESCO-cide’ was coined by Marco d’Eramo to describe the role overtourism has played in the death of cities listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. Disneyfication is the process of sanitizing potentially controversial or seemingly negative narratives from the tourist site to make the experience more palatable. I focus my analysis on two UNESCO World Heritage sites: Angkor Archaeological Complex in Cambodia and George Town in Malaysia. After a discussion about the negative impacts World Heritage designation has had on these sites, I suggest some mitigating strategies for tourism.

Church, Communication and Culture, 2018

Religion, Pilgrimage and Tourism (4 volume reprint series with Routledge)

Introduction For as long as human beings have existed they have been interested in travel. Particular homelands and cultural norms have always been constructed with reference to, or contrasted with, the lands and habits of ‘the Other’. Implicit in this statement is the notion that some places are more special (perhaps sacred) than others, and this is the core of the intimate relationship between human beings, place and travel, and religion. The field encompassed by this four-volume reprint series ‘Religion, Pilgrimage, and Tourism’ is thus vast. At the least controversial end of the spectrum are those incidences of travel which are sanctified by the so-called ‘world religions’ (Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam), such as the Hajj, the Camino de Santiago, the Shikoku henro, the Kumbh Mela, and the hope expressed at the annual Passover meal, ‘next year in Jerusalem’. However, the field extends far beyond these ‘official’ journeys, and encompasses the nomadic wanderings of Australian Aboriginal peoples through their ancestral lands, travel to participate in Native American potlatch gatherings, the assembly of Ancient Greeks every four years to honour Zeus Olympios at the Olympic Games, and the modern Druids who perform rituals at Stonehenge at the midsummer solstice. Yet beyond the immediately religious lies journeying that is motivated by individual ‘spiritual’ needs, which may involve traditional sacred routes and sites (for example, Westerners going to Indian ashrams), and radically eclectic, non-traditional pathways (for example, Wagner aficionados who travel to experience productions of the Ring Cycle and fans of Elvis Presley who visit his home, Graceland). In the post-religious milieu of the twenty-first century, almost any journey to almost any site may be religious and/or spiritual, a journey ‘redolent with meaning’ (Digance 2006).

Church, Communication and Culture (RCHU), 2018

Religious heritage can act as a transmitter of the age-old values linked to the identity of a territory, while reflecting on the relationship between the religious value and the monumental value of a place. This reflection is based on the initial premise that at present there are elements related to the architectural heritage of the church that have wholly or in part lost their use value as places of worship. After introducing the relationship between tangible and intangible heritage at religious sites and the role of tourism helping in the preservation (or not) of these values, the current situation is analyzed through a case study. The case study is focused on the Catalonia Sacra project and analyses 325 religious heritage sites from the region of Catalonia, in the northeast of Spain. Several sets of data were collected referring to the monumental and architectural values of these places and also the religious use of them, among others, with the aim to compare the relationship between the monumental values and the religious use of these sites.

In Y. M. Rowan and U. Baram (eds.), Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past, pp. 249-66., 2004

Much writing treats the tourist as a unitary type, confined to a touristic bubble. Attempts have been made to subdivide the tourist by developing various typologies. These approaches neglect the tourists' voice. By contrast, this paper's case study from Chalkidiki, Greece, indicates that different tourist types experience the same host community in different ways. Analysis of qualitative data from 86 British holidaymakers has led to the identification of five micro-types. Each is characterized by the dominant themes identified for their choice of holiday, types of activities, and views about the host community.

Religious Journeys in India: Pilgrims, Tourists, and Travelers. Eds. Andrea Pinkney & John Whalen-Bridge, 2018

This chapter offers a detailed discussion of the religious theme park of Anand Sagar in Shegaon. Providing an overview of the park experience for visitors through its exhibits and signage, it is argued that the park seems to fulfill recreational needs more than religious ideology, the merging of these themes in fact augments the pilgrimage to the Gajanan Maharaj in Shegaon. It is shown that the paradoxical nature of Anand Sagar as a new kind of commoditized tourist destination has encouraged religious travel by using recreation instrumentally.