Theme Parks

Theme Parks were a portion of early Neopets that featured both pre-made and user-made rides (which costed NP to create) in HTML.

Timeline

First announcement

Theme Parks were first announced as upcoming on the New Features page in February 2000 (Y2). The now-defunct link to Theme Parks went live on May 3rd, 2000 (Y2) with the announcement "You can create your park, and loads more stuff as well... tomorrow we will have them finished 100%". On May 10, TNT reported a few more rides being added to the Theme Parks, although they were not fully finished yet. In June, a New Features post revealed user-submitted "theme park photos."

Down for Maintenance

While Neopets moved their servers in July, the Theme Parks (as well as the Neopets Stock Market) temporarily went offline.

Official release

The Theme Parks were announced as completed on August 11th, 2000 (Y2), with the message "So far you can go on rides, and we have also added some funny ride entries. We will be adding more stuff, and more rides very soon. Also your pets will be able to find random theme park items like candy floss and balloons." By August 15th, Theme Parks was given its own board on the Neoboards. On August 29th, more rides were added, and users were given the ability to create their own Theme Parks. Then, on October 25th, TNT got rid of the admission fees to Theme Parks (and their rides) in order to stop cheaters from exploiting the game.

Retirement

By August 15th, 2001 (Y3) (just over a year after the Theme Parks were announced as "completed"), the Theme Parks feature was retired, with TNT announcing, "We have made a big decision, and that is to discontinue the Theme Parks. We did have big plans for them, but we have decided to redirect our efforts to things like the Trading Card Game and the new world. We will be refunding all the Neopoints you have spent on your parks to you over the next day or so." After refunding players on August 19th, TNT gave out Gold, Silver, and Bronze trophies to the players with the largest Theme Parks on August 21th.

According to The Neopian Times Issue 55 editorial, Donna stated that Theme Parks "never actually got finished so we [sic] removed it."

Trivia

• Theme Parks used Game ID 116.
• The Help page for Theme Parks still remains on the site, with the text "Note: Theme Parks are on hold at the moment, we will be working on them very shortly and we will keep you updated with our progress."
• Mr. Chuckles used to work at the Theme Parks before turning evil, as mentioned in his Neodeck entry and How to Draw page.
• The Chia Clown also used to work at the Theme Parks, as mentioned in his Battledome description and Neopedia article.
• The Stock Market makes several references to Theme Parks from the "Theme Park Entertainers Guild" stock in the icons for "Hakaheke Island Flights" and "The Presidential Palace", which both use the Theme Park icon.

Gallery

The Theme Park icon, which is reused in the Stock Market.

Gold Trophy

Silver Trophy

Bronze Trophy

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