Lord, what that man Samuel Taylor Coleridge started off when he wrote the lines
In Xanadu did Kubla
Khan
A stately pleasuredome decree,
The pleasure domes of today do not reach the splendour which Coleridge set out for us, but it seems they are here to stay. You know what they are like - huge, clear cupolas of glass or clear plastic or such like, with, often, masses of tropical trees, huge stretches of water, sandy beaches, if you're lucky, where the parents can sit in deck chairs and watch their offspring safely caper in the water, use the slides and so on. And, of course, be served with food add drink. We have at least one in Ireland, and they seem to be a world wide phenomenon.
A writer in a German news paper summarises it: "In warm bathing paradises you can forget rain and gray skies and, all year round, lounge about in summer temperatures among palm trees." At night, presumably, you go to your hotel. The Japanese, the writer tells us, have created under a giant cupola, the greatest artificial strand in the world. Bird song pours out of loudspeakers and every fifteen minutes there is a volcanic outbreak (presumably huge waves are meant) enlivening the fictitious strand."
In the ski centre at Tsudanuma near Tokio, snowflakes fall in a constant temperature of minus two. So that waiting for the skilifts doesn't become too tedious, there are ninety TV sets to hand. (After all, we shouldn't forget that in the heights of Switzerland and France and Austria where people go to ski, the snow is often the product of snow guns, when Nature proves dilatory.) In Nagasaki they have a "Holland Village", for which the entrepreneurs brought twenty million (million!) authentic slates from Holland.
It's, all over the world this setting up of special attractions for the tourist. On the Caribbean island of Coco Cay, palms were planted and a sandy beach laid down but this is the last word in looking after special customers - a "historic wreck" of a ship was sunk, and the remains of a presumably crashed, airplane for divers to explore. The list goes on and on.
Theme parks help to preserve, say, archaeological sites from being trampled by too many visitors. Casts of original stones and video shows can help preserve national treasures.