Notice anything different?
It’s been two years since I started combining my journalism skills with my love of theme parks by writing for (and eventually owning) Orlando Rising.
However, over the past year, I’ve felt a greater urge to cover not just Central Florida theme parks, but the biggest parks across the U.S., all with the same journalistic sense that I feel is missing from a media sphere increasingly dominated by vloggers, influencers and self-promoters who are more interested in staying on the media list than honest reporting. Really, all I had set out to do is write the kind of stories about theme parks that I’d personally want to read.
And judging by the reaction to my coverage — from digging into public records about the Buzzy theft to finding out how much Disney-centric sites pay their writers to charting how often Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure broke down — part of the theme park community wanted those kind of stories, too.
So now, Orlando Rising is expanding and rebranding. If you think Theme Park Tribune sounds more like the name of a newspaper than a blog, that’s no accident. We want to restore journalism to theme park coverage, because that’s what you, the theme park fan, deserves. And if providing fair coverage ticks off Disney or Universal in the process, then so be it.
This rebranding means you can expect more news about the likes of Disneyland, Universal Hollywood, Knott’s Berry Farm, the rest of the SeaWorld and Legoland chains and really, any major park in the U.S. that I want to cover.
And yes, it also means I will be looking for new contributors to help me grow the site.
It should be exciting. I hope you join us as the site heads for a great, big, beautiful tomorrow.