You’d need to be living under a fiberglass rock if you’ve never heard of Fake Theme Park, the social media parody account that pokes fun at all things theme park. It’s run by comedy writer and former Universal Studios Hollywood employee, Jason Ginsberg.
Jason has recently put together an ebook, “If The Princess Rolls Her Eyes, Your Wish Will Come True”. The book features classic Fake Theme Park tweets/Facebook posts as well as some hilarious brand new content. Jason was generous to send me an advance copy of the book. It was a hoot to read and I found myself chuckling countless times.
I had the opportunity to speak with Jason about the book:
What inspired you to put this book together? Why now?
Money, mostly. Did you know that people get to read all my tweets for free?
But also, if people want to explore the world of Fake Theme Park, whether it’s all the Christmas jokes or all the Park Princess drama, there’s no good way to do it. Twitter’s search function is kind of a pain. I list some content at fakethemepark.contently.com, but that isn’t searchable. And Facebook? Forget it. So this offers longtime fans a way to re-live the classics, and new fans to get up to speed on the absurd reality of the park. And a book was the only way to bring fans new pieces that were pretty long, like the interview with all four Park Princesses.
What do you hope readers take away from reading the book?
In all modesty, I hope people get an idea of the scope of the park—not only all its current attractions and craziness, but also its long history of catastrophes. I love the concept that the park is a real place, which everyone imagines differently. And I hope they get to know CEO Murph Gantly and the Park Princesses better.
How long did it take you to go through all those tweets to select the ones you wanted in the book? I’m guessing days if not weeks. It must have been fun reading some of those old tweets again.
I have a Twitter archive and went through topics that way. I tried to strike a balance between posts that did well and stuff that just personally made me laugh (yes, I laugh at my own jokes). Honestly, I read some of the tweets and thought “Didn’t I just post that in July?” and they ended up being from 2016.
I did make sure the four main topics in the book are some of the most popular: Christmas, fireworks, Cast Member issues, and of course the Park Princesses. I think I’ve now made every fireworks joke possible, so that subject may get put on the shelf until Disney comes up with some new type of hologram.
Will there be more Fake Theme Park books in the future?
There are certainly more topics to compile and enhance; Halloween comes to mind. And I love writing material longer than 280 characters for Twitter or a few paragraphs for Facebook. So the freedom of a book is very attractive to me.
“If The Princess Rolls Her Eyes, Your Wish Will Come True” is now available on Amazon. It retails for just $5 and if you’re a theme park fan (and you likely are if you’re reading this), it’s worth your coffee money.
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