The Thrilling History of Amusement Park Beers

On a cerulean spring afternoon at San Diego’s oceanside Belmont Park amusement park, the cloudless sun bright and the salty breeze brisk, I stood beside my 11-year-old daughter, Violet, and asked her a question about a rickety roller coaster. “Are you sure we should go again?” I inquired, motioning to the Giant Dipper. The historic wooden ride was born in 1925 and doesn’t act its age, whipping across creaky tracks at 48 miles per hour, adrenalizing thrill-seekers like my daughter, who wanted to board the Giant Dipper for a fourth spin in two hours. My middle-aged back braced for the answer.

“Duh, dad,” she said, tugging me toward the line. We lucked out, I suppose, with the front seats and clasped hands as the Giant Dipper climbed toward its 75-foot apex, overlooking the bustling boardwalk and churning Pacific Ocean surf. “Here we go!” I shouted as the descent accelerated, the ocean’s foamy white peaks reminding me of my looming refreshment at the ride’s end: a few IPAs at Draft, Belmont Park’s boardwalk restaurant serving standout beers from San Diego breweries such as North Park and Pure Project.

Giant Dipper shook my stomach like a Margarita as we hugged herky-jerky curves across 2,600-odd feet of time-tested track, a nearly two-minute test of retaining my breakfast in my stomach. “Want to sit in the back next time?” Violet asked as we slid to a halt. My neck said no, but my heart said yes. “But first,” I said, motioning to the boardwalk, “let’s take a break for a drink.”

Eating and imbibing are interlinked with amusement and theme parks, from funnel cakes to cotton candy, Dippin’ Dots to icy sodas. Not all drinks are for kids, or kids at heart. Across the country, concession stands sling cold beer to help of-age parkgoers cool off during summer’s heat and unwind in between rides. (That’s me!) “The relationship has been around almost as long as amusement parks,” says Jim Futrell, the historian for the National Amusement Park Historical Association. “It was common for breweries to open amusement parks to create demand for their product and sell beer.”

Today’s amusement and theme parks prioritize selling beer from area breweries, in addition to partnering with breweries on collaborative beers for concession stands. “People are coming to San Diego and Belmont Park for the weather and the rollercoasters, so we should also include local beer,” says Alvaro Cruz, the beverage manager at Belmont Park. It partnered with AleSmith Brewing on a West Coast IPA celebrating the park’s 100th anniversary this summer. “It’s great to have a local amusement park tapping into working with a local brewery,” says Kristen Ballinger, the AleSmith marketing manager.

Additionally, beer festivals are becoming bigtime park events, combining IPAs with splashing trips on log flumes. And groups are coalescing around visiting Walt Disney World for drinks, no need for a Mickey Mouse photo op. Epcot’s World Showcase features 11 pavilions themed around nations, and visitors will do international bar crawls known as “drinking around the world.” One lager in Germany, please. “It’s a different way that you can approach Disney World as an adult,” says Arya Gold, a co-founder of the website Drinking Around the World, about drinking at Disney parks.

Humans have long gathered for good times and great alcoholic beverages, the favored settings and diversions evolving over the ages. The year 1133 brought London’s Bartholomew Fair, a three-day religious festival that, over its seven centuries, grew into a multi-week carnival featuring acrobats, magicians, fire eaters, freak shows, and refreshments, according to Stephen M. Silverman’s book The Amusement Park. The festival’s peak, he writes, was a “three-week, seventeenth-century Coachella.”

In the 17th and 18th centuries, European pleasure gardens arose to offer public recreation and entertainment. Picnic grounds blossomed in late-19th century America, as parks were established around the terminus of trolley lines. Picnic grounds began with simple entertainment, like bandshells and pathways for promenading. “The idea was to get out in the fresh air, embrace that, and also have a beer,” says Steve Schaffer, lead archivist for the Milwaukee County Historical Society.

These public gardens were stitched into the social fabric of Milwaukee, a hub of German immigration and brewing. Milwaukee’s booming breweries began building parks to entice families with entertainment and fresh lagers. In 1880, Joseph Schlitz Brewing opened Schlitz Park, featuring a 60-foot lookout tower, while in 1889 Pabst Brewing opened the Whitefish Bay Resort north of Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. The 1890s saw Pabst turn a shooting range into Milwaukee’s eight-acre Pabst Park, where the brewery added a rollercoaster, carousel, and other amusement attractions in 1904. “If you wanted to stay in business, you needed more things for people to do than just drink and walk around,” Schaffer says, adding that the golden age of Milwaukee’s brewery amusement parks lasted until around Prohibition.

Brewing giant Anheuser-Busch (now part of Anheuser-Busch InBev) rebooted the amusement park as marketing vehicle with the 1959 opening of Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida. “This park was built on beer,” says Jeff Davis, the park president of Busch Gardens Tampa and the adjoining Adventure Island water park. “We had a brewery in the middle of the park for decades.” The Tampa facility began with tropical gardens and exotic birds, complemented by brewery tours and free beers.

In time, the park’s intersection of beer and entertainment expanded with thrill rides and zoological wonders, including a safari tour with giraffes. Busch Gardens “morphed into a way for people to relax and unwind,” Davis says. The company built Busch Gardens parks in Van Nuys, California, and Houston (both are now closed), plus a still operational location in Williamsburg, Virginia. Busch Entertainment Corporation, as the brewery’s subsidiary was known, then bought SeaWorld in 1989. After InBev acquired Anheuser-Busch in 2008, the company ended the beer-giveaway program and sold the amusement parks the following year.

Even with the ownership change, longtime parkgoers clamored for free beer. “Traditions live in people’s memories,” says Davis, who has worked for the company for more than 30 years. In 2018, Busch Gardens Tampa revived the perk, and now of-age summertime parkgoers receive a free seven-ounce beer with admission. “We see beer as our roots and something that enhances the guest experience,” Davis says.

When Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California, in 1955, alcohol was notably absent. Though Walt Disney favored a Scotch Mist cocktail (2 oz. of Scotch whisky over crushed ice with lemon), he wanted alcohol excluded from the theme park, says the historian Futrell. During that era, drinking “was viewed as dad going to the corner bar,” Futrell says. “Walt was concerned if he served alcohol at Disneyland, then Dad would go to the bar while Mom and the kids went on the attractions. He wanted families to stay together.” (The Walt Disney Company didn’t respond to multiple interview requests.)

As the decades passed, cultural attitudes toward alcohol softened, especially as craft breweries created family friendly taprooms. Ballast Point Brewing opened a location in Anaheim’s Downtown Disney District in 2019. Walt Disney World, which opened near Orlando, Florida, in 1971, now offers alcoholic drinks across its resorts, theme parks, and water parks. Drinking Around the World co-founder Gold began vacationing at Disney World as an adult, without her family, and she and co-founder Skye Ellis have more than 100 visits apiece. From doing a bar crawl via monorail to sipping tropical cocktails at Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar, “we almost never repeat the same experience,” Gold says.

Back in 2021, former radio personality Skip Sher founded the Disney Day Drinkers Club, also known as D3. It began during the pandemic with a small group drinking around the world at Epcot, where indoor mask regulations remained in effect. Assembled outside, meet-up members rested drinks on a flat-topped gray trash can they nicknamed “Binny.” It’s now the mascot for a growing network of more than 125,000 Facebook fans, largely folks ranging from 35 to 65 that “love Disney and love drinks,” says Sher of Richmond, Virginia. “When people are drinking at Disney, they feel like they’re on vacation.”

A great trip provides memorable experiences that are irreproducible at home. That could mean climbing a mountain, rafting in a river, or drinking a distinct beer at an amusement park. Last year, Sher started D3 Brewing Company. It contract brews a quartet of beers with a local brewer, including the Binny’s Brew golden ale and Retired Rides IPA, that are sold across Florida and at select Disney World locations. (The beer is unaffiliated with the park, which works with breweries such as Terrapin on official custom beers.) “It’s a fun thing that’s grown out of being a fan of drinking at Disney,” says Gold, who sometimes joins D3 meetups.

The 2010s rise of craft beer across America led many amusement parks to revamp beer lists with a local tilt. About 15 years ago, the seaside Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Amusement Park, a northern California landmark since 1907, began exploring bringing in homegrown beer. “More than 3 million guests come to our park annually, and they want to experience Santa Cruz culture,” says Omid Aminifard, the chief operating officer and general manager, who has worked at the park since 2000. “Local craft beer plays a role in the experience.” The old guard was initially resistant. Stick to mainstream staples, they said. Local beer would never sell well. Undaunted staffers met with local breweries, eventually partnering with Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing on 2011’s collaborative Horsetail Ale, which celebrated Looff Carousel’s 100th anniversary.

So began a tradition of honoring anniversaries with custom beers, most recently a golden ale from nearby Discretion Brewing that commemorated last year’s 100th birthday of the Giant Dipper roller coaster. (Yes, there are two Giant Dipper roller coasters. The Santa Cruz park restored Belmont Park’s ride in 1990, and it now bears its namesake.) Parkgoers can also freely walk around with cans of beer, such as Humble Sea Brewing’s Boardwalk Dreamin’ IPA. “It’s added a nice element to the to the guest experience,” Aminifard says.

Concession-stand treats also offer brewing inspiration. Kings Island, located northeast of Cincinnati in Mason, Ohio, works with local brewery Sonder on beers that parallel park treats, such as the Blue Ice Cream Ale. Last year, Kennywood Amusement Park, located southeast of Pittsburgh, partnered with Penn Brewery on Strawberry Funnel Cake Shandy that fast became the park’s most popular beer. “An amusement park should be fun, and that goes with the food and the beer,” says Justin Rossetti, the restaurant operations manager at Kennywood. (Penn also made a beer featuring Idaho potatoes used at the park’s famous Potato Patch fry stand.) This year, Penn is bringing its Kennywood beers to stores outside the park with a mixed six-pack featuring colorfully whimsical designs that “represent that fun nostalgia of going to Kennywood as a kid,” says label artist Paul Haggerty.

Summertime is prime season for amusement parks, and sunbaked crowds provide prime opportunities for selling beer. Several years ago, Brooklyn brewery KCBC began distributing beers to Coney Island, the legendary amusement zone alongside the Atlantic Ocean. KCBC’s canned beers feature Earl Holloway’s lurid illustrated labels, such as the Beach Zombie fruited sour ale featuring an undead beach-goer and a Ferris wheel. Fittingly, KCBC’s main sales venue is Coney Island U.S.A., a nonprofit that houses a museum, sideshow events, and kitschy Freak Bar. “There was a Venn diagram overlap of style on Earl’s art and Coney Island,” says Zack Kinney, the co-founder at KCBC. Freak Bar eventually stocked its coolers with all of KCBC’s beers. KCBC now produces a Sideshow Pilsner featuring Coney Island’s grinning Steeplechase Face mascot, and during the summer, Freak Bar is one of KCBC’s top three accounts overall. “It’s a destination at Coney Island,” Kinney says, attracting both locals and tourists alike.

For breweries, close proximity to an amusement park also pays dividends. In 2011, Tröegs Independent Brewing relocated to Hershey, Pennsylvania, less than one mile from Hersheypark, where a Tröegs outpost sells beers such as Perpetual IPA and Sunshine Pilsner. “We get a lot of sun-tinged folks that are a little tired, and you can tell they spent all day at the park,” says David Graham, the marketing director for Tröegs. Many guests visit from states where Tröegs distributes beer, including New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland. A positive vacation experience can amplify sales down the line. “When people are back in their community and see us on the shelf, they’re able to connect that dot and remember that great time,” Graham says.

Across America, thousands of amusement parks have been reduced to rubble, victims of development and changing tastes in entertainment. On the shores of Lake Ivanhoe, in Orlando, Florida, pineapple magnate George Russell opened Russell’s Point in 1910. Later known as Joyland, the park featured water slides, a dance hall, and boats for fishing, before closing in 1919 so the land could become housing. Nearly one century later, Glenn Closson founded Ivanhoe Park Brewing with beers named after the bygone amusement park, including Joyland IPA and Toboggan blonde ale. “The toboggan slide was the main attraction,” Closson says. Each year, the brewery celebrates its anniversary with the Return to Joyland festival, and previous editions had carnival games and artists drawing caricatures on beer labels. “There’s this cool history that we’re tied around,” Closson says.

A beer festival by itself can be boring, with nothing to do except drink another beer. To inject fun into fests, amusement parks such as SeaWorld in Orlando and San Diego are hosting their own beer festivals. (Busch Gardens naturally hosts beer festivals, too.) Perhaps the most novel melding is the annual Hops & Coaster Drops celebration at the Indiana Beach Boardwalk Resort in Monticello, Indiana, about 90 miles northwest of Indianapolis. The park closes to the public except for the 4,000 ticketed attendees who enjoy unlimited rides and samples from more than 110 breweries, distilleries, and wineries.

“Finding a niche for your beer festival is imperative,” says Mark Lasbury, the managing editor for Indiana on Tap, which partners with the park to produce the event. The first edition took place in 2021 with a goal of drawing new parkgoers. The event has grown so popular that, after the festival ends, attendees immediately book hotels for the following year’s Hops & Coaster Drops. While bottomless beers help fuel the day’s fun, it’s rare for attendees to overdo IPAs and roller coasters. “We love that they are there for the rides as well as the sampling,” Lasbury says.

Back at sunny Belmont Park, I finished a tropical IPA from Fall Brewing while Violet sipped the last of her lemonade. Beyond the restaurant’s windows, the buzzy boardwalk thrummed with bikers and buskers, while teens did handstands in the sand and plucky swimmers waded into chilly waters. The din of whirling contraptions and delighted screams sounded in the distance, a siren call that lured us back to the Giant Dipper. On our way there, we walked by an outpost of Pizza Port Brewing, its citrusy Swami’s IPA sounding mighty good. “Nothing adds more fun to amusement parks than a nice cold beer,” Schaffer of the Milwaukee County Historical Society, tells me later. I’m inclined to agree, but that IPA could wait. The Giant Dipper’s line moved quickly. We scanned our wristbands, climbed into the back-row seats, locked the lap bar, and braced ourselves for more of life’s most memorable ups and downs.