AMUSEMENT PARK

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21178, 27 October 1938, Page 8

AMUSEMENT PARK

Plans for Centennial Exhibition Many New Devices By Telegraph Press Association WELLINGTON, October 26 Details of the proposed amusements park at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition were given to-day by Mr Henry Seff. a director of the English company which has been negotiating with the Exhibition management for commissionary rights to erect and run the park. Mr Seff said that it would cost £lOO,OOO to £150,000, and would contain many devices that had never before been seen in the Southern Hemisphere. As his company were specialists in all kinds of tubular steel amusement devices he had obtained a concession from the Exhibition management. He intended to leave Wellington to-day for Auckland to connect with the Monterey returning to England from Sydney. Mr Seff said that on his return he hoped to conclude arrangements for many of the amusements to make ready for the shipment and assembly of the devices for the park, which would be called “Playland.” It would cover about ten acres, in addition to one acre devoted to the kiddies’ “Playland” where the children could amuse themselves in safety on miniature reproductions of various devices. It was intended to spend between £lOO.OOO and £150,000 to make the park at the Centennial celebrations comparable with the best in the world.

“It will be unique in that it will be the first in the world constructed principally of tubular steel,” said Mr Seff. While in England he hoped to complete a contract with a large troop of midgets, none more than three feet high, to come to the exhibition, in which case a midget town would be erected in the amusement park. Another feature would be a miniature or children’s railway running right round the park and carrying passengers. It would be a working model of a real railway system.