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Theme Park Apparel

MestnyiGeroi

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
Answer any of the following questions you want:

Theme park apparel: fun way to preserve a nice memory/show your coaster enthusiasm, or naff/tacky fashion choice?

When you visit a park, do you buy a shirt or article of clothing? Always? Never? Sometimes? If sometimes, what decides for you whether you'll get something from this place?

Do you collect park shirts?

Do you buy shirts with ride names on them or park names? What kind of shirts do you look for or avoid?

Do you wear shirts from one park while visiting another? While visiting a park, will you wear the shirt of a rival park or chain?
 
Here's my gripe about park shirts. What I like to get are tshirts with the names of the parks written on them. However, very often I don't buy anything, because I don't see anything I like.

Most parks develop their distinctive look for their park name -- with a distinct font and lettering style, with specific colors, and maybe with some distinctive touches (like little flags at the top of letters for the two Kings parks). Yet what drives me crazy is that 90% of the time, the classic park title tshirt is not sold anywhere in the park. Instead, completely different lettering is featured, surrounded by garish splashes of color and lightning bolts and Spider-Man and monster faces and superfluous writing that says things like "Do you feel brave today?!" or "Grab life by the horns!" or some other painful phrase. And in fact, half the shirts won't even feature the park name.

Why don't parks sell shirts with the classic logos they have spent decades developing and honing as the symbol of their parks?
 
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I'll buy a t shirt if the ride makes it into my top 10 and the t shirt is nice enough. I didn't like any shirts for Helix, Taron or Wildfire for example. I love my Lightning Rod one, not garish and could be mistaken for not being a goon shirt. I have no issue with wearing them at other parks, seems to strike up conversation easily.
I don't buy park shirts because they are usually awful, I'll buy hats on occasion, got a nice CP one.
 
I have a fair few shirts, and am looking to getting some prints. Specifically the MadeToThrill ones. Man, do they look good. <3
 
The only wearable merch I have ever considered buying was a thunderbolt T-Shirt at Coney Island. I didn't. I don't know what it is but 95% of the time I just think it all looks horribly tacky and I wouldn't wanna be seen dead in it no matter how much I support the attraction.
 
What you really need is a nice jacket with a load of theme-park patches sewn onto it.

Got a few park t-shirts (usually dull-sober ones with just a logo/retro style) but no single-ride shirts as they are universally awful. (and a couple of film T-shirts with amusement park references </double-geek> )

(*I did look for a Lightning Rod one last year just for the goon-points so interested in which of the awful ones DelPiero chose - maybe they had a new selection this season, but they were not good at all last year ;-) )
 
toofpikk said:
The only wearable merch I have ever considered buying was a thunderbolt T-Shirt at Coney Island. I didn't. I don't know what it is but 95% of the time I just think it all looks horribly tacky and I wouldn't wanna be seen dead in it no matter how much I support the attraction.
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This.
All wearable merch just seems horribly tacky to me and literally just makes you a walking advert for the park.
I'd happily buy some understated stuff that only other goons would understand - giving each other a secret nod as we pass by - but subtlety isn't the name of any theme park and we lowly muggles wouldn't be a good advert incognito.
 
Mysterious Sue said:
This.
All wearable merch just seems horribly tacky to me and literally just makes you a walking advert for the park.
I'd happily buy some understated stuff that only other goons would understand - giving each other a secret nod as we pass by - but subtlety isn't the name of any theme park and we lowly muggles wouldn't be a good advert incognito.
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Yes, I've long thought that park merchandisers make their apparel for eight- to twelve-year-olds who are so excited about their first day riding the big rides that they'll buy anything, especially something that loudly declares how they conquered such-and-such a ride. But what staggers me is that they usually don't throw in anything for a different demographic. I am usually looking for, as davidm just put it, "dull-sober ones with just a logo/retro style," but typically I find nothing at all. At my recent trip to Hershey, I took a quick look through every clothing store on the way out, but I found nothing I would even remotely consider buying. I just wanted to find a shirt with the classic "Hersheypark" on it -- not an odd request -- and I was waiting to give them money for it, and they refused to take my money.
 
davidm said:
(*I did look for a Lightning Rod one last year just for the goon-points so interested in which of the awful ones DelPiero chose - maybe they had a new selection this season, but they were not good at all last year ;-) )
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I'll snap a pic of it just for you m'lord.
 
^ I went early in the season so there was plenty of choice, no pin badges though. If anyone finds a LR pin badge at Dollywood let me know as I really want one!
 
DelPiero said:
^ I went early in the season so there was plenty of choice, no pin badges though. If anyone finds a LR pin badge at Dollywood let me know as I really want one!
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I'll be there in a few days so I'll keep an eye out. I can't say that I ever notice pin badges at parks, but I'm not looking for them.
 
I try not to go for anything too goony and obvious (unless I really like the ride) but I've got two or three that could be mistaken for metal band t-shirts, which I'll happily wear. This reminds me to dig out my Leviathan shirt, as I've not seen it for a while.
There's also one I grabbed at Heide, which nobody notices unless they look too closely and may as well have come from Debenhams.
 
MestnyiGeroi said:
I'll be there in a few days so I'll keep an eye out. I can't say that I ever notice pin badges at parks, but I'm not looking for them.
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Thanks! I asked at the main LR merch shop and the guy said they did have some but were sold out. The main merch shop at entry/exit only had butterfly badges.
 
MestnyiGeroi said:
Why don't parks sell shirts with the classic logos they have spent decades developing and honing as the symbol of their parks?
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Sounds like you'd enjoy the Europa Park and Liseberg ones then.

I buy them if I like the ride/park a lot and they look decent in my eyes. Nothing too full on, but nothing too cheap looking either.
I'll always wear them at other parks and usually try and have at least an obscure link between what I wear and something in the park of that day to see if anyone twigs. (Staff at USJ loved the Mummy USS shirt).

I feel like I need to expand my collection of shirts with track imagery on them, I remember reading a trip report where an obscure cred was only found by the person walking up to some locals and pointing at their own shirt asking for directions. Genius.
 
Nearly every tshirt and hoodie I own/wear has the name of a park and/or ride. Over time, wearing them causes the screen prints and overall material to crack/become holy and quite worn looking. I usually get a shirt or hoodie at every park, but only if it's a design I'll enjoy and proudly wear. I dig the font and overall logos for Gatekeeper and Valravn and own a couple of each, though one of them is now becoming a spare shirt I keep in the car since it's so worn. My favorite worn out shirt has all the ride statistics on the back, and logo on the front.
I love riding Maverick and I305, but I don't dig any the themes or designs on any of the shirts I have seen for those rides, so don't have any shirts or hoodies for them. My priority to collect from each park is a keychain (sometimes more than one if I like more than one). I've often been fortunate to receive Visa or Mastercard gift cards for occasions such as for my birthday or Christmas. The apparel and/or keychains are the special present I get myself with those prepaid gift cards, making it all the more special - memory from my trip, and as a gift from the one who gave me the card.
Yes I wear shirts to one park from a different park. I have found it stimulates conversation, and I've had other guests ask questions and interesting in knowing more about whatever park for the shirt I'm wearing, or get compliments from other people who have been to the same parks as on my shirts.
Last year I was wearing one of my shirts that has different ride stats, speeds, etc, and a person in line behind me asked if I was "some kind of coaster enthusiast." Yep, guilty, indeed I am.
 
sKrATcher said:
Yes I wear shirts to one park from a different park. I have found it stimulates conversation, and I've had other guests ask questions and interesting in knowing more about whatever park for the shirt I'm wearing, or get compliments from other people who have been to the same parks as on my shirts.
Last year I was wearing one of my shirts that has different ride stats, speeds, etc, and a person in line behind me asked if I was "some kind of coaster enthusiast." Yep, guilty, indeed I am.
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Yes, park/ride shirts can be conversation starters, especially with fellow enthusiasts. But while a park shirt might get me a comment now and then, I have one ACE shirt that I sometimes wear to parks that must get about a dozen comments or questions a day. That thing is just like a magnet.
 
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