Cartoon Destinations: Marriott's Great America
Our next destination takes us to two theme parks that opened the same year with the same brand, changing the world of amusement parks for the bicentennial of America, and giving Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes gang at last a true home....and those two parks are truly American as the name applies.....Marriott's Great America. Bugs is breaking ground for the new theme parks Marriott's is well known for the hotel chain, but they wanted to get into the theme park business with planning as early as the 1970's. There were going to be three parks, one for the D.C. area, one for the Chicago area, and one for the San Francisco Bay area. The D.C. area plan fell through due to politics, but the other two were set in stone. Marriott's struck a deal with Warner Bros. to use the Looney Tunes characters as the mascots of the parks to compete with Disney's Mickey Mouse just as they did in the movie theaters years ago. Bugs Bunny by 1973 was appearing at Warner Bros. ...