Amusement parks: The "Worlds"

 

There were three amusement parks, each adopting the suffix 'world'. There was New World, Great World and Happy World. They were operating concurrently between 1920s and 1960s and in their place today are residential units and large commercial complexes.City Square is where New World used to be and Great World City is on the site which was the Great World.

The 'Worlds' were places that attracted a wide cross-section of society, and provided various forms of entertainment. They flourished as there were hardly any recreational distractions at the time, apart from radio broadcasts and programmes from a commercial cable radio service known as Rediffusion. The 'Worlds' provided some respite to the hard lives that many had to endure.

There were shops, eateries ranging from hawker stalls to fancy restaurants that were popular for wedding banquets, cinemas, cabarets with live bands and dance halls, and night clubs with live shows. In the cabarets and dance halls, female dance hostesses were available as dance partners and their services came at a cost, as patrons had to purchase dance coupons. The cabarets were venues for Western ballroom dancing while the dance halls provided a Malay/Javanese form of dance known as the Ronggeng. On occasions, dance halls also introduce a type of Thai dance known as the Ramvong/Ramwong when they invited troups of musicians and dancers from Thailand. This was a popular  shift from the usual Ronggeng and drew large crowds of enthusiastic participants.

There were also gaming stalls in all three amusement parks. Essentially there were two types of such stalls. One type provided games that were skills-based and would appeal to the younger generations. These were the shooting galleries using a variety of 'weapons' and stationary and moving targets. Prizes usually in the form of soft toys were given for high scorers.

Another tyoe of stall took on a more serious tone. These were actually gambling stalls with bets and settlements in cash. Card games and games of chance with dice and cards were conducted. Many such stalls were not entirely honest in their operations, and had practitioners skilled in sleight of hand actions that ripped off many a participant.

The amusement parks of yesteryear were a far cry from the theme parks that we have today, but they served a very necessary function of providing emotional and psychological outlets for the populace when life was hard.

Like all institutions, there were both harms and benefits. There were those who found their experiences visiting the parks therapeutic, but there were also those who lost hard-earned money at the gambling stalls or squandered money on dance hostesses some of whom by reputation were not exactly angels!