Dragonland

Dragonland (not to be confused with The Dragonlands), is an amusement park in the city of Arindell, owned by High Mountain Bank and Trust, which belongs to a consortium of dragon flights, mostly High Mountain Flight. A similar park was opened on the Agras Plain. Both operated during the Sixth Age and through the end of the original Alliance era. As with many such attractions, they were closed through the Long Night.

When Arindell was rebuilt in the New Day, the park was re-opened (even featuring some of the ruins of the original as part of the new attractions), as one of a chain of parks owned by the Trans-Draconic Federation (some are jointly owned by the Gudersnipe Foundation.

Description

The park in Arindell has a very strong dragon-theme in all its attractions. In addition to the usual assortment of rides, displays, and shows, the park doubles as a sort of zoo, with mystical and rare creatures in enclosures. A major draw for the park is the opportunity to see a real dragon, up close; but that particular role is actually filled by a group of scaled Wyvern.

Despite the immense wealth of High Mountain, Dragonland quickly developed a reputation as a cheesy, over-priced tourist trap. Despite its proximity to Arindell and the strong Slayer Dragon affiliation, the Flight was unwilling to license the rights to the Order of Slayer Dragons. Instead, they created a band of very poor and obvious copies that often skirted the lines of copyright infringement, and who often were portrayed as the enemies (being "dragon slayers" in some cases).

Over all, while the ride technology and general quality is very high, the actual "themes" in the various Dragonland parks look like someone thought them up at the last minute.

Shady History

When High Mountain Bank and Trust set out to construct the original Dragonland on a parcel on the outskirts of Arindell, they had the capital to do it.

And that was pretty much all they had.

The dragon trustees in charge of the massive fortune bankrolling the operation initially envisioned a lavish entertainment facility specifically for dragons, catering to humans "on the side" as a way to ensure the park didn't end up costing them too much. However, being as they were wealthy dragons constantly on the hunt for amusement, they were not heavily involved in the design and construction of the park - instead delegating this task to the humans who actually ran the large network of banks. The directions were not very much more specific than "build us a theme park, with cool rides and fun things to do. And, also, if you try to use this venture to embezzle money from us, we will eat you."

The human bankers, in turn, being bankers and not amusement park designers, went to the only entity in the Known Worlds who could offer them an end-to-end solution: The Gudersnipe Foundation. This would actually prove to be an important moment in history, it marked the very first official, direct collaboration between High Mountain(who would go on to head the Trans-Draconic Federation), and Gudersnipe. The initial foray was an important step in building trust between the two groups.

According to legend, the initial designs involved the human bankers creating a very general and basic plan for a fairly generic park, then getting limited feedback from the dragons in terms of what sort of attractions they wanted to see. This plan was then taken to the Foundation subsidiary handling the project, who returned with an itemized budget projection. The dragons, who while enjoying human pleasures, are not often fans of human culture, then removed the part that involved licensing intellectual property or paying for celebrity endorsements.