Duff Gardens: the Duff beer theme park

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A theme park built around a beer brand, and the worst day of Lisa Simpson's life. Duff Gardens appears in "Selma's Choice" (season 4, 1993), the episode in which Selma takes Bart and Lisa along to test her maternal instincts. This guide gathers the park's advertising slogan, its attractions — the Beeramid and its Hall of Presidents, where a mechanical Abraham Lincoln works through can after can — Lisa's bad trip after drinking the canal water, and a fleeting visit from a stuntman in a full body cast trying out the rides.

A family theme park built entirely around a beer brand: Duff Gardens is one of the most cynical ideas ever to come out of Springfield.

A guided tour of the brewery's park, from its slogan to its most indefensible attraction.

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What is Duff Gardens?

Duff Gardens is the theme park of the Duff brewery, the beer brand that keeps Homer and the whole town supplied. It appears in "Selma's Choice", the thirteenth episode of season 4, aired in the United States on 21 January 1993.

The plot fits in one sentence: Selma, determined to find out whether she is cut out to be a mother, takes her nephew and niece to spend the day at the park. The test turns into the opposite demonstration.

The park should not be confused with the show's other great park, Itchy & Scratchy Land: one sells beer, the other cartoon violence.

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A slogan that says a lot

Duff Gardens introduces itself to the public with a television ad whose selling point has stayed in everyone's memory: "Where roving gangs are no longer really a problem".

The park's whole satire fits in that phrase: it does not promise magic or wonder, it promises that safety has more or less improved. Tourism marketing at degree zero.

📌 Duff Gardens needs a whole TV ad to reassure people about roving gangs; to show your colors without saying a word, all you have to do is stick one of our Simpsons pins on your jacket lapel.

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The park's attractions

The park works beer into every possible form, starting with the Beeramid: an aquarium where fish swim, distinctly tipsy, in foamy water.

🐠 At the Beeramid, it's the fish splashing around in foamy water; at home, it's your turn to splash, and our Simpsons shower curtains keep the suds on the right side of the tub.

Then comes the Duff Hall of Presidents, a direct parody of the Disney attraction: a mechanical Abraham Lincoln works through can after can there, without ever stopping.

Add a spinning barrel and a boat ride whose water, as we shall see, was never meant to be drunk.

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Lisa's bad trip

It is Lisa who gives the episode its most famous sequence. Parched, she drinks the water from the boat ride's canal — and hallucinates violently.

Park security retrieves her from the fermentarium, from which she proclaims: "I am the lizard queen!" The show's most sensible character thus becomes, for the space of two minutes, its most uncontrollable.

The show is playing here on a contrast it almost never uses: normally it is Homer who loses his head and Lisa who provides the commentary.

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Bart and the depantsed president

Meanwhile, Bart goes after the Hall of Presidents and pulls down the George Washington robot's trousers, before being detained by park security following an incident on the spinning barrel.

🩲 After the George Washington robot, who's next? If a buddy ever pulls the same prank on you that Bart did, you might as well be wearing our Simpsons boxers.

Another visitor passes across the screen that day: the show's professional stuntman, glimpsed on television, in a cast from head to toe, working his way through the park's rides. Even the worse for wear, he keeps working on his image.

Selma, for her part, leaves the day with a certainty — and an iguana.

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Summary table

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FAQ

• Which episode features Duff Gardens?
  "Selma's Choice", the thirteenth episode of season 4, aired on 21 January 1993 in the United States.
• Why does Lisa hallucinate?
  She drinks the water from the boat ride's canal, then declares she is "the lizard queen" from a beer fountain.
• Are Duff Gardens and Itchy & Scratchy Land the same park?
  No. They are two distinct parks: the first belongs to the brewery, the second to the cartoon.
• Which attraction parodies Disney?
  The Hall of Presidents, where a mechanical Abraham Lincoln works through can after can of Duff.

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Conclusion

An aquarium of drunk fish, an alcoholic Lincoln and an eight-year-old girl proclaiming herself lizard queen: Duff Gardens condenses into a single set everything the show thinks of the entertainment industry — and of the beer industry.

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