Imagine a group of internationally known, avant-garde artists building an amusement park together in 1987—attractions by Salvador Dali, David Hockney, Michael Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein (with music by Philip Glass, no less). An over the Big Top extravaganza. So delicious! So Tom Stoppard! So It-couldn't-happen now! Only wait: it can happen now, at least Luna Luna is being revived; and one day next year, you may be able to visit it in a city near you.
In itself, the original project could inspire a novel by, say, Thomas Mallon. A lot of the humor in the park was bad-boy, scatalogical; and not many women were invited to join. Just think what a feminist slant might do with that narrative. Susanne Schmögner's immersive labyrinth might be the place to start!
What I like even more is letting it inspire the idea of an imaginary amusement park. Erin Morgenstern's 2011 novel, The Night Circus, is one example of the "carnival genre." There is something uncanny about rides and sideshow amusements that lends itself to fantasy (see Mama Fortuna's Midnight Carnival in Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn).
Another direction would be to invent a summer art colony where attendees put together a fête at the end of the season with amateur attractions. Or have a group of young artists buy a defunct traveling carnival in the Midwest and fix it up. You could even imagine one of them obsessed by creating a pop-up book.
In any case, the whole Luna Luna shebang the sort of whoo-hoo! to tuck away in the back of your mind and see what happens.
Image via Minniemuse (with more photos at the site).