Sitting in the audience of today’s so-called Greatest Show on Earth can be a tad overstimulating, with three rings of showgirls on elephants, clowns and acrobats flipping and juggling everywhere, and tigers roaring. The show’s website is a little overwhelming, too, when launched. At the start, a circus train barrels toward the reader and passes through the American landscape: the woods, the mountains, the city and the desert. It stops cold, and out pops a showgirl, a horse, a tiger, a ridiculous clown and a motorcycle jumping. The colors are popping and bright; the music is festive and constant. The ephemeral excitement and sense of frivolity a circus brings is certainly captured in the general design. From here, the reader can learn about each of Ringling’s productions (after a little more flashy Flash presentation with the train, of course).

There are three different versions of the circus on the road: Zing Zang Zoom, Over the Top and the one-ring Boom A Ring. Each is fully dissected in different sections, offering video of the show and a bio as well as images and/or video of every featured performer. The same is true for all the animals in the show—the site offers an encyclopedic rundown of each. It’s a fairly large amount of information but it’s sure to satisfy the curious onlooker who is either preparing to go to a performance or wants more information about what he or she has just seen.

The language throughout is almost that of a sideshow barker: “For as long as there have been dreams, Children Of All Ages have dreamed of joining the circus” is the lead-in to a section called “Circus Celebrity,” which is trying to sell readers on buying a special ticket that will actually enable them to be in the production itself. Feld’s marketing department has clearly had its way with the copy; “excitement” and exclamation points abound! This isn’t necessarily bad, since the circus is all about selling fantasy and escapism, which other products such as razors and pens and strollers can’t claim as easily (as much as they’d like to). However, playing direct opposition to the grandiose wording in the show descriptions is the tiny, unchangeable font size, which leaves the reader constrained and frustrated (two decidedly un-circus-like feelings).

One fascinating area of the site, simply titled “Fun Stuff,” is a little bit of a catch-all of activities mostly designed for kids and anyone wishing to procrastinate actual work: a Clown Cannon game (adjust the speed and angle of the cannon to get the clown to land in a bucket of water), a downloadable circus train to run on your desktop, a silly circus workout routine to keep you in shape. Send a Pie-o-Gram via email or take a quiz about the circus. It can be hours of mindless fun. There is a section here called “Create Your Own Circus” that allows readers to “train” and “feed” computer-animated animals as well as performers. While Fun Stuff is, well, fun, it is also a little all over the place. It appears the site’s designers had no idea where to put all the fun content somebody else had assigned.

Over the years, this circus has faced many allegations and a few lawsuits that it is mistreating animals, particularly its elephants. So in a prominent position on the upper navigation bar is a link for the Ringling Bros. Center for Elephant Conservation that takes you to a separate, in-depth website that describes all the work Feld is doing to better the world for the Asian pachyderm. The site includes a short film and plenty of information on the research and conservation Feld is underwriting.

Any way you slice it, though, the site is bold and amusing, a total time waster that keeps the Greatest Show on Earth’s name and attitude front and center in the reader’s mind. Barnum wouldn’t have it any other way.