![]() ![]() Today, Busch Gardens theme parks are major draws in Florida and Virginia - but they’re no longer found in the West. Nowadays it’s an unofficial tourist attraction, the decaying dragon, water slides and other features looking more like ruins from a thousand years ago rather than a 21st-century attraction.Yet, the Los Angeles area once boasted not just 1, but 2 Busch Gardens theme parks that were operated by the legendary Anheuser-Busch beer company. Parts of the old gardens remain – including a giant banyan tree – but the world-famous water ski extravaganza has been replaced by a pirate-themed water stunt show.Ī giant concrete dragon that once housed an aquarium continues to stand guard over a lake that was once the centerpiece of Hồ Thủy Tiên water park near Hue.įinancial problems meant the park was only open intermittently between 20. Originally a mom-and-pop operation opened in 1932 by Dick and Julie Pope, the park drew ever-increasing crowds to see its giant topiary animals, acrobatic water ski shows, and Southern Belle greeters.įaced with increased competition from Orlando’s modern theme parks, Cypress Gardens closed in 2009 and was eventually absorbed into LEGOLAND Florida. Such was the case with Florida’s Cypress Gardens. Scott Audette/APĪnd every so often, a vintage theme park gets absorbed by another body. Members of the Cypress Gardens ski show perform a pyramid in 2003. Like Yongma Land in Seoul, which is now a popular venue for television productions, fashion shoots and wedding photography, the bride and groom posing on the decaying merry-go-round, bumper cars and other rides.Īctive from 1980 to 2011, the is one of the few abandoned theme parks where visitors have to pay a small admission fee (10,000 won) rather than sneaking inside. Once in a blue moon, abandoned theme parks find new life by adopting totally new functions. Hardly anyone outside Ukraine had even heard of this theme park until it was orphaned in 1986 following the Chernobyl meltdown just five kilometers (three miles) away.Ĭonstruction on the park had just finished and Pripyat never even had its grand opening because of the disaster.Įven more so than the infamous power plant, the park’s ghostly Ferris wheel and bumper cars epitomize history’s worst nuclear disaster. Claudia Himmelreich/McClatchy DC/Tribune News Service/Getty Image The Pripyat Amusement Park was built right before the Chernobyl disaster. Once upon a time, the park featured knights jousting on horseback, Merlin’s Magic Show, Dragon Flyer and Knightmare roller coasters and other medieval-themed rides and shows.Īfter its demise, the grounds served as a drive-thru zombie attraction before its current reincarnation as Scare City, a walk-thru horror experience through the creepy ruins of Camelot. ![]() Set in the leafy Lancashire countryside near Manchester and Liverpool, the Magic Kingdom of Camelot resurrected tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table on the site of a former lake that features with the medieval legend. Thirty years later, the park’s life-sized dinosaurs and megafauna, bumper cars and other attractions have been eerily engulfed by the jungle. The government forced the closure of Mimaland after a damaging mudslide and other safety issues. Considered the first theme park in Southeast Asia, it featured an artificial lake, a huge swimming pool with giant water slides and a Prehistoric Animal Kingdom. ![]() Located on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia In Miniature Land (Mimaland) was active from 1975 to 1994. Here are 10 of the world’s most bewitching abandoned theme parks.ĭisneyland's record-breaking regular shares his wisdom from nearly 3,000 park visits in a row “For the people who seek them out, there’s this sense of discovery, finding the remnants of the park and trying to reconstruct what was there in your mind.” “But an abandoned amusement park is the exact polar opposite. “We think of amusement parks as vibrant, colorful, noisy, cheerful places,” says Jim Futrell of the National Amusement Park Historical Association. There’s also something compellingly post-apocalyptic about places that have been overtaken by decay, a chilling yet intriguing glimpse at what the entire Earth might be like if humans ever disappeared. They were abandoned by owners and operators for a variety of reasons – falling attendance, natural disasters, financial difficulties or merely because they were no longer relevant to modern parkgoers.īut they retain their fascination, ghostly places that attract urban explorers, social media divas and people seeking to relive memories of once visiting with families or friends. Although hundreds of theme parks are active around the globe, hundreds more have been relegated to the scrapheap of amusement history. ![]()
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