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| Posted by Grumpy Goose I just read up on the history of this place if anyone was interested. It's a really unfortunate story. I did go visit the park last December and it's in pretty bad shape. I tried to imagine the glory it once was, but it's sadly trashed now. The park was constructed in the late 1950's and opened to the public in 1962. It was popular in the early 70's and mid 80's, but it started losing traffic and closed down in the late 80's. The park was sold in August 1990 to an investment group that envisioned a 50's theme "polished" park. The park reopened under a new name in July 1998 and unfortunately its big plans didn't last long. The park accumulated millions of dollars in debt and numerous financial problems. There was also an accident with an employee that decided to take an after hours plunge on one of the slides under maintenance. He became a paraplegic and even though that was his own fault, he was awarded $4.4 million in damages. The park filed for bankruptcy in August 2000. The investment group could not find a buyer for the park, so the judge overseeing the case returned the property to the previous owner's wife (the previous owner died in 1996) and discharged a huge portion of the debt. The wife sold the park to another investment group in September 2001 and died a month later. The park was renovated once again, renamed, and reopened in May 2002. It was open on weekends until summer 2004, when it was closed for good. There have been other plans to renovate the park, but nothing has happened at all and the park continues to rot in the desert. |
| | | Posted by Ptasteful_Pteranodon Sweet pics! This place looks neat. Thanks for this. I always find the history of these places super interesting. It seems like a lot of properties/ghost towns in the Cali desert have a similar story of being relatively successful in the 50s-60s before becoming too expensive to maintain, closing, and being left to bake in the heat. The Mojave definitely seems to accumulate a lot of random abandoned places that just aren't worth the cost of demolition. |
| | | Posted by Grumpy Goose I agree, the history is super interesting, but also a bit sad. It was someone’s hopes and dreams, they put a lot of time, effort, and money into making everything happen, and in the end, it wasn’t successful. That’s gotta be hard. The story of this particular place really saddened me. I always read up on different abandoned theme parks and I think they would have been so fun to go to, but Disneyland is the main theme park everyone goes to now and people forget about these smaller parks. There’s something about the old little theme parks (abandoned or not) that have always intrigued me. There’s an ambiance to them that isn’t like anywhere else. It feels like you’ve gone back in time. |
| | | | | | | | | | | Posted by urbexsully During a somewhat spur of the moment road trip from CA back to CO we stumbled upon this lovely water park! It was raining almost enough to have fully functioning water slides, what remained still there at least... |
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| | | Posted by WindsorSB Hello all, I recently visited this spot while on a road trip with @Goste. We were in a hurry but overall I took 108 shots on 35mm film. These are my favorites but if anyone would like to see some more from the trip feel free to reach out in the dms. While we were there we encountered several groups doing photo-shoots and one of the dude's there informed us that this property is being reviewed for purchase and apparently someone is thinking about re-opening the park. That totally ruin the spot obviously but could just be rumors. Maybe some of y'all that are local know some more details? -Cheers 1.
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| | | Posted by randomesquephoto Huh. That's a lot of film exposures for this place. Or, any place really. |
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