Ghost Train

January 20, 2009 2:31 PM

Abandoned Amusement Parks in Asia - 1, 2, 3
posted by Artw (30 comments total)

Wow... the one with the young lady miming the girl's death by the roller coaster was a bit... tasteless... however, by and large these were fascinating.

We've got at least one abandoned park here in New Orleans (what was once Six Flags Over New Orleans, née Jazzland)... makes me wonder how viable sneaking in there would be.
posted by bookwo3107 at 2:37 PM on January 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

bookwo3107 - I'd be interested to see that.
posted by Artw at 2:40 PM on January 20, 2009

Some pictures of Geauga Lake in Aurora, OH, which closed in 2007.
posted by ALongDecember at 2:41 PM on January 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

That duck statue in the China section, the one pointing at his garishly wide-open, reddened mouth, is missing the cartoon word balloon that used to hang over his head. It read, "I WILL CONSUME YOUR SOUL, FEEBLE CHILD."
posted by JHarris at 2:49 PM on January 20, 2009 [2 favorites]

More US abandoned amusement parks: Standing But Not Operating.
posted by ALongDecember at 2:49 PM on January 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

Clown train breaks my heart, again.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:59 PM on January 20, 2009

THE largest abandoned amusement park.
posted by gman at 3:05 PM on January 20, 2009

Neverland.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:09 PM on January 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

For a while the Wikipedia entry on amusement parks featured this photo of a sad car at an abandoned park.

Also, Chippewa Lake (which is not in Asia) has been posted to the blue before.
posted by parudox at 3:10 PM on January 20, 2009

Neverland.

Now THAT is spooky.

Clown train link is blocked BTW.
posted by Artw at 3:12 PM on January 20, 2009

Clown Train link blocks referrers. Paste into your address bar: http://www.eatliver.com/img/2007/2056.jpg
posted by ALongDecember at 3:15 PM on January 20, 2009

Neverland.

"From thriller to dangerous..."

I picture the Daily Mail writer getting a pat on the back from some British equivalent of J. Jonah Jameson who tells him "Good work".
posted by Joe Beese at 3:17 PM on January 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

Clowntrain will haunt my dreams, like a weird clown-headed giant spine worm thing.
posted by Artw at 3:17 PM on January 20, 2009 [2 favorites]

Joe Beese - Are you saying that's Bad?
posted by Artw at 3:18 PM on January 20, 2009 [2 favorites]

I hope my prior comment, re: duck, wasn't interpreted as snarky, this really is an awesome link.

A web search turned up the Wikipedia list of defunct amusement parks. Surprisingly, most of them have their own pages. Common themes appear to be enchanted forests (super passe), aging kids' entertainment franchises (Land of Oz, Hanna-Barbera Land), adjunct to corporate interest (Busch Gardens), and the plain-out misguided (Autoworld of Flint, Michigan, Heritage U.S.A.).

That reminds me, the surprisingly excellent documentary of Tammy Faye Baker, The Eyes of Tammy-Faye, has a short walkthrough of shuttered Heritage U.S.A. as it slides into ruin.

Man, is there anything in this world more melancholy than a dead theme park? The reclaiming teeth of Nature is unmoved by our hulking metal whimsies.
posted by JHarris at 3:27 PM on January 20, 2009 [3 favorites]

Related, including this abandoned Chinese theme park in Florida.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:07 PM on January 20, 2009

Abandoned theme parks: the perfect metaphor for abandoned hope.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:27 PM on January 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

Shame there's nothing from the recently closed bizarro Disneyland, Nara Dreamland. Though there's a few behind-the-fence shots on flickr, it looks like.
posted by anazgnos at 4:39 PM on January 20, 2009

See also: flickr groups:
Decaying Amusement and Theme Parks
Amusement Park Decay
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:50 PM on January 20, 2009

There was a tattoo thread on a forum I belong to, and one guy posted this:


Apparently, it's the name of an abandoned theme park him and his brother found when they were kids.
posted by seagull.apollo at 5:31 PM on January 20, 2009

And to think I wondered why nobody ever posts pictures. Here we go.
posted by seagull.apollo at 5:32 PM on January 20, 2009

STALKER II: Shadow Over Neverland
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:35 PM on January 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

Aw geeze, I just found out Americana's closed, from the "Standing but not Operating" page above (Southwest Ohio, anybody?) I remember the kids at school used to talk about that place and how great it was. I never went there, but just the thought that I could have gone to a now abandoned amusement park is giving me the willies.

After reading this trip report on the park from 1998, I can't imagine why the place ever closed...

"A word of advice for riding the Rock-O...most of the seat belts (for lack of a better term) on Americana's Rock-O are either disconnected or very loose. As a rider, you can spare yourself considerable discomfort by insuring that the strap is snugly attached to the lap bar. This way, when inverted, you will be held in place by the 3" wide fabric strap rather than the 3/4" diameter metal bar."

posted by gueneverey at 5:45 PM on January 20, 2009

Wow, more like amazement parks! I think a few us should get together and shoot a zombie movie at one of these ruins.
posted by Mister_A at 5:59 PM on January 20, 2009 [2 favorites]

Mister_A, that is such an awesome idea that if someone seriously tries to put that together, I will go to wherever the location might be and help after I graduate in June, if I can scrap together enough money for food and someone lets me sleep on their couch or floor. I never had a post-undergrad adventure, and helping to make a Metafilter abandoned theme park zombie movie would be fucking amazing.
posted by Caduceus at 10:23 PM on January 20, 2009

I love abandoned amusement parks. I love exploring them and I love risking lockjaw with every step across a collapsed roller coaster platform. I also love meeting up with people in the park who have the same idea I do (go explore the stuff); I less like meeting up with people there just to grab whatever they can take.

At the risk of being called out for the self-linking, here are Flickr photosets of local amusement parks I've visited several times:

Mountain Park, Holyoke, MA (visited fall 1998 and now completely burnt to the ground and bulldozed to nothing)
New York World's Fair Sites, Flushing Meadows (visited December 2006)
Lincoln Park, Dartmouth, MA (visited summer 2008 and at risk of being bulldozed to nothing)
posted by Spatch at 7:05 AM on January 21, 2009

When I was younger, my family was looking for an advertised waterslide while travelling through South Carolina. We eventually found the address, and started driving through a mostly empty development with a large hotel missing outside walls and generally abandoned. We found the dried up waterslide in the middle, and a central building that seemed to still have some shops and activity. We drove around some more, and when we saw the large satellite dishes next to a building, my father said "Oh... this is Heritage USA." Oddly enough, we were already planning to go see the Eyes of Tammy Faye that evening at a local indie theater.

Who would have thought that years later good ol' Jim Bakker would set up shop in my very own hometown of Branson, Missouri to try again.
posted by shinynewnick at 7:28 AM on January 21, 2009

A few seconds on flickr brought this up: Which effectively kills my enthusiasm for trying to get into Jazzland. Great shots here though.
posted by bookwo3107 at 9:09 AM on January 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

The OP's photographer's website is good for all sorts of alien abroad urban adventureering.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:53 PM on January 21, 2009

"Temporarily" closed in 2001 and permanently shuttered in 2005, Disney's River Country may have been the first themed water park. It now sits eerily abandoned.
posted by ALongDecember at 11:47 AM on January 22, 2009