A World Tour of Abandoned Amusement Parks

I grew up when Taman festival was being built and it actually was open for a year or so. My brothers and sister and I had free roam of the place. It was effectively our own giant amusement park because almost no one else was ever there. They had a giant reptile petting zoo (with the hungry crocs below of course) and we’d always go there. They were so ambitious at time of opening, talk about building a semi underwater hotel, zero gravity roller coaster, etc. they actually did start on that roller coaster but never finished. You can prly still finds parts of it gathering dust. Pretty sure it was all a giant money laundering operation. It was a really bizarre location to build a giant theme park. I mean we had just finished building a house in the middle of nowhere (pedang galak, an area known more for black magic competitions and poisonous snakes). It bordered on a river / jungle. Hard to emphasize how not ideal of a location it was for a giant theme park. Cool for us though

There is a long-form YouTube channel (DefunctLand) that has a lot of content about closed amusement parks and rides. It's a very good channel.

Just an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fec3jhPGTwY

>The adult Atlantis dolphins had been performing in captivity for almost a decade, and the captive-born juveniles had never hunted in the wild. They all needed to be shown how to hunt for fish. While some of the dolphins responded immediately, the captive-born dolphins “seemed to treat the exercise as a game and would often all chase the same fish, competing more with each other than actually showing any ability to forage” according to researcher Kelly Waples.

Somehow that's uncomfortably familiar.

Where's Li'l Abner's "Dogpatch USA?"

https://abandonedar.com/dogpatch-usa/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpatch_USA

Li'l Abner is where the Skonkworks originated, later "Skunk Works" when used by Lockheed Martin used the idea.

Li'l Abner and Pogo were both edgy anti-authoritarian cartoons worth remembering.

Not big enough to make it onto Atlas Obscura but in El Cajon California (San Diego County) https://hiddensandiego.com/things-to-do/places/marshall-scot... still intact they tried to open the Go Kart track a few years ago but the church next door put in a tremendous number of noise complaints getting the effort shut down.

I was hoping I'd find Wichita's Joyland[0]—since it closed it's inspired many new urban explorers.

[0]: <https://www.abandonedspaces.com/parks/joyland-amusement-park...>

If they ever make it to Australia, they should check out Leyland Brothers’ World in northern NSW.

Although TIL the Uluru/Ayres Rock appears to have been lost to fire in 2018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyland_Brothers_World

Not an amusement park per se, but Naturland in Çamyuva/Antalya/Turkey is also an interesting case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UboqmAiAAQA

Reminds me of Dismaland. https://dismaland.co.uk/

The theme seems to be similar: a park was built once -> lot of people used it -> repairs/maintenance was not done or was not done enough -> park got dangerous due to neglect -> less people visit it -> park gets closed down

I wonder what could be done differently

The guy who owns Spreepark in Berlin tends to be rather hostile to visitors, and has 24/7 security on site.

I'm not sure how often he pursues prosecutions against people caught trespassing.

Made visiting a lot more fun, avoiding them.

Atlas Obscura is an awesome resource - and a great way to discover lots of interesting things around you that you may not even be aware of!

Hm I can’t scroll any of the photos on my phone. :/ not a good user experience for mobile.

Ghost hunting in the Mystery Machine anyone?

No Decentraland? Too soon?