The success of Disneyworld and Disneyland certainly inspired other theme parks to come into existence. I have a very faint memory of visiting an Oz-based theme park as a child, and for the longest time I wondered if I had made up this memory, since I never heard of this theme park again. Of course, now in the days of the Internet, I have been able to find out that there really was such a place once upon a time.
And just today, I discovered that there used to be a theme park based on Li’l Abner’s home of Dogpatch! And it didn’t close until the 90’s. Why had I never heard of it?
So, now, I have this vision that there must be other such theme parks with substantial “themes” based on fictional places or characters. After all, I had never heard of Dogpatch and if I hadn’t been to the Land of Oz, I never would have believed that it existed either.
So… are there any others? Are there other worlds of wonder that have faded from public knowledge?
Flintstones Bedrock City
Fans of the cartoon series The Flintstones may enjoy walking around this life-size town (928/635-2600, 6 a.m.–8 p.m. daily in summer, decreasing to 7 a.m.–4 p.m. daily in winter, $5 ages two and up). It has the houses of Fred and Barney and their families, businesses, dinosaur statues (one is a kid’s slide), a little ride through a “volcano,” and a theater where the cartoons play. The park is open year-round but the volcano ride and theater don’t run in winter. There’s also a campground and a snack bar.
I assume you’re thinking of the same one I visited as a child in Banner Elk, NC. In case you didn’t know, it’s open the first weekend of October every year (it’s run as a bed and breakfast the rest of the year).
I went there this past October and had a lot of fun reliving old memories. It’s very much the same as it used to be, minus the Emerald City.
Well, Holiday World is still operational, but I would think with themes surrounding Christmas, Halloween, etc., that it would count towards what you’re looking for.
Also, in the defunct category, Florida used to have Circus World, whose character(s) is obviously clowns.
By the way, that last link has lots of good stuff on former attractions in the same state. I recommend it.
Yeah, the yellow brick road is still there! There’s still a ski lift there, but it wasn’t in operation when I was there; I assume they still use it during skiing season. The gondolas are no longer made up to look like hot air balloons; they only had the metal framework of one of those hot air balloons on display.
I went there this past October. That was the first time in 30 years, so my memory isn’t too sharp, but as far as I could tell everything was the same except for the Emerald City, which no longer exists.
Here’s a website about it. It hasn’t been updated for 2006, but I expect it will be open the first weekend of October again. (By the way, it was extremely crowded when I went, so it took a while to get through it all):
One we used to visit when I was a kid was Storybook Forest in Ligonier, PA. There were (are?) other Storybook Forests in other parts of the country as well.
Yeah, that reminds me, there was an Enchanted Forest (EF) in Ellicot City I visited as a kid many years ago.
It’s closed now, but my brother lives in Baltimore so I’m still in the area reasonably often. The EF actually still exists, but is not open and is overgrown. It’s right next to a shopping plaza, so if you wander by the fence you can look in and see some of the structures left behind.
Apparently there’s been some support in the area from people to get together, fix it up, and reopen it, but I haven’t heard any details about that in quite a while.
