Why Did Freedomland and Pleasure Island fail?

Factual Questions
1

Freedomland was once the ;argesy amusement park in the country – it was bigger than Disneyland (which it was built to compete with). It was entirely within New York City, and was built in the shape of the United States. Yet it stayed open only a couple of years.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/robfriedman/

Pleasure Island was once the largest amusement park in New England (and was also inevitably compared to Disneyland). It featured New-England themed rides (Like “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and the cruise for Moby Dick – himself the park’s mascot) and was immensely popular. Yet Pleasure Island stayed open only ten years. Within a couple of years, the deserted park looked as if it had been closed for twenty. Today it’s gone and an office complex is on the site, the only reminder being street signs on 128 and 129 for “Pleasure Island Road”.

http://www.wakefield.org/pleasureisland/index.htm

Why did these parks fail? A reason often given is that they could only open in the summer, and the long winter closing kept revenie down (Unlike Disneyland, in sunny and warm California, and the later DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida). Here’s a cite that says cold weather was the death of Pleasure Island: http://www.wakefield.org/pleasureisland/years/1976-dream-failed.htm
Yet this can’t be the reason (or at least the only reason) Other large amusement parks exist in the same areas. Some started decades before either of these vintage 1959 parks, and are still going strong today. Six Flags New England, formerly Agawam Park, is easily larger now than Pleasure Island ever was, and it statrted out long before. Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire is over a hundred years old. Storyland near Crawford Notch is not only much farther north, but higher in elevation. If anyplce ought to close because of snow, this is it. Yet the place is something like 80 years old. Lake George amusement park is still going strong in New York, and Hershey Park has to get socked with worse winters than New York City saw. Busch Gardens in Virginia is further south, but they can’t keep their summer attractions going all year. I could go one with parks in other snowy states, but my point is that weather certainly couldn’t have brought these down.

Real Estate prices finally forced the closing of Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey (another park that closed in the winter) http://www.palisadespark.com/ , but not until 1971. I don’t think prices had time to hit Freedomland. It’s been said that the 1964-65 World’s Fair, but there were only about six months between the opening of the fair and Freedomland’s declaring bankruptcy. The World’s Fair may have nailed the coffin shut, but it didn’t kill Freedomland.
One thing I notice that both Freedomland and Pleasure Island had that their surviving competitors didn’t was Live Shows with big-name performers. Pleasure Island had The Three Stooges, Ricky Nelson, Caesar Romero, and Lassie.

2

Based on the information in the links, I would guess that Freedomland was pretty much doomed from the start. It began with what appeared to be a lot of relatively expensive “participatory” entertainment that would have not recouped the expense to build (Chicago fire, San Francisco earthquake, etc.). According to the Friedman piece, by the second year it had already dumped those entertainments for traditional amusement park rides. That would seem to indicate a large capital outlay for the first season that did not bring in the return needed, followed by a second large capital outlay to change the attractions. If it did not bring in enough money to cover those successive debts, it was going to be in trouble. In its fourth year, it lost attendance to the World’s Fair which, I would guess, doomed it.

Pleasure Island probably had similar troubles. The amusement parks that grew up in the North were built slowly with an expectation of only three months’ worth of business. Cedar Point, for example, goes back well over 100 years. Other Northern parks closed with a certain regularity. Around Detroit, there were at least five parks that died between the 1950s and the 1970s, (Walled Lake being the one I remember because my Dad’s office used to hold their picnic there) but even the largest local park, Bob-Lo, finally fell. Cleveland lost similar numbers of amusement parks, the largest being Euclid Beach, at the same time. Cedar Point appears to have survived because it was always fairly conservative, financially, until all its competion went under. (Cedar Point recently bought the last surviving Cleveland park, Geauga Lake, after Six Flags had a two year money losing try at keeping it alive, and there are constant rumors that Cedar Point will move the better rides to Cedar Point and close the property to be sold as condos.) Pleasure Island was built as a large park (presumably heavily capitalized) just as large numbers of medium sized parks were failing. I would guess that it simply did not have the return on investment to cover its debt.

As noted, all previous explanations are WAGs. I do not have specific information regarding the finances or failures of either Freedomland or Pleasure Island.

3

It is my impression that a lot of amusement parks fail, regardless of location.

Here’s a website devoted to defunct amusement parks: http://www.defunctparks.com/

Google “abandoned amusement park” for more entertainment - the top link connects to a Japanese website.

4

WAG:

To survive an amusement park must have cheap land and a a long open season.

The cheap land part can be grandfathered in if property taxes are somehow kept in line…but nothing short of witchcraft can stop the snows. even without high taxes, prime real estate suffers from lucrative competing offers that force profiit expectations to be very high.

I watched Lakeside amusement park in Denver die a slow horrible death. It went from a booming upscale place in the 60’s, to a still prifitable, if slightly downscale place in the 70’s, to a seedy place where you didn’t feel safe in the 80’s…finally closing whenever goggle says it did…I have no desire to search, as the place had a lot of fond memories for me. Dad’s company held thier annual picnic there, and my elder brother worked there one summer.

It’s death was coincident with the rise of video games, and movie rentals. I don’t know to what degree these contributed, but I have a strong sense that people stay home more than they used to.

5

I guess that would explain the lack of amusement parks further north, in Canada. In fact, I can only think of two within a ten hour drive of here (Calaway Park and Playland) and only one other one (Canada’s Wonderland).

6

Yeah, but that’s my point – There are plenty of northern amusement parks without long seasons (I don’t think anyone ever plans for a park to have a three month season. And even in NH you can push well beyond three months). And many of these have been going for years. Here’s Storyland, NH’s calendar:

http://www.storylandnh.com/uploads/pdf/11327627832006webcalSL.jpg

They’ve been open for over fifty years.
tomndeb, why is “participatory” stuff expensive? I’d have thought it was cheaper than hiring even more actors. By the way, the participatory stuff was continuing to operate for several years, no matter what the articles say. I helped with the pump at the Fire as a kid.

7

I’d guess participatory attractions have a lower ratio of users to dollars spent. An attraction like the firefighters at the Chicago Fire would allow a far smaller number of people to participate in a given timespan than a traditional attractions as, for example, a rollercoaster ride. Sure, it might be cheaper to build and maintain; but you have to spend more dollars per visitor on this kind of entertainment.

8

That’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s a show, not a ride. If everyone’;s watching it they take up space and you need more actors to run the thing. Having the audience participate means you can have the same show with fewer actorsm, and the audience actually moves into the space where the attraction is, taking up less room. At worst it costs no more than a non-participatory event, but it probably costs less, and is more entertaining.

9

A northern park has from Memorial Day to Labor Day to make money. I live close to Wisconsin Dells and those dates were the difference between busy and dead. The places opened and closed a couple weeks before and after. Disney has tourism all year, and between Labor Day and Memorial Day the tourists from the north go there instead. The seasonal change funnels all the Northern money to Disney for half a year. Wisconsin Dells has become a much more viable place since the indoor water parks opened. Now it’s full of tourists all year. It helps the whole town, because the restraunts and other periferel bussinesses don’t shut down now.

10

I remember going to FreedomLand as a young kid, but just barely. The one things I recall specidically was a cowboy performer who teach us kids to cluck our tomgues to imitate the cloppin hooves of a walking horse. An important talent my sister and I practiced non-stop for many, many weeks.

Two reasons I think it failed is 1) competition. There was Pallisades Park just over the George Washington Bridge and Playland, at Rye Beach. The latter is a gem of a park on the Long Island Sound with beautiful art deco styling. (it’s been featured in mnay movies, including Big, with Tom Hanks). The boardwalk adds to it’s charm considerably. Freedeomland, on the other hand was built on a marsh. Even today, the area can generate some foul odors. Bu this way have to do with some type of oil refining or transportation nearby. Also, Playland is county owned, so I guess it has a a financial advantage. I worked there for four fun-filled years, so it had that going for it, as well.

  1. My guess is that FreedomLand was doomed when someone had the idea of building Co-op City, a huge swath of affordable housing, on the spot.
11

Once again, time extends beyond Memorial and Labor Day (look at the Storyland schedule), so it’s not strictly three months. Furthermore, back in 1960 mosdt people didn’t skip down to Disney – flying was more expensive back in those pre-bargain fare days. And, again, other parks continued to flourish while these went under.

I suspect that there are a lot of factors involved, and having a big park in 1960 wasn’t necessarily a good thing (although from what I’ve seen, Pleasure Island wasn’t really all that big). A lot of the surviving parks – Canobie Lake, Clarke’s Trading Post, Whalom Patk (which just recently closed, although it had been open since the turn of the century) – were pretty small in 1960, and their operating costs were probably low enough to let them make it through the winter.

12

I suspect Co-Op City was just opportunistically moving in on land that could be had cheap because the park had failed, rather than being the cause of Fereedomland’s fall.

13

I actually visited Freedomland. It failed mainly because it was unimpressive. Take a look at it here.

Freedomland was too much a throwback to the Coney-Island-type amusement parks, which were horribly passe in the early 60s. That type of park was designed to be a cheap getaway for middle class whites (nearly all turn-of-the-century amusement parks were segregated, even in the North). They were often tied in with subway/trolley lines. But as people moved to the suburbs, the parks could not offer parking, so the patrons were those who didn’t own cars. Which meant it was people with very little money, which scared away the people who had money. Amusement parks of that type became tacky and rundown (further driving the middle class away).

When Disney tried to get Disneyworld started, the amusement park was considered a thing of the past. Disney had a hell of a time getting funding, finally offering a TV show to ABC in exchange for the money he needed. His vision was different: a clean, well-maintained place with parking so that the middle class would want to go.

Freedomland tried to follow Disney, but with a park that was too much like Coney Island – and without any roller coasters or other thrill rides. It paled by comparison to Disneyland, and it invited comparison by copying some of the themes.

About all the impressed me about my visit was the skyway and the donkey rides. I was 9 or ten at the time, and I didn’t feel particularly motivated to return. We never asked my parents to take us there again and when it closed, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. OTOH, when I went to Disney World in the early 70s, I wanted to return.

In order to boost attendance, Freedomland added more typical amusement park rides, but that only made it look even more like Coney Island and less like Disneyland. The New York World’s Fair of 1964 siphoned off patrons: it was nearby and much more impressive. Ultimately it failed; the fair only speeded up the process, though.

The successful parks you mentioned had one advantage: they were not urban parks. Since they were in the suburbs, they were able to add parking and keep out the “wrong people” (i.e., lower class). Also, there was less competition for the entertainment dollar in places like Glens Falls or Agawam, and these parks offered at least one or two thrill rides (which turned out to be a successful formula once Six Flags started using it). So when the urban parks were failing, these managed to keep going, making enough money to both add new attractions and maintain the old ones. Also, the costs were more manageable – land was cheaper, but, in addition, the mortgage was usually paid off. Not having to pay all that interest was a bit help to the bottom line.

14

I was wondering about that. But because Co-op City takes up much more land than Freedomland did, my guess is that the deal was already in the process, with the hopes “Hey, woldn’t it be great if we could extend the project into where that amusement park is?”. When things were looking but for Freedomland, for the reasons already mentioned by me and others, the owners were probably thrilled that their recently undesireable land was now desired by developers. They were probably happy for thrilled and happy to be able to get out.

Interesting note. The miniature train that was at Freedomland was bought by one of the brothers of Petrillo Construction, Felix, I think. He installed in on has rather large piece of property in Peekskill (I think). I was a guest up there onece and us kids played cops and robbers on the moving train all afternoon.

15

It is a show, not a ride. But it seems to me that (with the exception of Disney parks) people go for the rides, not the shows. The advertising for Six Flags parks and Cedar point certainly play up the rides rather than the shows. Also, the shows at most parks (although I don’t know about Freedomland’s) are pretty much the same throughout the season. Probably results in much less repeat business than a park with a lot of rides- I’ll take my season pass to Great Adventure to ride El Toro and Nitro every chance I get, but I’m not going to watch the same shows over and over. A park with a lot of shows would probably also miss out on a lot of teenage business. Also, unlike Rockaway Playland and Coney Island, Freedomland seems to have been an all-day event- when I was young, no one went to Playland or Coney Island for the whole day. We’d spend the day at the beach and then go to the amusement park

16

I’ve only been once, but Kennywood in Pittsburgh seemed pretty urban to me (I mean, I don’t know the city very well, but it didn’t seem like we went very far.) My mom and her sister used to go by streetcar when they were kids. I understand it had some pretty run-down years, but it’s been going for an awfully long time and seems to be much beloved. My grandparents used to go dancing there in the 30’s and 40’s.

17

A park like Freedomland would have done better to provide an imitation Europe or Asia.

After all, why not visit New York or the Southwest, instead of an imitation? Car trips in the 60’s were quite inexpensive.

But a faux Asian or European experience would be vastly cheaper than the plane tickets.

18

RealityChuck: Your analysis makes sense, and goes a long way to explaining Freedomland’s demise (although I’d never call it a “Coney Island-type park”. Even when it added other rides, it was clearly imitation Disney) My only objection is that Pleasure Island wasn’t urban at all – it was away from Boston in the wilds of Wakefield. After it closed, it was still out in the wilds (No Co-op City waiting in the wings) until relatively recently, when it got turned into an apartment building and an office complex. So Being away from the city isn’t a sure ticket to success.

And Pleasure Island was a lot closer than any of those other amusement parks are to Boston even today. I note that during the same period the rides and attractions at Revere Beach all closed down as well, and that was even closer to Boston, accessible by Subway. If you go to websites about it, they say that the blizzard of 1978 did the last of it in. But I visited there in the mid-1970s, and I can tell you there were no attractions for the Blizzard to kill. Revere Beach had died well before the Blizzard. Again – Why? It sure as heck wasn’t property values. There are still big deserted stretches along Revere Beach.

19

I’ve often wondered what makes amusement parks fail.

I don’t see how it could be the weather. I mean, Pennsylvania has 14 amusement parks and a waterpark. Louisiana has one waterpark. They didn’t get their first and only amusement park until 2000, and that park has been in financial trouble ever since. Making matters worse for them is that they had to close for the entire 2006 season to rebuild after Katrina.

20

All the parks of the same type of intertainment in Wisconsin Dells died out by the early 80’s. Even in the 60’s and 70’s I knew people that went to Florida in the winter and they all stopped at Disney. The northern parks still had no income for half a year. Disney and other Florida attractions had income all year long reguardless of northern tourist going there. Six months of potental income yearly instead of twelve, changes the profitability equation greatly. The only attractions now left in the Dells are open all year. The one’s that shut done for six months are almost all closed. Minature golf, fudge shops and souvenir stores are the only seasonal enterprises left, and for the most part are backed by investors that own all of them scattered around the town.