Abandoned Amusement Parks

[Gordon Bombay]

I'm still new here and learning the ropes, but I was turned on to this board after a friend referred me to that thread on the abandoned River Country photos. Thought some folks here might enjoy these. (I apologize in advance for the annoying watermarks).

I've been working on a project documenting abandoned and forgotten locations here in the Cincinnati area since 2007, but have been shooting photos for the website since 2006. The project is called Queen City Discovery. When I saw the River Country thread it reminded me of one of the first abandoned places I ever explored:

Surf Cincinnati - A waterpark built in the late 80's thrived in the mid 90's and closed in the early 2000's. Spent many summer days here as a kid:

The Wave Pool:

The First Aid/Guest Services Building:

Kids pool:

Ladder:

Lazy River:

Slides:

Employee Lockers:

Bottom of the wave pool:

Snack bar:

That's just a small portion of the pictures and you can see the full gallery here: QC/D :: Surf Cincinnati. Soon, just don't have the time right now, I'll have a full article up about the history and such of this place. It was all torn down a few years ago to build a giant suburban church.

Just north of Cincy, Americana Amusement Park (formerly Lesourdsville Lake) closed in 2002 after nearly 80 years of operation. A lot of the rides have been shipped out and sold since I took these in 2007 and a future use as an amusement park seems unlikely, regardless, enjoy:

I don't wanna overload this thread with a ton of pictures for anyone with a slow connection, but if you wanna read the full history of this place and check out some more photographs. Read the full article here: Americana/Lesourdsville Lake Revisted.

Thanks for checking them out.

 

[KramBerries]

Cool stuff. It must be eery walking around a place like that. We've had several amusement parks disappear from the Houston area since I was a kid. We had a Busch Gardens, although almost no one around here seems to even remember it. We had a little indoor place called Candyland or something like that. We also had a major Six Flags theme park called Astroworld.

When they shut down Astroworld, it was because they wanted to sell the land to some developers, so it was dozed pretty quickly. I would have loved to have had a chance to walk around there and photograph it. Of course, by the time they sold it, most of the stuff from my childhood was already gone - the Black Dragon was gone. The jungle boat ride had become nothing but a few ponds you could see from the roller coaster that replaced it. The treehouse coaster has been gone so long I barely remember it.

One of my favorite memories of the park was with the whitewater raft ride. My wife and I went in before the park opened one morning and took a whitewater rescue training class in the river. It was a good class. It was also a lot of fun.

Someday, this fate will probably befall our beloved Disney Parks. Can you imagine how depressing it would be to walk through a post abandonment Magic Kingdom?

 

[KramBerries]

(I apologize in advance for the annoying watermarks).

BTW, those aren't annoying watermarks. I'm not an expert on watermarks, but I am an expert on annoying and I can definitely say that we often see much more annoying watermarks.

 

[Gdad]

Very nice set- I would love to shoot some star trails silhouetted by an old abandoned roller coaster- still searching for one around here.

Can you imagine how depressing it would be to walk through a post abandonment Magic Kingdom?

Depressing- but oh sooooo cool. I'd head right for the haunted mansion ruins.

 

[ukcatfan]

Depressing- but oh sooooo cool. I'd head right for the haunted mansion ruins.

I am with you on that one!



I am originally from Eastern KY about two hours from Cinci. I spent some time at that water park as a kid. Seeing this makes me want to ride The Beast!!!

 

[Gordon Bombay]

We also had a major Six Flags theme park called Astroworld.

I never got to visit Astroworld as the only time I've been to Texas I was there for a wedding. However, my dad is originally from Houston and worked there through high school/college. I have a ton of his old stuff that he collected working there. He was pretty bummed when Six Flags closed it. When we went down for that wedding I got to stand outside and just get a look at it. Bummed I never got to visit it.

I am with you on that one!
I am originally from Eastern KY about two hours from Cinci. I spent some time at that water park as a kid. Seeing this makes me want to ride The Beast!!!

Glad to see someone else remembers Surf Cincinnati. The Beast is a great ride. I was the supervisor of that ride for a few years when I worked at Kings Island and got to do off season maintenance on it when I transferred departments.

 

[Pugrpooh]

Very nice pictures. Maybe in a year or so I can contribute pictures of an abandoned amusement park too. Last night Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom announced they were closing. I find it hard to imagine that this same fate will befall the Disney parks though.

My daughter's in grad school at Xavier now -- I'll pass the link to your website on to her, she may find it interesting.

 

[ukcatfan]

Very nice pictures. Maybe in a year or so I can contribute pictures of an abandoned amusement park too. Last night Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom announced they were closing. I find it hard to imagine that this same fate will befall the Disney parks though.

My daughter's in grad school at Xavier now -- I'll pass the link to your website on to her, she may find it interesting.

That is sad for the city, but it really was never a good park. Being so close to the airport, they had height limits that really held them back. That and the horrible accident a few years back. It freaked me out b/c I had been on that ride a number of times!

 

[Suburbanmom]

Thanks for the Americana pics. My kids and I went there often when they were little. Kings Island was too much for me to navigate with them as preschoolers. Americana was just our size. I have so many fond memories of that park and was sad when it closed down.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

...Depressing- but oh sooooo cool. I'd head right for the haunted mansion ruins.

I heard that they have to add dust to the Haunted Mansion every few days to keep it looking "haunted." If they abandon it, it'll probably clean up over time and look like a normal house by the time you get there. If you want to see something like the haunted mansion in daylight, stop by my house.

Very nice pictures. Maybe in a year or so I can contribute pictures of an abandoned amusement park too. Last night Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom announced they were closing. I find it hard to imagine that this same fate will befall the Disney parks though.

Sooner or later (probably much later), some grisly fate will befall WDW. They'll get paved over or abandoned. Nothing lasts forever. I can imagine an archeological dig unearthing them several millennia from now.

 

[ThurlFan]

Love the composition on this one. Really makes the eye travel...thanks for sharing!

 

[donaldduck352]

Wow I remember both them parks.My wife is from Cincinnati and we lived there for a couple years back in the 90's. The parks do look eerie bieng empty like that!

 

[MichelleVW]

I lived near both of those parks growing up! We went to Americana all the time!! I loved that park!!

 

[DznyFan]

Very cool series. That desolate feel they have is so eerie, yet made for a fascinating group of images.

Someday, this fate will probably befall our beloved Disney Parks. Can you imagine how depressing it would be to walk through a post abandonment Magic Kingdom?

That would be depressing!

 

[Groucho]

Fascinating stuff. I think some of them would lend themselves to a nice b/w conversion, too.

WDW is big enough that I think you can find little bits of abandoned stuff here and there if you like... I seem to recall that when they ripped the giant Epcot logo and hand off the side of Spaceship Earth (good riddance!), there was a video floating around of it lying broken into pieces along the side of one of the back WDW roads. River Country is another obvious example... the treehouse villas probably looked a bit like that before being rebuilt, too. And how about that "Golden Era" section of Pop Century that was never finished?

 

[shawn68]

I loved Astroworld! I worked there through college until they shut it down. Very depressing. I had the best job there. I was the puppet Cornelius D. Crow, I had a little show that made fun of all the guest. Good times.......

 

[hedgehog2owl]

very cool pictures!

 

[ssanders79]

Growing up in Northern Ohio, I always wanted to explore Chippewa Lake Amusement Park. Here is a site with a bunch of images.
http://www.forgottenoh.com/Chippewa/chippewa.html

 

[Geoff_M]

Very cool series of photos... I love the topic of "forgotten" photography. There's also some great stuff on this topic that's come out of Detroit.

When it comes to Cincinnati, I was fascinated when I saw the stuff from the abandoned uncompleted subway system. I always wondered what what those tunnels were along I-75 when I went to Reds games at Riverfront as a kid!