#1 – Jungleland USA (Thousand Oaks) - This zoo and theme park operated from 1926 to 1969. Here are 5 other abandoned theme parks that no longer exist in Southern California: The closure of both Busch Gardens Pasadena and Busch Gardens Los Angeles left Southern California with 2 fewer amusement parks.īut there were also several other California theme parks that shuttered their doors over the past decades. Other Abandoned Theme Parks In Southern California Plus we’ll also check out 5 other old Southern California theme parks and explore what’s left of them for you to see today… The History Of Busch Gardens In Pasadena I’ll also share info on where you can still find traces of the historic Busch Gardens Pasadena! Let’s take a look back at these 2 long-lost Southern California theme parks, what made them so popular, and why they closed. I’m not only a Busch Gardens historian, but I’m also a theme park enthusiast, and I enjoy sharing my knowledge of old theme parks with others. The older of the 2 operating Busch Gardens theme parks opened in Tampa in 1959.īut the very first Busch Gardens was located in Pasadena.īusch Gardens Pasadena was an exquisite botanical feast for the eyes, welcoming millions of guests during the first decades of the 20th century. Today, Busch Gardens theme parks are major draws in Florida and Virginia - but they’re no longer found in the West. If you visit in the winter, with the park covered in snow, the overwhelming and eerie silence of the place will help you realize if only slightly, just how significant this place, and what happened here, really is.Yet, the Los Angeles area once boasted not just 1, but 2 Busch Gardens theme parks that were operated by the legendary Anheuser-Busch beer company. You can take guided tours of what was to be, being checked for radiation before and after visiting, with only the large Ferris wheel and bumper cars still remaining. It was to open May 1st, 1986, but the nuclear incident happened on April 26th, soon after the town was completely evacuated. Ironically, the amusement park was never used, never even had an opening day for people to remember. In 1986, before the nuclear disaster, Pripyat was home to over 50,000 people and with an average age of 26, making an amusement park the perfect addition. The reason? The park is inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the site of possibly the biggest nuclear incident this planet has ever seen. Here is an abandoned park with the feeling of dread hanging over it like a gigantic cloud that won’t go away. With roars of lions easily heard nearby, blankets of mosquitos everywhere, and packs of wild dogs now calling the park home, it is definitely a place you don’t want to visit alone. The locals will tell you that the park closed because of the death of children there, and they never left, as their ghost still haunts the now decaying remains of the park. There are stories about bad business meetings, disagreements between landowners, noise complaints, etc. However, there has never been an official reason why the park closed between 20. Sadly, while the violence continued, the park did not and eventually closed 15 years after it opened. Many believed the park was built to distract people from what was going on and, in truth, there are locals with very fond memories of the park from their youth. When the park opened in 1997, the Myanmar government at the time was a brutal dictatorship, constantly engaging in violence, unrest, and civil war. Blockbuster movies Jurassic World and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes have shot scenes here, ironic since both movies deal with massive disasters of some kind, making the now-closed Six Flags, New Orleans, the perfect, already built set, in which to film. You would think they would want to tear it down and use the property for something else, but it seems the park, even though dead in the usual sense, still has some use. Unable to recover financially from the damage done by Katrina, the park closed, never to reopen, as the joyful rides now sit silent, rusting and rotting, a constant reminder of what happened. The hurricane submerged the park under 20 feet of water and once over, it still took over a month for the remaining 7 feet of water to recede. Six Flags New Orleans, once a lively and vibrant park, now lies desolate and dormant after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The creep factor here is so real you can almost feel it.
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