Over the years, dozens of new theme parks have been proposed, but never built. Some of these were almost impossibly ambitious – but came surprisingly close to becoming a reality.
Five floors of rides housed inside an abandoned power station. A full-scale recreation of a fictional spaceship. A cage that lowered guests into a pool full of man-eating sharks. All of these too-crazy-to-be-true attractions were really planned – and some of them even got as far as initial construction work. But, sadly, they were not to be.
Take a look at the concept artwork for 5 incredible theme parks that failed at the last financial hurdle, and dream of what might have been.
4. DisneySea
Following the success of Walt Disney World, Disney was keen to transform Disneyland into a similar multi-day destination resort. The problem, though, was land – it didn’t have much of it to work with close to Disneyland. Instead, it proposed building a new theme park in Long Beach, which it dubbed DisneySea and announced in 1990. It was to be the most ambitious Disney theme park ever, sprawling across 225 acres.
The entire park would have featured a marine theme, and would have been accompanied by no fewer than 5 hotels, a cruise ship port, a marina and an evening entertainment area. Disney had already acquired the RMS Queen Mary (which would have become one of the hotels) and the Spruce Goose, which would have been incorporated into the new resort.
Similar to a SeaWorld park (but with much heavier theming), DisneySea would have combined live animal exhibits with high-tech theme park attractions. It was to feature lands themed around a Grecian village, an Asian water market and a Caribbean lagoon. Each was to be themed around a real or fictional port.
The most ambitious element, though, was Oceana, a stunning, multi-domed structure that would have been the world’s largest aquarium. This would have featured tidal exchange with actual ocean, so as the tide changed, the levels of water in the outside display tanks would rise and fall.
The aquarium would have held a ridiculous 10 to 12 million gallons of water, making it double the size of the one at Epcot’s Living Seas pavilion (itself the world’s largest when it opened). Oceana would also have hosted a real, working research center, bringing together scientists from around the world.
Elsewhere, City of Atlantis would be an underwater trip to the mythical lost city, Pirate Island would be a child-friendly area for exploration and Nemo’s Lava Cruiser would simulate a trip into underground caverns. In the Adventure Reef area, guests would have been lowered in a steel cage into a tank full of sharks.
So what went wrong? Disney thought that the EuroDisney project was a slam dunk. Instead, when it opened in 1992 it immediately began to haemorrhage money. CEO Michael Eisner lost his enthusiasm for the DisneySea project, and it was ultimately dropped. Disneyland visitors ended up with the underwhelming Disney’s California Adventure instead.
3. The Starship Enterprise
Back in 1992, the authorities in Las Vegas were looking for a way to revitalize the Downtown area, which was struggling in the face of competition from the famous Strip. They decided to run a competition, inviting proposals for a major attraction to boost the area. There was one proviso: the attraction could not be a hotel or a casino, since the local hotels and casinos would be paying for it.
One of the entries came from Landmark Entertainment, the firm headed by Gary Goddard that would go on to produce Terminator 2 3-D for Universal’s parks (along with a host of other classic attractions). They proposed a FULL-SCALE recreation of Star Trek‘s Starship Enterprise – which, Goddard felt, would become the “eighth wonder of the world”. It would even be visible from airplanes overhead.
Goddard and his team studied the ship, even going so far as to consider how it would be stored in “dry dock” when it wasn’t off exploring the universe. They designed a tour of the spacecraft, as well as a restaurant themed around a Star Fleet dining facility and a high-speed “travelator” to carry guests from deck to deck.
The cost of building the ship was estimated at some $150 million. Despite this astronomical expense, Goddard claims that the Las Vegas downtown redevelopment committee was ready to announce the Starship Enterprise as the winner of the competition.
However, Goddard still needed to persuade Paramount Studios, which controlled the rights to Star Trek, to come on board. In the end, this came down to a single presentation to Stanley Jaffe, the studio’s chairman. As Goddard recalls that meeting, everyone present agreed that the idea was a winner – with one exception. Unfortunately, that exception was Jaffe, who said: “I don’t want to be the guy that approved this and then it’s a flop and sitting out there in Vegas forever.”
Only one other proposal was under consideration for the downtown area, and it ended up being approved. That proposal was for the Fremont Experience, a show that is still in place today.
2. The Battersea
Back in 1983, entrepreneur John Broome was flush with success. Three years earlier, he had converted a former stately home at Alton Towers into the most popular theme park in the UK. Now, he was looking to repeat the same trick elsewhere – and he had his sights set on the UK’s capital.
Just as with his first park, Broome planned to base his next attraction around a listed building. However, the location was even more unusual and potentially problematic than Alton Towers. He hoped to build a massive leisure complex in and around Battersea Power Station, an iconic London landmark situated next to the River Thames in Wandsworth.
Broome acquired the site for just £1.5 million in 1987. He boasted that the theme park would become “London’s Tivoli Gardens”, creating four-and-a-half-thousand jobs in the process and sprawling across a total area of thirty million cubic feet. Broome was intent on creating “the jewel in London’s pleasure industry crown”.
So just what exactly would be on offer at “The Battersea” (the name selected ahead of “Alton Towers II”, “Tower Inferno”, “The Battersea Powerhouse” and “The South Chelsea Fun Palace”)? Well, for an entry fee of £4.50 for both adults and children, guests would gain access to five floors of attractions inside the building, as well as a handful of outdoor rides.
Visitors would enter the Battersea via a spectacular entrance colonnade, surrounded by fountains and terraced gardens. Escalators and glass-walled elevators would transport guests between the floors, with a total of forty rides and two hundred attractions being on offer across the immense main gallery and the two turbine halls. An enormous wall of water would cascade down one side of the building’s interior.
The ground floor of the main gallery would be dominated by a huge ice rink dotted with islands and spectacular dancing fountains. It would host attractions as diverse as a craft village, “entertainment simulators”, a shooting gallery, a mirror maze, an aquarium and a traditional carousel. The simulators would be themed as a “Journey into Tomorrow”, with concept art closely resembling Disney’s Star Wars-themed Star Tours rides (which didn’t open until December 1986). The stand-out element, though, was Charles Dickens’ Street, an “authentic actual village” populated with craft shops and restaurants.
A mezzanine level would host a Disney-style dark ride, featuring three-seater cabins that would pass through sixty animated tableaux populated by seventeen thousand animated figures telling the story of the history of the British Empire . Elsewhere on the same level were “electronic entertainment exhibits”, restaurants and twin cinemas.
Up on the fifth level, Broome planned to install one of The Battersea’s signature rides. This was a balloon ride, which would see riders boarding mock balloons that would swoop around a circuit overlooking the Main Arena.
The outdoor area surrounding the power station, previously used as a coal store, would be put to dual use. Firstly, taking a leaf out of Alton Towers’ book, it would be home to “beautifully landscaped gardens” stretching along six hundred and eighty feet of river frontage. Alongside the gardens would be four major rides, including the enclosed Jumbo Jet Coaster (a custom-designed, Schwarzkopf creation), a Runaway Train, a rapids ride and an observation tower.
The initial cost estimate from Broome for the project was just £34 million – ludicrously low. The budget subsequently leapt to £45 million, then to £170 million. By 1988, the price tag had soared to £240 million.
Construction work finally began in November 1988. It quickly became clear that just getting the basics in place would cost a fortune. Tons of toxic asbestos were found on the site, and there were huge problems with the building’s foundations, which were “virtually non-existent”. On top of this, the UK was in the grip of a recession and the property market was depressed. Work ground to a halt after just four months, but not before the power station’s roof and west wall had been demolished to remove the giant turbines. This left parts of the building exposed to the elements for years, accelerating its decay. Rather than building a theme park, Broome recalls ruefully, “I had to spend 4 months just putting in 300 piles 600 feet deep to pin up the building”.
1. Six Flags Dubailand
Six Flags, the North American chain of regional theme parks, has dabbled with overseas projects on several occasions in the past. By far the most ambitious, though, was the park that it planned to build as part of the Dubailand project – designed to create a world-leading tourist destination in the Emirate that would outstrip even Walt Disney World.
This was not to be your average, run-of-the-mill Six Flags park, filled with off-the-shelf thrill rides and cloned roller coasters. No, this was to be a Six Flags park on steroids – a heavily-themed wonderland packed with every type of ride imaginable. Surprisingly, the firm had engaged the Goddard Group (yes – the same Gary Goddard that dreamt up the Starship Enterprise attraction) to produce some concept designs. And they look AMAZING.
Typically for a Six Flags park, the headline rides would be roller coasters. But not just any roller coasters. A stunning-looking wooden roller coaster would act as the park’s icon, towering over the entrance to the “Kingdom of Thrills”. Elsewhere, a Bolliger & Mabillard hypercoaster would twist and turn its way over the park.
The fun would start on the way to the parking lot. Guests would drive over Roller Coaster Road, complete with a series of “airtime” hills.
There was even to be a Disney-style icon at the park’s heart – a spinning sculpture made up of six colorful towers.
Even the ticketing office was to be somewhat spectacular, as shown in the artwork above. There appears to be an Intamin coaster swooping by in the background.
Unfortunately, the ambitious plans for Dubailand were scaled back drastically following the 2008 financial crisis. Even though elemetns of it have been revived, it seems unlikely that anything remotely on the scale of the original plans will be put in place. If we do ever see a Six Flags Dubailand, it’s unlikely it will look anything like the artwork above.
