An early competitor to Disney World, the Circus World theme park was a bit like a phoenix. It had an early spark and soared brightly for a little while but ultimately crumbled to ash too quickly. It was later reborn as the park Boardwalk and Baseball, but that had an even shorter lifespan.
During their short time open, though, both parks had a strong impact on the Central Florida theme park landscape. Circus World even prompted Disney to design and in some instances create new attractions to compete with the perceived threat. Though both parks eventually failed, they had fascinating journeys along the way. Read below about two of the early players in the Central Florida theme park industry that competed with Walt Disney World to varying degrees of success.
The classic circus origins
Circus World was born out of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Billed as “The Greatest Show on Earth,” the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had roots as early as 1860. “P.T. Barnum’s Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome” was created in 1875 and its rival, The Cooper and Bailey Circus, began fifteen years earlier. Persuaded by the immense popularity of the first elephant born in the United States that was featured at The Cooper and Bailey Circus, Barnum merged with Cooper. The result was the Barnum and Bailey Circus, a franchise that was familiar to people across the country and the world. It was probably best known for the Jumbo act that featured what was promoted as the world’s largest elephant. That elephant, though probably not actually the biggest one in the world, seemed to loosely inspire the character Jumbo, Jr. of the 1961 Disney animated film Dumbo.
Five of the Ringling brothers founded their own small touring circus in 1884. It eventually became even bigger and more profitable than the Barnum and Bailey Circus. The Ringling brothers purchased Barnum in 1907, but ran the two circuses separately for twelve more years. Common sense eventually prevailed, though, and they merged in 1919. A few more decades passed with setbacks like low attendance due to the Great Depression and the disastrous Hartford Circus Fire, but the circus empire was able to stick around and eventually fell under the ownership of Irving Feld. By 1974 Feld was looking for a place to serve as their winter headquarters, and wanted to take advantage of the burgeoning theme park industry in the wake of Disneyland and Disney World. That quickly led to the creation of Circus World.
The start of Circus World
Circus World opened in 1974 as a 27,000 square foot building made to look like an open circus tent, and was originally known as the Circus World Showcase. It was referred to as a “preview center” for what was supposed to be a much bigger theme park that combined circus rides, shows and much more into one mega entertainment center. However, Jim Hill Media argues that the owners didn’t know that the completed Circus World would ever come to pass, too low on funds to pay for such a gigantic project. The Showcase, Hill suggests, was probably meant to encourage big spenders to invest in the concept so the owners could take it to the next level. That sadly never happened, but nevertheless the “Showcase” was eventually dropped from the Circus World title.
The Circus World attractions
The Circus World Showcase opened with a sparse number of attractions. In 1974, when it opened it had an IMAX theater, displays of circus memorabilia and a model of the theme park that the owners really wanted Circus World to become. That was about it.
Over the next couple of years there were new attractions such as displays, shows, a carousel, a wooden roller coaster, a ferris wheel and a theater for the biggest act, which was called “The Day The Circus Came To Town.” That event involved a lot of audience participation. Guests sometimes got the opportunity to try to walk a tightrope or fly on a trapeze, with extra safety precautions taken. Still, it definitely didn’t have the level of activity of somewhere like Walt Disney World during that time.
Circus World photos
Here are some of the memories preserved by photographs of Circus World, including one of a Mr. Michael Jackson, who loved one of its roller coasters.
The competition Circus World posed to Disney
Opening just three years after the Magic Kingdom, Circus World was one of the first major competitors to Walt Disney World and one that the Walt Disney Company was especially fervent about staving off. The biggest cause for concern was the proposed 19 story hotel shaped like an elephant that was supposed to be added when the Circus World Showcase found investors to fund the completion of the park. It sounded pretty amazing; it was supposed to have hundreds of jewels that would be light up and add a cascade of colors to Circus World at night. Though it would house guests, it was meant to serve as a sort of counterpart to Cinderella’s castle at the Magic Kingdom. Disney was so worried about Circus World threatening its business that they went so far as to alter their PR messages to say that the upcoming Space Mountain would be 20 stories tall instead of 180 feet so they could one-up the promise of the elephant-shaped hotel.
That wasn’t all, though. To stave off the threat of Circus World and other burgeoning theme parks, Disney promised a lot of additions to their Orlando theme park. Most of them didn’t happen, but it definitely put more work on the plate of the Imagineers and adds a richer history to the line of Disney World attractions.
Disney’s response
After Circus World was announced (and rather overhyped) in September of 1972, Disney took swift action. Within a few months, executives held a press conference about a major expansion planned for Walt Disney World. They even promised that, combined with what Walt Disney World already had, the park would offer more attractions than SeaWorld and Circus World combined.
Here are projects that were promised but never delivered because it became clear that Circus World wasn’t fated to ever be a major rival to Walt Disney World.
A western town
Close to the Fort Wilderness camp store, this was meant to include shops, theaters, restaurants and more.
Lake Wilderness
A swimming hole with white water so that guests could ride on rafts.
Big Thunder Railway
A race down the tracks of a classic Wild West iron house roadway. This was meant to have sharp turns, desert wildlife, a beautiful valley to look at and teetering rocks. This was part of a much bigger plan for a Western River Expedition Disney was working on, but none of it ever came to pass.
Treasure Island
Treasure Island was the most complex of the planned additions to Walt Disney World in the wake of the perceived Circus World threat. When they were most worried Disney wanted to construct small lakes and waterfalls on an island in Bay Lake that you could find with the help of paths and trails. After this was completed, the Imagineers would have started building a number of attractions based on the 1950 film Treasure Island. Reportedly, planned features include the wreck of the ship the Hispaniola, a cave to explore and a place to eat inspired by the Benbow Inn from the movie. Personally, I most enjoy the idea they had for a peg-legged parrot that would have hosted the tour (Treasure Island did eventually open in Bay Lake, as a nature preserve/zoo that was later renamed Discovery Island).
The only major attraction that really came out of that press conference was a recreation of Pirates of the Caribbean for the Magic Kingdom. So, while its impact on Disney parks certainly wasn’t wide-reaching, Circus World did at least succeed in rattling the Mouse for a short period.
The Disney collaborations
Even though it was a direct competitor for a time, the Walt Disney Company actually worked with Feld Entertainment on projects that featured the Ringling Bros. And Barnum & Bailey Cirus. “Let’s Go to the Circus” is a video from the Mickey’s Fun Songs series that came out in 1994 in which Mickey and his pals take a trip through the circus that once competed with Walt Disney World. Two years later, in 1996, Feld Entertainment hosted a skating-themed show called Disney on Ice. That just goes to show that even former rivals can collaborate to make money, especially when the other company hasn’t posed a threat to Disney in a long while.
The shutdown of Circus World
The Feld organization ended up selling the Ringling Bros. to Mattel, though they’d buy it back a few years down the line. That included Circus World, but the theme park was something the toy company never had a lot of interest in.
Still, Mattel made an honest go at it. They added things like the Roaring Tiger wooden roller coaster, the Flying Daredevil shuttle loop, a wild west show, carnival rides and various animal-themed attractions. All of that was there by 1982. By 1984, though, Mattel threw in the towel and sold Circus World for a paltry $10 million to a developer named Jim Monaghan.
Monaghan cleaned the place up a bit and added more attractions such as a huge Ferris wheel and a Weiner Looping Coaster. He, too, sold Circus World, but not out of desperation. In 1986 the Orlando company Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich (a textbook publisher, of all things) started going throughout Central Florida buying every theme park it could in the wake of Disney World’s success. That included SeaWorld, Stars Hall of Fame, Cypress Gardens and Circus World. Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich decided that it was time for the property to be rebranded, which led to Boardwalk and Baseball.
The beginning of Boardwalk and Baseball
Harcourt Brace and Jovanovic invested a lot of money into the new park. It spent a purported $18 million buying the property from Jim Monaghan, almost double what he paid for it a few years prior. Harcourt went on to spend $25 million to make Boardwalk and Baseball, a boardwalk like you’d find in Atlantic City in the 1800s with a vintage baseball stadium. In addition to the huge, beautiful stadium were smaller baseball fields, a clubhouse and training fields. It also had its own mini Baseball Hall of Fame, borrowing items of interest from Cooperstown, New York. In addition to what I listed above, Boardwalk and Baseball had a combination of re-themed and brand new attractions. “The Grand Rapids” was built on its own lake and was a very long and tall long fume. There was Park Place, a peaceful setting where gas style lanterns and benches were meant to fill you with nostalgia.
ESPN recorded a special quiz bowl game show called Boardwalk and Baseball’s Super Bowl of Sports Trivia. I question the use of the name of a national football championship at a park themed around baseball, but whatever works, I guess! The quiz bowl aired in 1998 and 1999 with teams representing colleges in the United States.
Most traces of Circus World disappeared, except for the extremely popular Florida Hurricane wooden roller coaster and the western area, where Boardwalk and Baseball added a “Colorado Riders” parody show making fun of the founding of the state which was repeated twice a day.
The early end to Boardwalk and Baseball
Boardwalk and Baseball was largely considered an improvement over Circus World, but it still failed to draw a big audience. That was in part because of all the other theme parks in the area for tourists and natives to choose from. Another reason was Richard Howard, the CEO of Harcourt. His priority was on building a perfect stadium for very minor baseball teams rather than adding rides to compete with Disney World and the like. The Baseball City Royals and the Gulf Coast League Royals, two single-A teams, were based there for a few years. There were plans and permits for more roller coasters, but they never happened. In fact, over its three active years it had made zero changes to the selection of rides and attractions. Grand Rapids was the only real “ride” aside from what was already available at Circus World. That combined with Howard’s poor management of the park in general made Boardwalk and Baseball a losing proposition almost from the start.
It wasn’t attendance that spelled the doom of Boardwalk and Baseball, though. Rather, an attempted hostile takeover of the textbook publisher that owned it, though avoided, left Harcourt Brace and Jovanovic billions of dollars in debt. They had to sell all of their theme park holdings to the beer company Anheuser-Busch for a little over a billion dollars. That included Boardwalk and Baseball plus Cypress Gardens and SeaWorld. Though they originally claimed otherwise, it doesn’t seem like Anheuser-Busch ever really wanted to continue Boardwalk and Baseball. They wanted to eliminate the competitor to their own theme park in Tampa, Busch Gardens. Likely for that reason, Boardwalk and Baseball closed in January of 1990.
The final demolition and how both parks live on
Pretty much everything was demolished except for the baseball stadium and the IMAX theater that had been on the property since Circus World. Once all the baseball teams had left in 2003, the stadium and theater were also destroyed. Like the locations of a lot of failed parks, the area turned into a retail complex. However, both Circus World and Boardwalk and Baseball maintain a fairly fervent fanbase.
Circus World has been the subject of a number of features including the aforementioned Jim Hill Media article and an article at LostParks.com. People have even hosted gatherings that reunite individuals who worked at Circus World or simply enjoyed going there. That’s a clear testament to the impact it had in its short time.
There’s a great collection of photos you can look at here to get a sense of the fun and whimsy at the park while it was open. Boardwalk and Baseball and Circus World also share a Facebook page that’s full of facts about both parks and photos featuring the good times to be had there. They are two more underdogs that went up against the goliath that is Disney and failed, but nevertheless created a lot of happy memories and interesting history along the way.
