3 Dearly Departed Amusement Parks

When Six Flags filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Saturday, everyone who enjoys a good rollercoaster probably cringed. While Six Flags' executives are assuring patrons that their parks will remain open during their tough economic times, it's still no fun thinking that all of those six-dollar sodas we've been buying over the years couldn't keep the place solvent.

At least for now, though, Six Flags won't join the list of dearly departed theme parks that for one reason or another couldn't hack it and are now in the amusement graveyard. Let's take a look at some of the ones that weren't so lucky.

1. Action Park

Sounds fun, right? It would have been if not for how dangerous the park was. The staff was often young and inattentive, and injuries and fatalities (yes, fatalities) started piling up. The giant waves in the wave pool (nicknamed the "Grave Pool") drowned a few patrons, but the park was perhaps best known for its looping water slide.

The enclosed waterslide ended with a total vertical loop. If this setup sounds like a terrible idea, that's because it was. If the rider lacked the speed or the water pressure to make it all the way through the loop, an injury was inevitable. Patrons got nosebleeds, back injuries, or stuck at the top of the loop.

Park staff later claimed that they were offered a hundred bucks a pop to try to the slide, but refused after seeing that test dummies often emerged on the other end dismembered. The looping slide was actually closed down for most of the park's life due to these injury concerns.

In 1996, with a total body count of six fatalities and countless injuries, the park had to close down due to its inability to cover the exorbitant insurance premiums its dangerous rides required. However, many of the rides still exist in safer, renovated form as Mountain Creek Waterpark.

2. Dogpatch USA

Younger readers might not be familiar with Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner, but it basically chronicled the hilarious lives of a family of goodhearted hillbillies in Dogpatch, Kentucky. The strip ran for 43 years and at its peak had millions of readers.

After Snow and his partners spent over a million dollars getting the park up and running for its 1968 opening, the park turned a tidy profit in its first year. After that, however, some pretty big cracks emerged in Dogpatch USA's underlying concept. First, while Li'l Abner was a fairly lighthearted look at mountain culture, Arkansans couldn't help but realize that going to a hillbilly-themed park was like paying to be mocked. "Ha! Look at how quaint and funny you mountain folk are!" didn't exactly make the locals break out their wallets. On top of that, for all of the Natural State's charms, Arkansas isn't a huge tourist destination, so the park couldn't piggyback off of the region's success at pulling in tourists. For reasons like these, nobody came to Dogpatch USA. The park had hoped to draw 1.2 million visitors a year within its first nine seasons of operation; the most it ever drew was 300,000 in its inaugural year.

Over the next 24 years, the park changed hands several times, added roller coasters, and shifted focus towards theater attractions, but nothing could lure in patrons. In 1993 the park closed for good, and now it sits abandoned on State Highway 7 with trees and weeds growing around the old rides and attractions.

3. Opryland USA

When I was growing up about an hour north of Nashville, the promise of a trip to Opryland could coerce my younger brother and me into doing pretty much anything. The country-music-themed park opened in Nashville in 1972 and offered traditional rides like roller coasters as well as live country music revues. The park quickly established a brisk business and pulled in over two million guests per year. In 1977, the Opryland Hotel opened, and the sprawling inn has since become the largest non-casino hotel in the world.

Although the park disappeared, not all of the rides shared its fate. As is fairly common in these cases, management sold some of the nicer roller coasters to other parks. Today the Hangman operates as Kong at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, and the Rock "˜n' Roller Coaster found new life as the Canyon Blaster at New York's The Great Escape.
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Do you have a favorite departed amusement park or have any tales of your own gruesome injuries from Action Park?