Watching vids about the demise of Evermore & Galactic Starcruiser did something to my YT algorithm, and I've been down a theme park rabbit hole ever since. Watching a vid now asserting there will simply be no more theme parks in the US, for the foreseeable future. That the window has closed.

What video is this?

Defunctland X Jenny Nicholson pretty much IS that rabbit hole. Hits real hard when one of them does a video for somewhere you've been many times in the past!

In theory there is a new Universal Studios park being built in Orlando that I have seen promo for around, but the thing looks so ridiculously ambitious that it comes off as deliberately impossible for the sake of a tax write off.

I remember when Legoland was slated for Carlsbad, what I remember the most of the opposition communication to the general populace was about all the gum tourists would leave on the city sidewalks.

The argument is, to have half a chance now, you need +100 acres less than 2 hours from a major metropolitan area, w/a cooperative local government and populace that want to live next to a theme park, with commercial zoning, and half a billion to burn and get up and running. And that's not possible.

This feels really weird to me. When I was growing up there were crappy little parks all over the place like The Land of Make Believe, Wild West City, Action (Traction) Park, Dutch Wonderland, and Space Farms.

That galactic starcruiser video was also in my algorithm!

Theme park YouTube is great background listening while I work personally, but you do become entirely insufferable at parties. Park designers really need to reincorporate sight ones though.

Theme parks require a certain level of environmental innocence to be enjoyed, and fewer people can embrace or fake that. It’s like insisting daddy spins me again knowing he’s about to pass out. I, too, have nostalgia for the innocent extravagance, but I am no longer innocent.

I still maintain evermore could have worked if it wasn’t so incompetently run.