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Interesting Hard Rock Park article

Yeah. I've been reading along as Screamscape has been posting the links.
 
They used the park in the last episode of revolution, it looked a right state.

Yes some of it was cgi and fake mess but the rides are just rotting.
 
Just makes me want to turn back time and buy tickets to go there. It's a really interesting series of articles but the more I read of it the more frustrating I find the whole situation. If only it was given more time to develop and expand properly. SAD FACE.
 
It just wasnt a very good park.... or park plan. They did so much wrong and what they did do, wasnt even good.

Image00208.jpg

Yeah.....
 
Yeah, I was under the impression that what they did WAS good (After many chats with Jerry on the subject) but the crowds just didn't come? I've heard loads of people say that the Led Zep coaster was an awesome experience (I'm talking as an entire experience, not just the coaster), that Moody Blues dark ride was one of the best ever and it appears to look gorgeous?
 
The park did get a lot of support from many coaster groups all bar one who totally slated the place and told people it was a waste of time.

Things like that really do not help.

I really wanted to go there it looked a nice park, still feel it was built in the wrong place.
 
They did virtually no advertising apart from a couple billboards on the road to Myrtle Beach. Coaster groups were essentially the only people outside of Myrtle Beach that knew the park existed. Even the Hard Rock Cafes, Hotels and Casinos had no tie-in promotion at all, which should have been a no-brainer.

The park was actually ok. It was a bit small, it was definitely overpriced at the outset, and they completely screwed up the appropriate hours of operation. Since the beach is the big draw to the area, neither Family Kingdom nor Pavillion typically opened before 4pm. HRP tried opening at 10am, and nobody showed up. If you can find trip reports where people stayed later, it usually had far more people in attendance after 5pm.

Financially, the plan was flawed. HRP had almost no money in reserve after construction was completed. That meant the park needed to be profitable from day one. With no advertising and a flawed business model that didn't suit the available clientele, it was just a matter of time before it fell apart.

When I made it to the rebranded FMP the next year, the ticket price was better, which helped, but with the loss of all of the licensed IPs and the sour reputation from the previous year, it was going to be an uphill battle to save the park.

The final nail in the coffin wasn't actually HRP or FMP's fault: the financial market crashed, the economy went off the cliff, disposable income evaporated and people stayed home in droves. Otherwise, they probably would have been able to secure additional financing and survive past the first season. The truth is, it was a pretty good start for a new theme park, it just couldn't survive long enough to figure out what they were doing wrong and grow a fan base.
 
^ Bingo.

The park was a failure in a lack of ability to draw in crowds. There was never any infrastructure, and the park fell in on itself.
 
CanobieFan said:
It just wasnt a very good park.... or park plan. They did so much wrong and what they did do, wasnt even good.

Image00208.jpg

Yeah.....
Click to expand...

In all fairness, your photo is from the Freestyle Music Park days, when attendance was even worse than when it was HRP.

Really, I thought the park itself was alright. Yes it was small and the ride selection was very limited, but the level of detail that went into the theming and atmosphere made it a fairly enjoyable place to spend an afternoon & evening. The food was also pretty good, and there were live musicians and performances spread throughout the day that were very entertaining for the most part (this coming from someone that almost always skips the shows at theme parks). And the nighttime fireworks/laser light show synced to Bohemian Rhapsody was actually pretty spectacular.

As has been said here already, the main flaws that lead to HRP's demise were:

- Lack of advertising - I only knew about it because of this forum, and even driving into Myrtle Beach did not see a billboard for it until I was about 10 miles away.
- Bad business model - Relying on unrealistic attendance projections just to stay afloat through more than one season.
- Being overpriced - Tickets were nearly $60 from what I recall, entirely too much for such a small park and also a bit out of the price range of the typical Myrtle Beach tourist. It's a tough sell to get a family to drop $300 or 400+ in one day when that money could easily be stretched out over multiple days given the bevvy of other relatively inexpensive entertainment options available at MB.

It's a shame that the convergence of these factors led to the failure of the park so quickly, because I think it had potential.
 
Here is an interesting article detailing further proposed expansion, including:

Expanding Maximum RPM
Building a Radiator Springs-like indoor/outdoor racer
Lincoln themed swinging ship
KISS bumper cars

http://themeparkuniversity.com/backstag ... ts-part-2/

Again, it is difficult to imagine HRP affording so much copyright without being able to draw crowds. A hypothesis I like to propose is: What if HRP opened with fewer copyright-themed rides? (Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Mini Cooper, etc.) Copyright costs would have been lower, and might have given the park better financial stability.
 
Joey said:
Elaborate CanobieFan...?
Click to expand...
I guess Mr.Chris kinda said what I would.

based off my 2 visits... and having had been to Myrtle Beach Pavilion. A far nicer park than HRP/FMP. It just wasnt there. Even before Hard Rock opened.. you could just see the flaws! Too far from the beach, no kids price, no locals price, way tooooooo long park hours, NOT ENOUGH TO DO!, NOT ENOUGH WATER RIDES! And the best thing in the park was a Vekoma Mine Train that shot fireballs when it was 100*+ out.... :?

Myrtle Beach Pavilion closed because the owners felt they could make more by selling the land the parks on, not because the park was failing. And yet MBP being maybe the size of a city block... had a good woodie, a great flume, one of the wettest raft rides I've been on, a ton of flats, kid rides, family rides, and adult rides... and enough to keep you there for hours on end.

Free Style had... uh.... an OK at best B&M (sorry, I'm not a hater.. it just wasnt that good). RMP, odd ferris wheel lift that didnt really add anything to the ride, nor did it provide a view of anything but a closed outlet mall. (it was also an insanely short ride) a hand-me-down water coaster... thing.. and the Mine Train that was rather fun but little to no theme.

I guess I'd rather have ridden MBP's Topspin, Enterprise, Rainbow, Swinging ship, Calypso....
 
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