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Worst theme parks

Edward M

Edward M

Strata Poster
There have been plenty of topics on good parks but not many on bad. I want to talk about the stinkers, the worst of the worst. What are the worst parks you've been to?

My personal least favorite park is actually SFGAdv. I just don't like anything about the park (except El Toro and Nitro). It has some of the worst maintenance I have ever seen, and the lines seem to be dreadfully long. I just don't like the rude workers either. Another one of my least favorite parks is Animal Kingdom. I don't like this park because there is nothing to do! There are only 5 major attractions. At $90 that is ridiculous! The park itself is very overrated too. It is pretty but not that pretty. The animals are very gimmicky. If I want to pay $90 to see some animals I will go to zoos and save $60. I feel like the "magic" of Disney shines least in this park. Also, Expedition Everest is very overrated. Coney Island was pretty underwhelming with no good rides in the park while it is $9 per ride. The Cyclone was pretty disappointing for how built up it was.
 
Indiana Beach. It has one great coaster (Cornball Express), but besides that it is dirty and half the coasters always seem to be broken down.
 
Ignoring minor parks with just kiddy coasters etc.:

Six Flags New England - one good coaster, a load of filler crap and a horrible atmosphere.

Carowinds - vile place. Hated it with a passion and would happily light the match to burn it down.

Indiana Beach - A couple of very good coasters, granted, but it doesn't make up for how rundown it is and what a pack of **** the staff are.

Chessington - Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Crap rides, crap theming even before they pulled it down, and a crap day to be had by all.

Disney Studios Paris - piss poor excuse for a park, especially a Disney one. Barely enough to fill two hours. No atmosphere and looks like ****.
 
Re: RE: Worst theme parks

Elitch Gardens, now its been a decade since I was there or so, but thinking back, just awful. Its cramped, horrible line up, and wasn't good.

Sea World San Diego is by far the worst though. Outrageous prices, tiny park, upcharge for anything and everything, no shade, and just awful. Wish they would just combine with the san Diego zoo and call it a day.
 
How come people hate so much on Chessington? I prefer it to Thorpe Park.

Well worst parks I've ever been to:

Freizeit-Land Geiselwind - gosh you don't wanna be there for more than 2 minutes.
Legoland Billund - This park was a waste of my time and money.
Thorpe Park: no comment
Drayton Manor: no comment
 
Yeah, Drayton Manor as well. It just feels so lack lustre and has nothing to it. I know they're investing but it still feels...like nothing really.
 
Drayton Manor.

It's dirty, it's boring, it doesn't actually have that many rides, the zoo's poor and it's poorly laid out.
 
While I can understand all the hate for Drayton, I always leave a park and base my opinions of how good a day I've managed to have there across all the times I've visited.

I've never, once, had a "bad" day at Drayton. However, it's helped by a few things:

1. I tend to go with the family and the park is a superb place for an "under teen family".
2. When not with family, I've been with CF which tends to make a day better naturally.
3. I actually adore a couple of the rides there and secretly also love Shockwave.

I don't think it's a brilliant park. It's certainly suffered from neglect in a lot of areas. It's tired and dirty in most places (other than the new installs). The zoo is mediocre at best, the food somewhere between abysmal and "just about edible if you catch it on a good day" and the staff can be some of the worst I've ever encountered.

However, it ticks more positive boxes for me than negative.

I could also go as a "grown up" and because there are a handful of rides I could ride over and over (Maelstrom, Pandemonium, Black Buccaneer, Rapids) and some I love to ride at least once (Apocalypse, Shockwave, The Haunting, Chuff Nuggets) I'd still have a mediocre time at least with a few highlights.

Chessington suffers a lot of the problems Drayton does, only without a family in tow, it offers nothing really at all. The rides are all **** (sorry to tell people this, but Vampire is dull and Dragon's Fury balls ), and each year the theming gets worse and worse. It's just less attractive. However, it's still a good theme park for the audience it caters for.

This is my major issue with these topics. I can't think of any really dreadful theme parks (even Flamingoland which I actively dislike), because they have a niche somewhere, somethnig that is right if you happen to be the right person there at the right time with the right group.

I guess it's down to places like Coney Beach, Ocean whatsit in South Shields and New Pleasureland to really take the brunt of this topic - but even they fit where they are as terrible, run down make do amusement fairs.

I'll have a think, but I honestly can't think of a really awful theme park I've been to. I may just be lucky though :lol:
 
Have to agree with Furie on Drayton, I went with my son and Thomas Land was fantastic for him, it had some decent flats and extra creds for me. None of the creds are stand outs but Apocalypse is currently my favourite drop tower.

Chessington (last time i went) was rubbish, I struggled to find anything I actually wanted to go on. This was a couple of years ago though, and I will be going back this year with my son so maybe i'll appreciate it a bit more with him with me.
Seems like Merlin are focusing on TP/AT and leaving Chess to rot, 10 years since their last coaster and that was a poor mans spinball.
 
It's actually superb with kids mate. It's just as an adult, it's pants.

delpiero1982 said:
10 years since their last coaster and that was a poor mans spinball.
Click to expand...

And I thought I was going to upset people with my comments. Put on your fire proof suit :lol:
 
furie said:
It's actually superb with kids mate. It's just as an adult, it's pants.
Click to expand...
May start looking forward to this a bit more then. Need to go on Cobra too as thats been added since I was last there.
Will keep an eye out for Joey too, Choo Choo!
 
The absolute worst park I've been to, barring the Jersey shore parks, is Six Flags America, without contest. Every ride except for one is ****. So bad in fact the SLC seemed good by comparison. There is no shade at all in the park, the layout is something made in RCT, with no real point to it, rides are behind other rides, there no way to get back without back pedaling, (I think it's something in a T shape). Then there are the people, long story short, I've felt safer driving through the Bronx than walking through this horrible park. There are maybe 2 things in this park that aren't just awful. 1. It's tiny, so you wont be spending a lot of time in hell, and 2. Jokers Jinx is actually pretty awesome, but since Spaghetti Bowls are all over the nation, there is no reason to travel ONLY for this ride.
 
The worst park in my opinion is Bobbejaanland overhere in Belgium. The sad thing is that about 18 years ago, it was my favorite park, ranking way higher than Efteling.

But now I just don't care about Bobbejaanland anymore. The last time I visited was in 2004 and never felt the need to go back even though it's only 20 minutes away from here.
The park is boring and has nothing more left to offer for me. Yes, they do invest more in their park than Walibi Belgium does (last investment in Bobbejaanland was 2010, the last one in Walibi Belgium was in 2003), but I don't have the energy to go to Bobbejaanland. Their rides are neglected, the park is dirty and needs maintenance, their staff is rude and always looks pissed,...
You pay 32 EUR, but the last time we were there, we finished the whole park in only 2 hours. We left there 3 hours later. None of us wanted to do a re-ride on any of their rides.
 
Bakken is essentially a permanent funfair, with some shockingly bad rides, **** atmosphere and the feeling you overpaid to get the wristband so are forced to ride things to not feel too shortchanged...

Plus the only park I've seen staff smoking whilst operating on their rides (on the Mine Train AND the woodie)...
 
There are lots of bad parks, lots of ugly ones, and lots of disappointing ones; but I think I've only been to one that was a national tentpole tourism destination that was all three at once.

Now, I will preface this with the fact that I visited on the last day of a trip where we visited Efteling, Phantasialand and Toverland on the previous days, and these three hit all my buttons so easily that pretty much anything that followed would likely seem much worse than it actually was. I will also say that I hadn't actually had my opinion of the place coloured by the opinions of others - I hadn't actually heard anything about the place at all, really, besides a few words about the park's biggest attraction, Goliath.

So yes, I'm talking about Walibi Holland. On its face, the place seemed perfectly quaint, if a little remote. The very first area we went to was the new music themed bit, and that seemed perfectly fine, even nice. I think it was about the time we headed towards Goliath, which irritatingly forces you to head towards the middle of the park, past a massive ferris wheel, some particularly grotty game stalls, and a drop tower that seemed to have been placed there in an afterthought. The rides themselves looked fine, but something else struck my attention. It was the faded paint on everything we passed. It was the cracked, uneven paving along the way. It was the lack of any atmosphere. It was the lack of beauty, even with all the foliage, and the bounty of ruddy lakes throughout the park. It felt devoid of any actual joy, and it's as if they filled the vacuum with dull consumerism. Aside from Goliath, there were no other entertaining rides, and on top of that, the majority of the rest of the offering was actively unpleasant.

Now, again, there is a likelihood that this was because it was the last day on a trip, and it was a pretty warm day that made me a little less receptive. Even accounting for that, it doesn't excuse the park, given how poor the show was even accounting for my total lack of expectations. They need to spend a little to add some actual emotion into the park: a little music, a touch of paint. I hope their retheme will do the job.
 
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