About 12 years ago, I guess, the City of New Orleans got its very own amusement park. At first, it was called Jazz Land--it was a pretty dismal failure, with pretty lame rides. Still, it was an amusement park, so we went to it a lot. It had one truly good rollercoaster, a wooden one named the Mega Zeph and modeled after the Zephyr of bygone days at Pontchartrain Beach.
Around 2003, Six Flags bought the amusement park, made a few minor improvements, and added a couple of new rollercoasters. The park was still pretty much a dismal failure. Six Flags New Orleans was about the last place that the tourists wanted to visit when there are so many other options here, and the park was built in the middle of a piece of swampland, basically. It was a horrible place to be in the summertime, with very little shade coverage. But still, I have some fond memories of goofing around there with friends--this was long before parenthood came into the picture for me.
The park closed on August 27, 2005, in preparation for Hurricane Katrina. It has never reopened. I'm sure it was a relief to Six Flags to have the park flooded during Katrina so that they could claim their losses with their insurance company and move on. But it has always shocked me that they were allowed to just completely walk away from it and leave their mess behind. (Other than when they dismantled and moved the Batman rollercoaster to another Six Flags park somewhere else.)
Here's how Six Flags New Orleans has remained for almost 5 1/2 years. According to this video, it's finally going to be demolished in January (H/T, Jeffrey).
2 comments:
Your title got this one bang on. I was waiting for zombies to lumber into the scene for most of this video. Too bad it's being demolished, it has such character.
I just passed there yesterday. I was shocked that it looked as if the storm had just hit us.
Waiting for January.
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