I have three of them for your surfing enjoyment: Insane Asylums, Sanitariums and Prisons Creepy, Abandoned and Eerie Places and no list would be complete without Creepy, Abandoned and Formerly Fun Parks. I can see who is pinning what from my page and consistently, the abandoned places boards are almost as popular as the Disney ones. ( Photo by Michael Turtle))Īnyone that has visiting my Pinterest Pageknows that, along with the ridiculous number of Disney-everything boards, I have several dark boards as well. The castle would be behind the photographer. (ABOVE: Nara Dreamland's “Main Street USA” and the entrance / train station at the far end. The contrast from the bright, extremely noisy day to the dark, very peaceful quiet at night was palpable. Otherwise, I think being all alone in a huge, quiet amusement park / ghost town would be freakin’ awesome! I often wonder…if you get to stay in the Cinderella Suite at the Magic Kingdom, do they lock you in the room or can you wander around the park after closing when there are only a few cast members working? Admittedly, when I worked at an amusement park as security, the time after we closed and chased all the customers out was my favorite. That lake is the reason River Country is closed. But I wouldn’t swim across a dirty lake, like the guy that went to Discovery Island. That would be the most surreal time, I think. If there was one near me, hell yeah I’d try to get in there! Especially at dusk. A whole subculture of ‘urban explorers’ (or ‘haikyo’) risk injury and arrest to get into these places for the photos and the adrenaline rush. So, just what is it about abandoned places that catches our attention and curiosity? I admit, I’d love to stumble across some really cool, creepy, forgotten place, and I’m not the only one. You can see the Contemporary Hotel in the background) (ABOVE: Discovery Island at night taken by urban explorer.
All just left where they are to rot (Ooohhh…. There are even abandoned sections in the parks that are still standing but not used. I have done posts on all three and I’ll add the links to those in this paragraph, as well as the bottom of this post. Many Disney fans know of the abandoned Disney parks: River Country and Discovery Island, both within the Walt Disney World complex, and Treasure Island in the Bahamas, which was the precursor to Castaway Cay. In honor of the new park, I’m sharing some darker history about Disney and one of it’s former competitors: Nara Dreamland. (ABOVE: The abandoned Dreamland entrance in 2011. I was there in 2000 and drove right by the entrance to the park, but didn’t have the time to go in. I continuously kick myself in the arse about Paris. It’s on my bucket list to visit all the parks before I die. Shanghai will join Hong Kong, Tokyo, Tokyo Disney Sea, Paris, Orlando and of course, Anaheim, California, where it all started.
This will be the second Disney park in China. Disney is preparing to open it’s seventh amusement park in spring of 2016 Disneyland Shanghai.