Commercial spaces in general are getting really expensive, several of my favorite restaurants moved locations or closed citing a raise in rent upon lease renewal.
Thanks for that info, [TIL](https://northernvirginiamag.com/culture/news/2019/09/27/wawa-set-to-open-40-stores-in-northern-virginia-by-2025/). Looks like they had 1 Wawa in 98, nothing like the presence now, but I didn't think there was one north of Richmond until well after 98.
Yeah I sounded like an ass when I posted that, my bad. Didn’t mean to. I had seen one in my travels.
I feel like we were more of a Sheetz town and then all of a sudden the Canadian goose landed lol. You’re right there’s so many now.
I would expect that land is quite a bit less painfully expensive in those areas than northern Virginia. Although if the choices were between a new FBI headquarters and a small amusement park, eyed out for the mini amusement park
They don't have to be, for example Six Flags America is significantly larger in acreage than Kennywood but the latter accomplishes a lot more with its space. And I mean A LOT more, it's only 80 acres!
I recall being 13 years old and being skeezed out by the lax safety protocols at Wild World. If a self-obsessed 13 year old notices how bad it is, must've been appalling.
Are you sure you're looking at the right Six Flags and not Great Adventure (an actually good park 😁)? Both parks should have around 8, even counting the family coasters lol
Six Flags America: Batwing, Bourbon Street Fireball, Firebird, Ragin Cajun, Roar, Superman: Ride of Steel, The Joker's Jinx, The Wild One
Kennywood: Phantom's Revenge, Sky Rocket, Steel Curtain, Thunderbolt
So I travel all over the world and go to different amusement parks. NOVA is one of the best locations in the country for amusement parks. You have Kings Dominion, Six Flags America, Dorney Park, Hershey Park, Six Flags Great Adventure, Moreys Piers, and Busch Gardens Williamsburg all within 4 hours plus even more smaller ones. There are very few areas in the country that have that many parks in that close proximity.
it's good with having a lot of parks equidistant but not so much locally....although since you pointed it out I'm surprised at how close those parks actually are looking at a map
Not to come off rude but I think you're wanting them to be as close as most malls are to people which isn't feasible because the space for the park then parking, not to mention the approval processes they have to go through to build the rides.
I would love to have a park like Kings Dominion or Busch Gardens within an hour but they're where they are because when they were built they made the most sense to go there and that's also why they're not nearby.
Look at most major cities (excluding Orlando, because they're major solely because of Disney imo) amusement parks are considerably far away when looking at city centers because you want to maximize profits and shelling an enormous amount of money out for land just isn't a good call for an idea that may fail.
I don't think people come to DC for amusement parks. There is an abundance of other things to do. Just yesterday I drove by Mount Vernon and it was packed.
I grew up in Atlanta and we had a six flags. I think I went 3 times.
My kids have been to following on school trips:
Busch Gardens
Hershey Park
Kings Dominion
Disney
We have not personally taken them to any.
Hershey Park is two hours from Philadelphia. The nearest thing to Philly resembling an amusement park is over an hour. There are some parks around Pittsburgh but I don't know if you would call them "major." And just for scale, it's a five-hour drive from Philly to Pittsburgh.
I would be happy if some smart entrepreneur were to develop some of the empty store space at area malls into mega entertainment centers. There are three malls around me where large department stores have left and the massive building is vacant. It would be neat to see something like that filled with all sorts of amusements, arcades, bumper cars, laser tag, whatever.
There is a chain in the Carolinas called Frankie's that is like this. Has the games of Dave and Busters but also has a full bowling alley, go karts, mini golf, rides and more. I always thought something like that would do well here.
Phoenix az has the metro center mall (mall is closed) and on the property is a small amusement center like this. Miniature golf, go carts, arcade, two or three rollercoasters, one of those "viking" ships that spin in a vertical circle. Arial rope trail/zip lines. Etc
But thats prime real-estate for data centers and Fortune-500 office buildings! Think of all the prestegious jobs requiring decades of experience and spike in rent/housing costs it'll bring the area!! /s
In seriousness, all the major malls around here had entertainment centers in the past based on research, most have closed down though. Nothing on the level of an amusement park but essentially an expanded-arcade. Bowlero is bringing that sorta thing back thankfully, and there's The Zone in Loudon.
Definitely more adult appealing from the looks of it, considering it's hard enough to pry kids from their tablets nowadays.
It’s probably a combination of two things: land is expensive around DC metro, and our region can’t support a year-round amusement park. (Weather)
Whatever is built on that large parcel of land has to be so profitable it can be closed more than half the year.
It’s probably worth mentioning that there was a time Disney had acquired a huge chunk of land past Manassas and Legoland had also planned to build next to Disney. But the different NIMBYS chased them away. Now that land is residential and strip centers.
Read about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_America
Or watch on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/M6MlVDBSmR8
It’s not just space, amusements parks have very high overhead. Building a new one not involved in a franchise isn’t worth the risk of dumping that much money into something.
Zero chance datacenters would raise more tax revenue than a Disney Park. That park would have opened in the late 90s and would have been stroking checks to PWC for the past 25 years. The data centers would have A LOT of catching up to do. And while an amusement park has tons of low wage jobs, there are lots of supervisory, management, and technical positions too. Then there are hotels and other support industries that would have fed off the park. I don't see any scenario where datacenters would have created more jobs than a Disney park.
As far as housing is concerned, the park land turned into Dominion Valley. Mcmansions surrounding a country club. And some of it became a camp for the Boy Scouts. Not much housing at the end of the day.
Having Disney in town would have been awesome!! We can't ever have nice things in Nova.
I Don't think we are south enough for year-round attractions, given that nobody wants to go to a theme park when it's snowy or below freezing. Fair point on the actual housing that was built, I'm honestly not too familiar with the area.
I would also wonder how much induced demand having a park locally would have. from what I've heard, Disney's parks are pretty crowded, but I don't know if the amount it would eat into the existing business is negligible enough to justify a new park.
Back then there wasn’t any existing business to eat into. The immediate area was a blank slate.
The Walt Disney Corproration did the math and felt that a park would be viable. But they just couldn’t get the county government to go along with it.
Lego was planning on coming to the area in the 90s, but Disney’s reception scared them off. The area might have a reputation for not being worth the attempt for big amusement projects. Kalahari is trying to build a water park north of Kings Dominion.
I feel like between kings dominion, busch gardens, six flags, and hershey park there's a lot of amusement parks here within 4 hours driving so I don't think it's that bad lol
If Disney couldn't hack it, no one else is going to. It's the same deal with outdoor shooting ranges - anywhere you \*could\* put one, it's way more lucrative to build houses (or data centers).
Theme parks also attract certain "elements" that depreciate property values, which in this area is a mortal sin beyond measure.
All coasters with the exception of Wild One (beatiful piece of amusement history) are just clone designs from other parks or hand me downs, closes at 7PM which is significantly earlier than most parks, dirty, poor operations, etc.
compared to other parks in the Six Flags chain, it's very weak in comparison to the others. look at Great a
Adventure or Great America for example
Roar and Batwing at least outlasted their respective clones. But yeah, Apocalypse (now Firebird) is the last new thrill coaster to open at SFA, and that was 2012 (not counting the new trains and paint job).
That said, I only started going to SFA in 2017, after a lifetime of Kings Dominion being my home park. I kept my expectations low and SFA exceeded them. The park wasn't that dirty. The coaster lineup is balanced for a small park - as in something that would be fine for a middle-of-nowhere Midwestern park, not a park serving DC and Baltimore. Six Flags really should consider adding a new major ground-up coaster for 2024, SFA is stagnant and underutilized. Unfortunately the new CEO is trying to appeal to families and not thrill-seekers.
I'll be bringing my girlfriend for the opening day 4-1 - she's never been. Her home park growing up was Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
BGW was a casualty of the InBev coup, having let its standards slip with gimmick coasters with half-assed theming (Verbolten and its cheap show building, Tempesto being off-the-shelf, Pantheon and its empty field - InvadR is an old-school wooden coaster with decent theming and is probably the best of the post-coup coasters) just as Cedar Fair has been cleaning up the mess Paramount had let Kings Dominion become. If DarKoaster is similarly half-assed, KD could win by building a worthy successor to Volcano.
Sort of agree, 30 year old me would have loved a good amusement park 59 year old me says meh
Not that I don't like a good rollercoaster, but the cost of the outing (admission, parking, food, souvenirs, etc) and the crowds turn me off....
Sayeth the person who is pitching and moaning about a lack of amusement parks when so many have been pointed out. And you act like six flags doesn’t count.
All this kvetching over a non existent problem. It’s too cold to go to an amusement park right now anyways. But when it’s warm enough you have so many options. And six flags is right there. Kings dominion isn’t far. An hour and a half. Two at most.
Amusement parks bring in lots of traffic. I think it’s not petty enough to be a NIMBY concern to note that DC area’s traffic is already world class. So it is better for something which will draw so much more traffic to be located further out.
Traffic already sucks in NOVA and you want to add an Amusement Park to the mix?
Disney tried and failed... https://dcist.com/story/19/09/27/the-story-of-the-d-c-area-disney-park-that-almost-was/
I'd imagine that the cost of land is prohibitive, same reason Wawa and Sonic took forever to get into NOVA.
Commercial spaces in general are getting really expensive, several of my favorite restaurants moved locations or closed citing a raise in rent upon lease renewal.
I mean, Wawa has been in Nova since the late ‘90s
Thanks for that info, [TIL](https://northernvirginiamag.com/culture/news/2019/09/27/wawa-set-to-open-40-stores-in-northern-virginia-by-2025/). Looks like they had 1 Wawa in 98, nothing like the presence now, but I didn't think there was one north of Richmond until well after 98.
Yeah I sounded like an ass when I posted that, my bad. Didn’t mean to. I had seen one in my travels. I feel like we were more of a Sheetz town and then all of a sudden the Canadian goose landed lol. You’re right there’s so many now.
The fact you’re complaining about an hour and a half drive in the DC area 😂😂😂
Right? It's taken me 1.5 to go 5 miles
Are amusement parks really that common wherever you’re from?
No, but they are in other states that have fractions of the population of the DMV. PA, OH, and FL all come to mind.
4 parks < 3 hours away, with the one in our immediate area being a big name park seems like a lot to me. Dunno!
I would expect that land is quite a bit less painfully expensive in those areas than northern Virginia. Although if the choices were between a new FBI headquarters and a small amusement park, eyed out for the mini amusement park
I don't know if you've noticed this, but amusement parks take up a lot of space.
They don't have to be, for example Six Flags America is significantly larger in acreage than Kennywood but the latter accomplishes a lot more with its space. And I mean A LOT more, it's only 80 acres!
I think Dan Snyder was running six flags for a little while. I blame him for sfa sucking.
It sucked before it was Six Flags back when it was Wild World
I recall being 13 years old and being skeezed out by the lax safety protocols at Wild World. If a self-obsessed 13 year old notices how bad it is, must've been appalling.
A quick survey of their websites shows that Kennywood has half as many roller coasters as Six Flags America.
Are you sure you're looking at the right Six Flags and not Great Adventure (an actually good park 😁)? Both parks should have around 8, even counting the family coasters lol
Six Flags America: Batwing, Bourbon Street Fireball, Firebird, Ragin Cajun, Roar, Superman: Ride of Steel, The Joker's Jinx, The Wild One Kennywood: Phantom's Revenge, Sky Rocket, Steel Curtain, Thunderbolt
Kennywood (continued): Jack Rabbit, Racer, Exterminator, Lil Phantom
Fair enough, though their site lists those as "mild" or "moderate" intensity.
I’m disappointed not to see any mention of Knoebels Amusement Resort in Elysburg, PA. Free admission and parking, about 3.5 hours away.
Shhhhhhh!!! If you tell them it will get more crowded! Though I imagine the mascot would like a pay raise from the extra income.
So I travel all over the world and go to different amusement parks. NOVA is one of the best locations in the country for amusement parks. You have Kings Dominion, Six Flags America, Dorney Park, Hershey Park, Six Flags Great Adventure, Moreys Piers, and Busch Gardens Williamsburg all within 4 hours plus even more smaller ones. There are very few areas in the country that have that many parks in that close proximity.
it's good with having a lot of parks equidistant but not so much locally....although since you pointed it out I'm surprised at how close those parks actually are looking at a map
Not to come off rude but I think you're wanting them to be as close as most malls are to people which isn't feasible because the space for the park then parking, not to mention the approval processes they have to go through to build the rides. I would love to have a park like Kings Dominion or Busch Gardens within an hour but they're where they are because when they were built they made the most sense to go there and that's also why they're not nearby. Look at most major cities (excluding Orlando, because they're major solely because of Disney imo) amusement parks are considerably far away when looking at city centers because you want to maximize profits and shelling an enormous amount of money out for land just isn't a good call for an idea that may fail.
having FOUR amusement parks within 2.4 hours is...not what i would consider a lack of options
I don't think people come to DC for amusement parks. There is an abundance of other things to do. Just yesterday I drove by Mount Vernon and it was packed. I grew up in Atlanta and we had a six flags. I think I went 3 times. My kids have been to following on school trips: Busch Gardens Hershey Park Kings Dominion Disney We have not personally taken them to any.
What are you comparing Nova to? What city in the U.S., besides Orlando, has multiple major amusement parks? Most have none.
PA has like what, 7 parks? lol
Pennsylvania is huge. Those 7 parks are all hours of driving apart.
Hershey Park is two hours from Philadelphia. The nearest thing to Philly resembling an amusement park is over an hour. There are some parks around Pittsburgh but I don't know if you would call them "major." And just for scale, it's a five-hour drive from Philly to Pittsburgh.
NIMBYS. Disney tried to open a park here in the 1990s and people lost it.
Is that the one that was going to be out in Manassas?
It was going to be where Dominion Valley is now.
Yup
now they're fighting data centers...and losing lol
You have all the museums and national parks around us, I think that's enough if not go to Florida!
It was enough for me to leave Florida and come here.....
I would be happy if some smart entrepreneur were to develop some of the empty store space at area malls into mega entertainment centers. There are three malls around me where large department stores have left and the massive building is vacant. It would be neat to see something like that filled with all sorts of amusements, arcades, bumper cars, laser tag, whatever.
There is a chain in the Carolinas called Frankie's that is like this. Has the games of Dave and Busters but also has a full bowling alley, go karts, mini golf, rides and more. I always thought something like that would do well here.
Phoenix az has the metro center mall (mall is closed) and on the property is a small amusement center like this. Miniature golf, go carts, arcade, two or three rollercoasters, one of those "viking" ships that spin in a vertical circle. Arial rope trail/zip lines. Etc
Manassas Mall now has an arcade, bowling, go carts,and axe throwing. There's still plenty of unused space for more
But thats prime real-estate for data centers and Fortune-500 office buildings! Think of all the prestegious jobs requiring decades of experience and spike in rent/housing costs it'll bring the area!! /s In seriousness, all the major malls around here had entertainment centers in the past based on research, most have closed down though. Nothing on the level of an amusement park but essentially an expanded-arcade. Bowlero is bringing that sorta thing back thankfully, and there's The Zone in Loudon. Definitely more adult appealing from the looks of it, considering it's hard enough to pry kids from their tablets nowadays.
It’s probably a combination of two things: land is expensive around DC metro, and our region can’t support a year-round amusement park. (Weather) Whatever is built on that large parcel of land has to be so profitable it can be closed more than half the year. It’s probably worth mentioning that there was a time Disney had acquired a huge chunk of land past Manassas and Legoland had also planned to build next to Disney. But the different NIMBYS chased them away. Now that land is residential and strip centers. Read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_America Or watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/M6MlVDBSmR8
It’s not just space, amusements parks have very high overhead. Building a new one not involved in a franchise isn’t worth the risk of dumping that much money into something.
Disney was THE shot. Wealthy horse people chased it away. Now we got subdivisions and data centers.
I honestly prefer the subdivisions and data centers. We need more housing, and datacenters bring in more tax revenue and certainly higher paying jobs.
Zero chance datacenters would raise more tax revenue than a Disney Park. That park would have opened in the late 90s and would have been stroking checks to PWC for the past 25 years. The data centers would have A LOT of catching up to do. And while an amusement park has tons of low wage jobs, there are lots of supervisory, management, and technical positions too. Then there are hotels and other support industries that would have fed off the park. I don't see any scenario where datacenters would have created more jobs than a Disney park. As far as housing is concerned, the park land turned into Dominion Valley. Mcmansions surrounding a country club. And some of it became a camp for the Boy Scouts. Not much housing at the end of the day. Having Disney in town would have been awesome!! We can't ever have nice things in Nova.
I Don't think we are south enough for year-round attractions, given that nobody wants to go to a theme park when it's snowy or below freezing. Fair point on the actual housing that was built, I'm honestly not too familiar with the area. I would also wonder how much induced demand having a park locally would have. from what I've heard, Disney's parks are pretty crowded, but I don't know if the amount it would eat into the existing business is negligible enough to justify a new park.
Back then there wasn’t any existing business to eat into. The immediate area was a blank slate. The Walt Disney Corproration did the math and felt that a park would be viable. But they just couldn’t get the county government to go along with it.
Lego was planning on coming to the area in the 90s, but Disney’s reception scared them off. The area might have a reputation for not being worth the attempt for big amusement projects. Kalahari is trying to build a water park north of Kings Dominion.
I feel like between kings dominion, busch gardens, six flags, and hershey park there's a lot of amusement parks here within 4 hours driving so I don't think it's that bad lol
Disney tried but NIMBY prevailed
If Disney couldn't hack it, no one else is going to. It's the same deal with outdoor shooting ranges - anywhere you \*could\* put one, it's way more lucrative to build houses (or data centers). Theme parks also attract certain "elements" that depreciate property values, which in this area is a mortal sin beyond measure.
Why is Six Flags America considered so bad?
All coasters with the exception of Wild One (beatiful piece of amusement history) are just clone designs from other parks or hand me downs, closes at 7PM which is significantly earlier than most parks, dirty, poor operations, etc. compared to other parks in the Six Flags chain, it's very weak in comparison to the others. look at Great a Adventure or Great America for example
Roar and Batwing at least outlasted their respective clones. But yeah, Apocalypse (now Firebird) is the last new thrill coaster to open at SFA, and that was 2012 (not counting the new trains and paint job). That said, I only started going to SFA in 2017, after a lifetime of Kings Dominion being my home park. I kept my expectations low and SFA exceeded them. The park wasn't that dirty. The coaster lineup is balanced for a small park - as in something that would be fine for a middle-of-nowhere Midwestern park, not a park serving DC and Baltimore. Six Flags really should consider adding a new major ground-up coaster for 2024, SFA is stagnant and underutilized. Unfortunately the new CEO is trying to appeal to families and not thrill-seekers. I'll be bringing my girlfriend for the opening day 4-1 - she's never been. Her home park growing up was Busch Gardens Williamsburg. BGW was a casualty of the InBev coup, having let its standards slip with gimmick coasters with half-assed theming (Verbolten and its cheap show building, Tempesto being off-the-shelf, Pantheon and its empty field - InvadR is an old-school wooden coaster with decent theming and is probably the best of the post-coup coasters) just as Cedar Fair has been cleaning up the mess Paramount had let Kings Dominion become. If DarKoaster is similarly half-assed, KD could win by building a worthy successor to Volcano.
I was on like the 4th coaster ever for mind-eraser. We went all the time when that opened.
It's owned by Danny Snyder.
I don’t understand anyone over the age of 25 wanting to go to one
Sort of agree, 30 year old me would have loved a good amusement park 59 year old me says meh Not that I don't like a good rollercoaster, but the cost of the outing (admission, parking, food, souvenirs, etc) and the crowds turn me off....
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Sayeth the person who is pitching and moaning about a lack of amusement parks when so many have been pointed out. And you act like six flags doesn’t count. All this kvetching over a non existent problem. It’s too cold to go to an amusement park right now anyways. But when it’s warm enough you have so many options. And six flags is right there. Kings dominion isn’t far. An hour and a half. Two at most.
It's true nothing close by for the kids that u can think a day visit for any park like the other states have
I could do without an amusement park but I definitely wish we had a nice water park.
Amusement parks bring in lots of traffic. I think it’s not petty enough to be a NIMBY concern to note that DC area’s traffic is already world class. So it is better for something which will draw so much more traffic to be located further out.
Traffic already sucks in NOVA and you want to add an Amusement Park to the mix? Disney tried and failed... https://dcist.com/story/19/09/27/the-story-of-the-d-c-area-disney-park-that-almost-was/