Theme Park Closes after 8 days, Disneyland Rides Announced, and More

Dixie Landing Closes for the season after just 8 operating days

Dixie Landing, a waterpark and amusement park located in Louisiana initially opened on May 23rd for Memorial Day weekend. About 2 weeks before that, the owners announced that the waterpark would not be opening this year.

On June 2nd, it was announced that the amusement park side of Dixie Landing would be closed for the rest of the season. After about 8 operating days of the season, they announced their closure.

What went wrong? It was cited that lack of attendance was the main reason. The park has been struggling for years. I guess the owners very quickly saw the writing on the wall and their bank accounts draining when very few guests showed up in the first week. No one closes an amusement park because they are making too much money!

I’m quite sad about this turn of events, I may have visited the park this year on a road trip. But it may possibly never re-open unless they get a large influx of cash. I had seen at least one of their coasters for sale on a second hand theme park reselling website. The odds of the rides sitting for another year unused and being able to return to operations again are low as the owners will have to pay for maintenance to keep the rides in shape.

Disneyland officially announces Avatar land Being built and Coco Ride

After finally getting approval from the City of Anaheim for their Disneyland Forward initiative. Disney is in full planning mode. They’ve been wanting to make some big additions to their parks for quite some time but have been land locked. Disneyland Forward was a public awareness campaign to drive positive sentiment to what the park wants to accomplish in the next decade.

The first large scale project they are taking on is removing the current uber/lyft drop off section as well as the bus pickup/dropoff section, and moving that across the road to a plot of land they had purchased awhile back. It’s here that they will be building a brand new parking garage, complete with a bus area, and a ride share area. There will be a bridge connecting this area to the main esplanade.

Because Disney is removing the bus area from the current esplanade, this gives them extra room to build an Avatar land into the Hollywood section of California Adventure. This means that a portion of that land will be closed for good and turned into this new land. The park has announced that the Monsters Inc. ride in the area will close sometime in 2026 to make way for this expansion.

It’s unclear how much else of the land will be changed for the new avatar land as the parks did say they were keeping a portion of the Hollywood section of the park.

The park also announced that the new Coco ride will be built near Pixar Pier and Paradise Gardens Park. They will be replacing a section of the backstage area with the ride. Construction will begin sometime in the fall.

I believe this will be a water ride that will feature lots of music and take guests to the land of the dead. This idea kind of sounds like the ride concept we made of Coco for April Fools day one year, check out the video here.

Halloween Horror Nights Announces Fallout and Five Nights at Freddy’s

Universal Hollywood Studios and Orlando have announced the first two IP’s that will be at the events this year, Fallout and Five Nights at Freddy’s.

Fans have wanted a Five Nights at Freddy’s house for years now. Many have said it would translate extremely well into a house at HHN. Based on a video game where you are the lone security guard at a defunct family entertainment center where the animatronics come to life and want to kill you.

This will be an extremely popular house at the event as sooo many people grew up playing its games.

Fallout is also a popular video game that is most likely being turned into a horror house. I’m not sure there are as many scary moments in this IP to be a truly scary house but it may make for a fun one regardless!

I’m assuming that both these IP’s will be a house versus a scarezone because the latter don’t build hype for HHN and Universal will most likely want all the hype they can get to sell as many tickets as possible.

News At A Glance

• Siren’s Curse to open June 28th at Cedar Point.

• Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit at Universal Orlando Closing August 18th to make way for new ride.

• New night time parade at Disney World starts July 20th

Disney World Announces End Date of Tom Sawyer Island for Cars Expansion

Disney World just announced that the last day of operation for Tom Sawyer Island will be July 6th. After that, it will be transformed into Piston Peak (Obligatory “He did what on the peak!” joke).

Piston Peak will be a cars themed area of this land. It’s debatable whether or not this will be considered a ‘Cars land’ or just a ‘part of the land themed to the Cars movie’. I kind of think Disney will market it as a ‘Cars land’ as that would be a major selling point.

This new area will feature two rides, the main one being called ‘Off-Road Rally Adventure’ that will take guests through this stunning national park. The other ride has not been named yet but has been said to be more family friendly.

I’m really hoping that they use the same ride mechanics from Radiator Springs Racers at Disneyland California Adventure, but in a new setting. Imagineers have teased a type of golfcart looking ride vehicle going through terrain that in my opinion looks lame. Here is the video of it at D23 Brazil, you can skip to the 1:15 mark to check out the ride.

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