Castle Park (Riverside CA) removes Spinning Mouse

I drove by Castle Park earlier this week and noted that their long troubled Spinning Mouse had been removed. It was closed more than it ran over the last few years, but it's finally been removed. That alone would be troubling enough, but given the other issues the park has had with closed attractions, it sure puts a cloud over the park's future.

Cute little park with a TON of Amusement Industry history (see Hurlbut, Wendell "Bud").

Honestly, I'm glad it's gone. It was an awful ride with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Here's hoping that the park puts something better in its place.

I thought that ride was fun, and the park was outstanding. More fun than Magic Mountain this past time. Maybe they’ll get Scorpion.

Have they cleaned that place up? It was a dump when I went in 2019. Half of the rides were closed and many were completely disassembled. Mini golf course looked like it hadn't seen water for years and was falling apart. That was especially telling since that was the home park for Palace Entertainment before they moved HQ to Pittsburgh shortly before the pandemic.

I thought it was a nice little park when I stopped by in 2009. The mini-golf course is is huge!

In the past year, they have removed the Sally dark ride - Ghost Blasters, the Spider ride, and the Screamin Demon - spinning coaster; and they added a picknik area and a couple of arcade games. They also discontinued Anthony the Magic - the one entertainment show that they had. The miniuture golf course fountains are all broken and have not held water in years. The chain must be broke or this park must not be doing very well to spend any money on it.

Castle Park's last coaster is up for sale:

https://www.amusement-rides.com/product/junior-coaster-247-vekoma

I'd always hoped to see more investment in this lovely little theme park with Knott's Berry Farm roots. I SO wanted to see a CCI pop up there 20 years ago. I grew up with the mini golf course. It's great. And although I'd love to see Scorpion sent there, or an ArieForce One clone, I don't have much hope for the place. Seems to be going the way of the other FECs in the area (Scandia and Pharoh's Kingdom.) Gotta take care of what you have before adding more things to neglect.

Must have went downhill quickly. I was there in July 2021 and the place was fantastic, clean and all rides were open. The only problem I had was getting a pop out of a machine, and they fixed that quickly. Shame to hear all these bad reports, it was a great place.

I have Castle Park, Knott's and Magic Mountain passes and go to Seaworld San Diego, Belmont Park, Disneyland and DCA about once per year.

Castle Park has barely any business on the weekends or even during the summer since it is to hot in the inland empire, so admission is mostly broke locals on discount tickets or cheap annual passes. I have asked one of the managers that I have known for several years how they stay open and he said things didn't look good with all of the rides, structures, fountains and golf courses approching 30 - 50 years old with neglected maintenence and appoaching the end of their useful lifespan. I am just shocked at how quickly things disappeared recently. They spent some money refurbing the Sally dark ride but the guns were not working in at least one of the three working cars, so I guess they scrapped the whole attraction. They cut maintenance hours to only scheduled operating hours, so when the park is closed during the week offseason there is no ride maintenence and this is the past year or so and not COVID related.

Pharoh's Los Kingdom failed almost in the first year because a girl was going down the tallest water slide in the water park and a misalligned water slide section tore her vagina from the pelvic bone and they settled for I think 4 million dollars? The park was sold and the carnival rides sold/removed and it went downhill ever since. There was some raves and drug issues with the police after it was sold from the orignal owner when it because a water park / tramoline park / FEC. Ugh!

Scandia Ontario didn't have the business and never added any new rides from after it opened. They alse had the coaster with the weird rule that when it was under 70 degress, every seat on the coaster needed to be filled before they would dispacth it. Not one single seat could be vacant and they would wait for over a half hour for an extra person if needed. Complete incompetence in running a park. The arcade was dated with a lot of out of order machines. They still have a boring park in Victorville that is never busy. BTW, just because you valleyed a coaster on a cold freezing day when it was empty without water dummies, it does not translate to the entire coaster train needs to be full from now on when it is uner 70 degrees. That is just being cheap on the electric bill and makes people hate you.

The unfortunate thing is that there isn't a mid or upper market for any inland empire amusement park. As soon as someone can afford a Knotts, SFMM, Seaworld, Universal, or Disney pass; they move up and leave the IE to the broke locals or people like me that need an occasional flat ride fix between trips to the city.

I guess I went back through all my old amusement park forum links since TPR forums began to die around COVID. Their Knott's and SFMM forums are dead along with the similar forums on MC. I can't find any other active So Cal amusement park forums or interest outside D'land and sometimes Univeral Hollywood. Either way, it is pointless to type on here if the other people don't care so maybe I will check back in a few years to see if things change.

Jasonland:

TPR forums

That pretty much tells me everything I need to know.

I love how people always want to leave it up to others to influence the quality of a community, instead of making it something better themselves.

Jeff:

I love how people always want to leave it up to others to influence the quality of a community, instead of making it something better themselves.

In this country we use the phrase "pissing into the wind" for that.

There are too many echo chambers on the internet where any attempt at being sensible is quickly drowned out. The site formerly known as Twitter springs to mind.

It wouldn't surprise me if Palace is looking for a buyer for Castle. It's the only property they have west of the Mississippi, plus there is talk that Parques Riunidos is looking for a potential buyer for the US operation.

Palace also operates Raging Waters in Los Angeles county. I believe they still have two Boomers FECs in Southern California too. The remaining California properties share support services like HR and marketing.

My understanding is Palace sold all the Boomers around the time they were moving their offices to Pittsburgh.