Please... Arizona needs a Theme Park!

^This is a longshot, but is it possible there isn't a large amusement park in AZ partially b/c of all of the other stuff there is to do outdoors? It seems that hypothesis doesn't make too much sense because of all of the parks in California, but you have to remember California's huge population as compared to Arizona.

So I guess what I'm saying is that maybe Arizona doesn't have a large theme park due to a combination of the relatively low population, population demographics, lack of another large city within reasonable driving distance (LA and Vegas are just too far away), unfavorable climate, drought and water shortage, and competition from the large amount of other vacation activities available.

Does anybody remember the expanssion pack for RCT2 that let you build a theme park in the middle of the Grand Canyon.

Mybe they should build a park like that. Ha Ha Ha;)

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Mamoosh said:

Arizona...not a tourist destination? So I suppose no one goes to that really deep canyon at the north end of the state?

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I never said there wasn't any tourism to Arizona, just that it isn't a big draw.

Let's use 2004 for comparison.

27.8 Million tourists visited Arizona (Source: http://www.nau.edu/hrm/ahrrc/az_otrl/stats.htm)

21.3 Million tourists visited San Antonio!
(Source: http://www.sanantoniocvb.com/local_partners/Research/DKSResearch%202005.pdf)

That's right: San Antonio alone draws almost as much tourism as the entire state of Arizona.

And considering that 21.3 million is concentrated on just one city, that's a lot of money to flow into a park. *** Edited 5/11/2006 2:29:20 AM UTC by IntrepidationAW***

^business and in-state travelers skew those stastics horribly. If you look closer, it says there were 9.1 million "overnight leisure travelers" for San Antonio, compared to 21.68 million leisure travelers for Arizona (I got that figure by multiplying 27.8mil and 78%, stats from the site you linked to).

My argument here is that it's not the number of tourists in arizona that have led to there being no major theme park, rather it's the various things I listed at the top of this page.

Also, San Antonio isn't really a good point of comparison because it's one of the top 10 most visited cities in the US. Why not compare it to Cleveland, or Kansas City, etc... cities that aren't neccesarily known as tourist cities, yet have one or more large amusement parks near by.

I think building a new park is a risky venture even if the numbers are there to support it. Many parks start small and then grow. Unfortunately, C&C doesn't look like it has any room to expand. That being said, I could imagine a small attraction being built in the Phoenix area in the not-too-distant future.

By the way, If I were to build a park there, I'd rig up firehoses so that it was always raining. ;)

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Lee Grant said:
Six Flags may not be the best people to start an amusement park there either with all the financial problems they're going through after having to close down Astroworld and dealing with New Orleans, among debt problems with other parks.

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Good luck getting Six Flags to build anything but a water park, and it sounds like Phoenix has enough of those already. Also, SF didn't HAVE to close Astroworld, they chose to.

And didn't get near the amount of money they thought they would from the sale. I agree the parking issue was pretty severe, but I didn't get the impression that it was that bad that they needed to close the park to resolve it.

I often am surprised with how people whine over how unfair a park closure is, what with the parks that are just total failures, but even I find the closure of Astroworld to have been a pretty lousy idea.

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sirloindude said:

I often am surprised with how people whine over how unfair a park closure is, what with the parks that are just total failures, but even I find the closure of Astroworld to have been a pretty lousy idea.

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Yup. Hate to beat a dead horse but if you look at the minimal investment put into Astroworld the last 10 years and the profit turned, you'd scratch your head at how this could have possibily been a good idea.

/end derail

What I am trying to say that somebody should put a theme park in Arizona for the locals AND to help increase tourism for Arizona. *** Edited 5/14/2006 6:17:59 AM UTC by Hamster Boy***