The Remains of American Adventures

One of my favorite blogs is Above the Norm, http://above-the-norm.blogspot.com/.  This blog features many photos of forgotten and abandoned places.  They are both beautiful and haunting.  I thought of this blog when I went to White Water in Atlanta with my children this weekend.  Oddly, the entire water park seems to be surrounded by an abandoned amusement park.  Old rides, thick with ivy, surround the park.   Abandoned buildings sit in the parking lot speaking of forgotten places with sad stories.  It seemed to me an odd place to have a water park, next to the skeletal remains of a dead amusement park, but the story is simpler than it seems.

Wikipedia described the history of this dead park in one brief paragraph:   "First opened in 1990, the American Adventures family entertainment center operated next door to White Water, even using the same parking lot. This facility included a number of common carnival rides and other attractions geared towards families with small children. While the park was a separate gate from White Water, the two promoted each other often, to the point of having a connecting pathway between the two park entrances. When Six Flags acquired White Water in 1999, American Adventures was included in the purchase, and the park was considered one of Six Flags' minor parks. However, in May 2008, the park was leased to a new operator, Zuma Holdings, which no longer co-branded the park with Six Flags White Water. In 2010, American Adventures closed its doors for good, citing "circumstances beyond our control."