Japan's Abandoned Amusement Parks

Japan's Russian Village

 Io9: Japan has a wealth of bizarre abandoned amusement parks. For example, we've seen an entire Mount Rushmore left to rot and a graffitied giant model of Lemuel Gulliver.

In the town of Niigata, you can visit the remains of The Russian Village, a shuttered tourist attraction that once boasted such sights as a recreation of the Cathedral of the Nativity in Suzdal, Russia, fake cars from the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and (what appears to be) a woolly mammoth skeleton, hanging out in the middle of nowhere.

When the Niigata Russian Village opened in 1993, an entrepreneur hoped to attract tourist dollars by importing a little slice of Russia to Japan's west coast. This Russocentric Epcot Center managed to stay open for a decade before the park fell into bankruptcy. After another grand opening in 2002 — that lasted all of six months — the Village was closed permanently, leaving such weird artifacts as a fake taxidermied woolly mammoth behind.

From the looks of these photos taken by Ralph Mirebs, plenty of people still visit the Village, but nobody pays the entry fee (such as Vice Magazine, who found employees' costumes up for grabs). I don't know about you, but I find facsimile villages like this pretty fascinating. Cloning geography, for fun and proft.

Giant Model of Lemuel Gulliver

The Rise of Africa's Amusement Parks

Global Post: On Africa’s westernmost tip, a caterpillar coaster swoops past a pirate ship then a space shuttle labeled “Star Warld,” before crossing the gaze of Galdalf, a porcelain wizard clutching a Hamlet skull and a dartboard. Children scream.

“Get on,” insists a surly carnival operator, hissing at two reluctant riders before mocking them: “Vous avez peur? You scared?” He shakes his head, pelts his cigarette to the ground, then hops into the caterpillar train: Off we go. In this, Dakar’s largest amusement park, even the employees ride the thrills.

Welcome to Magic Land, a fortress of fun on Senegal’s Atlantic coast. The 20-acre hotel, water park, nightclub and amphitheater complex forms part of Africa’s most playful boom industry: amusement parks.

At least eight theme parks have opened or are scheduled to open in West Africa alone since 2000. The region’s roller coaster tycoons — some foreign, many local — brave one of the world’s least friendly business environments.

Power outages in Dakar last half the day; Nigeria’s last longer. Most citizens of either country can’t earn enough in 24 hours to ride Magic Land’s bumper cars for even 15 minutes. And yet, triumphing over power outages, corrupt governments and widespread poverty, Africa's middle class is flourishing. And that middle class, theme park operators say, craves roller coasters.

“More and more, Senegalese parents bring their children here to ride the attractions and play,” said Abdoulaye Ndiaye, security guard at Magic Land. “It’s super. We have given them a place to relax in a city where we don’t have a lot of space to play.”

However discouraging West Africa’s economics are, its demographics make it ripe for a theme park bonanza. Half the continent is under 20. By 2050, one in every fifth person on the planet will be a sub-Saharan African, according to the United Nations. Hundreds of millions of those will be teenagers with no place to go on a date.

South Africa has led the way in Africa's amusement parks with elaborate parks, home to hair-raising roller coasters, in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The continent’s kid-surplus hasn’t totally escaped the notice of the global amusement park industry. In 2009, Six Flags announced it would open its third non-American park in Nigeria.

“We saw Nigeria, a country with a population of more than 140 million people, a rapidly growing middle class, and relatively few theme-park options, as a good emerging market to expand Six Flags’ growing brand,” the company’s Executive Vice President of Strategic Development Andrew Schleimer told the Washington Times.

Two years later, Six Flags Nigeria has yet to break ground. Local variants, however, are filling its void — like Rosella’s Family Sports and Amusement Parks.

The Lagos-area park describes itself as "the actualization and physical manifestation of the great vision and commission by the Almighty God in 1985 to Prince Abraham Oluwatoyin Ololade (then Oluwatoyin Barber) to establish Amusement Parks where children of God will regularly seek succor against stress, boredom, and grief, seek rest, relaxation, and quiet time with God and most importantly, to Glorify God — a place with God.”

Manuel Marco, a 64-year-old Spaniard running Guinea-Bissau’s only amusement park, describes his operation as a set of 23 bumper cars – modest, but popular. “There were no amusement parks here, nothing,” he said. “I asked myself, why not? Why don’t we have anything?”

“This is a country with a lot of problems,” his assistant Nelson Balde added. “We have so many children who want to steal, just to have something to do. I brought this here for them.”

Dwarfing every other park in the region is Heritage City, a 25,000-acre nature reserve and theme park planned outside Abuja, Nigeria. “Africa’s First and Only African History Theme Park” bills itself as an Epcot of Africa’s pre-slavery renaissance period, a place where kids will tour replicas of Timbuktu and other medieval African kingdoms.

Japanese Theme Park to Launch Record-Breaking Coaster

The Independent: A Japanese theme park is about to launch a roller coaster with the world's steepest vertical drop.

The Takabisha ride is scheduled to open at the Fuji-Q Highland Amusement Park near the base of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi prefecture on July 16 and will feature seven major twists over its 1,000-meter length, a sharp rise to a peak of 43 meters - which triggers a moment of weightlessness before riders take what the operator of the ride describes as "a nosedive" - and sections that plunge riders into complete darkness.

The part of the ride that is ground-breaking, however, is the breakneck freefall at 121 degrees. The park has applied to the Guinness Book of World Records to have the ride certified as the steepest in the world.
Thanks to the assistance of linear motors on the cars - as well as the effects of gravity - riders on the Y3 billion ($42 million) attraction will reach a speed of 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour and the ride will last for just 112 seconds.

Once the ride has been certified, it will be the 14th Guinness World Record set by Fuji-Q. The park is already home to the Fujiyama ride, Dodompa and Eejanaika, putting the park among the leading venues in the world for thrill-seekers.

The Kingda Ka ride at the Six Flags Great Adventure park in New Jersey is the present holder of the title of the tallest steel roller coaster in the world, at 139 meters, with a maximum vertical drop of 127 meters. The prize for the fastest coaster goes to the Formula Rossa at Ferrari World, in Abu Dhabi, which only opened last November and reaches an impressive speed of 240 kph (149 mph).

The record that Takabisha is looking to overhaul has been held by the Mumbo Jumbo ride at Flamingoland in Yorkshire, northern England since July 2009. With an incline of only 112 degrees, Takabisha will be fully 9 degrees steeper for the riders.

Admission to Takabisha is Y1,000 ($14) after an entrance fee to the park has been paid, but there are restrictions on the age and height of anyone wanting to take the ride.

Let Your Kids Run an Amusement Park

USA Today: As the summer months roll on, many families will visit an amusement park. Before screaming their heads off on their favorite rollercoaster, it might be fun for your kids to check out "My Amusement Park" on the Nintendo DS. The game will teach them about the business of running an amusement park while also challenging them to solve fun logic and memory puzzles. It is a perfect game to pack for the trip that gets you to the real park. 

Published by Scholastic, this DS game invites kids to design their own amusement park. They are provided with the layout of an empty park and $900 to start purchasing attractions. As the park builder, kids choose a theme which can include Mountains, Safari, Desert or Tropical. Next, they scroll through a variety of rides, food pavilions and amusements to add to the park. Each costs money to build. For example, if you select the Octopus Ride, it will cost you $200 to build, where a Bumper Cars ride will cost $500. 

But there is more to building a ride than just selecting it and paying the money. Kids will also need to play memory games to help construct the ride. They will look at the ride's schematic plan and try to remember where all the pieces go. Then the ride will break apart, and they will be tasked with using the stylus to drag and drop the scrambled parts into the correct places. 

Kids can run through the initial $900 pretty quickly. Luckily, the game provides many ways for players to earn more money so that they can continue to expand their park. One way is to play a maintenance game. The game sends alerts when a ride, food venue or special attraction breaks down. When kids click on the alert, they are taken to a special game where they must drag pipes or wires onto a schematic to make them all fit. By solving this puzzle correctly, kids fix the ride or attraction and it starts making money again. 

There are also six management games to play to earn more money. These vary greatly, but many involve logical thinking. For example, the one called Parking Lot Jam is a take-off of the popular "Rush Hour" puzzle where cars are jammed into a parking lot grid. You have to figure out the order in which to move the cars to create a path for the designated car to make it to the exit. In another game, you must study the ride's seating area, and then grab parts off a conveyor belt to match the picture on the top screen and recreate the ride's broken part. 

For parents looking to add some intellectual challenge to their kids' gaming, this is a perfect choice. Kids will love the build-your-own-park theme and will enjoy playing the logic games to earn enough money to build their favorite rides. 

By playing, kids will start to understand how a real amusement park makes money. The game creates an artificial time within the game and periodically designates the end of a day. At that time, kids earn money from the attractions they have built. They will also have to budget money to save so that they can afford the more expensive rides. 

The game has a excellent support system and offers players suggestions of things to do through the park's information booth. These suggestions change as days pass in the park, but lead to the game's eight different memory and logic games. 

Even kids as young as age 5 can play "My Amusement Park" because the game speaks all of its instructions out loud. While the budgeting part of the game may go over their heads, they can still have fun building rides and playing the logic and memory games because all of those games come in three levels of difficulty. Older kids will want to play the games on the higher difficulty levels for more of a challenge, and because they will earn money more quickly. 

"My Amusement Park" is a good introduction to simulation games for kids ages 5 to 8. Nothing ever gets too complicated in this game, and there is very little micromanagement. Some older kids may feel that the parks they build are too small, but for the kids targeted by this game, the smallness is just fine. 

So here is a good prescription for having fun this summer: plan a trip to your favorite amusement park; and when you do, remember to pack the sunscreen and this "My Amusement Park" game. You will be amazed by how your kids become more savvy about the business of running a park.