Took my family and friends to Carowinds a few years ago. Never have gone back and never will. What a disgusting theme park. Bathrooms were pathetic, food was awful, the grounds are dirty and the employees are ignorant to any question (even directions about the theme park).

With that said, we will give our business to Virginia. It’s a joke that Raleigh does not have a theme park or water park for this “NUMBER 1″ Fastest growing area in the country for the next 20 years (news and rankings just released – no surprise). Raleigh, get your heads out of your “you know what”, where is the entertainment for kids (no water park in Raleigh is PATHETIC). Start “today” to build for the future growth. How will Raleigh entertain 2M people, let alone all those children (growth is only for three counties, what about the rest of the Triangle growth?

The big problem for Raleigh getting an amusement park is that national amusement park owners would think a park around here is WAY too close to two in Virginia, one at Myrtle Beach, and one in Charlotte. The Cedar Point people are only interested in running big parks, and in fact, shut down Geauga Lake, and small park in eastern Ohio (parts were sent to KD and Carowinds as well as other parks of theirs). Busch Gardens’ new owner, the company that bought Anheiser-Busch said publicly that it doesn’t want to be in the theme park business, and wants to unload both BGs and Sea World. I am very concerned about what will happen at BGW. Finally, Six Flags filed Chapter 11 a couple of weeks ago, so don’t expect THEM to open anything here to compete.

All-in-all, I think the chances of getting a theme park here in the next 20 years are slimmer than our odds of getting both an NFL team and an NBA team. What there SHOULD be, however, are bus day trips that go to these parks all though the summer. I would gladly meet at 6am to ride a bus up for the day to KD. I wonder if the ski shops would be interested in organizing something like that each Wednesday, for example.

This coaster freak is SUPER excited!!!!

And I was just up there about a month ago, darn it.

It really is bizarre that Raleigh doesn’t have a park nearby. Most mid to large cities in the country do, even if it is a smaller park (and these are often the best IMO).

With the Intamin coaster at Kings Dominion next year and the B&M coaster at Carowinds, I would be willing to bet that both rides will be in the top 10 on 2010 steel coaster polls.

While the Kings Dominion coaster is still pretty much a mystery in terms of what it’s actually going to do, the Carowinds coaster is much more predictable. It should be very similar to Diamondback at Kings Island (http://rcdb.com/ig4253.htm) and Behemoth at Canada’s Wonderland (http://rcdb.com/ig4005.htm), although from what I’m hearing there could be an extra little twist thrown into the mix…

Not that I’m trying to champion Disney, but some will recall a decade or two ago they attempted to bring a theme park to Virginia and finally gave up after stiff local opposition. North Carolina doesn’t quite have the same colonial heritage that Virginia does, but I think we’re in a good geographical location to support such a development. I would actually welcome any major theme park (Disney, Six Flags, or otherwise) within a 30 minute drive of Raleigh, but I won’t hold my breath, due to the current economic climate. I recall rumors of Six Flags having interest in building a park near Clayton (I-40/US70 area) but that obviously never came to fruition for whatever reason.

I haven’t been to Carowinds, but unfortunately I have heard too many negative reviews to ever want to go there without some extensive persuasion. Most of what I have read/heard is exactly along the lines of what Thomas said.

I realize we have 2 major theme parks within a 3 hour radius of Raleigh, but I believe there’s a sizable enough market to support one of our own close to home – if you were to market the Triangle, Fayetteville, Wilmington, and Rocky Mount/Wilson, along with the rest of eastern NC. Strategically, it could be placed near Benson for easy interstate access and high-visibility. Of course, I am daydreaming here… Dana’s right that we likely won’t see any theme park of any sort around here soon, at least, not without a miracle.

I’m glad the theme park proposal for Roanoke Rapids at Carolina Crossroads did not go through. I wasn’t too eager to see yet another theme park popping up in our region that was going to be well over an hour’s drive from Raleigh again.

So, this thread got me thinking. I looked at the top 50 metro areas in the country by population to see which ones had a significant amusement park within a 1.5 hour drive (using Google Maps). “Significant amsuement park” is subjective, but essentially my requirement was that it needed to have at least one roller coaster that was more than a cookie cutter children’s coaster.

45 of the top 50 metro areas have an amusement park within around an hour and a half. The ones that do not are:

-DETROIT: closest park is Michigan’s Adventure (3 hours)
-NASHVILLE: closest park is Dollywood (3.5 hours), but Nashville did have Opryland, a major park which closed in 1997
-JACKSONVILLE: closest parks are the millions in Orlando (2.25 hours)
-MEMPHIS: closest park is Magic Springs, but Memphis had Libertyland which closed in 2005
-RALEIGH: closest parks are Carowinds, Kings Dominion, and Busch Gardens, all around 3 hours away

Good point, Jonathan (although Cedar Point is 2hrs from Detroit, I believe).

It seems the variable that is screwing things up is Busch Gardens. Richmond has 2 parks within an hour of if. If BGW were being built today, it seems obvious to put it and the plant on the I-95 corridor. IT seems like all of these dies were cast back in the late 60′s. Raleigh was a sleepy town then and not a big enough magnet to lure someone doing a park. If the slate were clean today, and there were some money in the industry, I’m sure that your list would be found in every theme park corporation’s land acquisition department. The number of parks these days is shrinking, unfortunately. Hard Rock was a huge anomaly and went bankrupt in its first year, so I don’t see any speculative theme park expansion for at least 20 years. Sigh.