The Cypress Gardens Theme Park
The Cypress Gardens theme park is located in Winter Haven, Florida. The park is owned by Land South Holdings and is formerly known as the Cypress Gardens Adventure Park. There are a total of 41 rides at the park, five of which are roller coasters and two water rides.
Cypress Gardens’ History
In January of 1936, the Cypress Gardens opened to the public as a botanical garden owned and planted by Julie and Dick Pope. Over the years, the park became one of the largest attractions in Florida and was known for its Southern Belles and water ski shows.
Additionally, the park was known as the Water Skill Capital of the World because several landmarks of the sport’s first records and other fifty world records were broken at the park.
Competition for visitors and guests developed after the opening of the Walt Disney World Resort in 1971. The Popes retired during the early 1980s and reassigned the park to Dick Pope Jr.
Also in the 1980s, a book publisher named Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich purchased the park alongside Circus World, Stars Hall of Fame and SeaWorld. However, most of their properties were sold to Anheuser-Busch in 1989. The new owners then continued to operate the Cypress Gardens Park until April of 1995. This was also the year when Bill Reynolds, leading a group of the park’s managers, bought the property.
Under the leadership of president and CEO Bill Reynolds, the Cypress Gardens theme park operated until April 2003. The park then closed due to a prolonged decrease in tourists after the September 11, 2001 incident. However, efforts to reopen the property soon bloom against plans to modernize and turn the property into condominiums.
Then on February 2004, Kent Buescher, owner of Adventure Parks Group, purchased the property and renamed it as Cypress Gardens Adventure Park. The new owners planned to reopen the property in September of 2004 but soon stopped due to damages created by three hurricanes, namely Frances, Jeanne and Charley. Finally, the park reopened two months later with the Triple Hurricane roller coaster as one of its new attractions.
The park has been visited by a number of popular celebrities and dignitaries, including King Hussein and his son King Abdullah II and Elvis Presley.
Attractions at the Cypress Gardens Theme Park
The colorful history of the Cypress Gardens theme park has brought the development of several attractions that the whole family can enjoy.
Originally, the park has five roller coasters but in early 2007, the Starliner roller coaster was added. The ride is a classic Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters-designed wooden roller coaster. It was originally operated in Panama City, Florida at a certain theme park called the Miracle Strip Amusement Park.
The park also has the Fiesta Express, which is a children’s roller coaster that features small hairpin turns. There is also the Okeechobee Rampage created by Vekoma and is a skater coaster slightly the same with the Flying Unicorn ride located at the Islands of Adventure. The park also has a Primeval Whirl-like ride called the Galaxy Spin, which opened in 2005.
The Cypress Gardens theme park also has a Vekoma-designed suspended roller coaster for the family called the Swam Thing. Lastly, the famed Triple Hurricane, which is a junior wooden coaster. The Triple Hurricane was named after the three hurricanes that damaged the park in 2004.
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