“I slept hard, after that amazing meal we had last night,” Scott confessed. “The hotel does a nice breakfast, but I was still too stuffed to eat much. Then I did some writing on my next article, checked sources online, and made sure I had everything on today’s list that I need.” He paused. “And I made an appointment to talk to someone at the Fox Institute tomorrow before our next flight.”
“That’s great,” Justin replied. “I bet they can help a lot with your research.”
Justin felt pleased that today Scott didn’t hold on for dear life when they took off, taking that as a sign of growing trust.
“What do you want to do first? Abandoned ski resorts or defunct amusement parks?” Justin asked.
“We did some of the ski areas yesterday,” Scott replied. “I’m really curious about the old amusement parks.”
“Your wish is my command.” Justin adjusted course. “I only got to one of them as a kid. Most were gone before my time, but there’s a lot of nostalgia.”
“That’s what prompted the article,” Scott admitted.
“Some of the parks just vanished,” Justin told him. “Others got torn down and repurposed into something completely different. A few got folded into other parks.”
“I have a soft spot for amusement parks. My family went every summer, and those were great memories.” Scott sighed. “I know times and tastes change. Though it’s hard to beat a good roller coaster.”
“Look down there,” Justin said. “There’s not much left, but that’s where Frontier City used to be. It was a Wild West theme, with rodeos and people in costume. There was even a bank heist every day at noon.”
“Must have had the worst sheriff in the world,” Scott joked.
“As a kid, it was very exciting. I’ve seen old home movies on YouTube, and it was pretty low-budget Hollywood,” Justin said.
Scott snapped photos, and Justin circled the area for him to get a good look. When Scott had the information he needed, Justin turned north. “Victorian Village was one of the oddest parks,” Justin said. “Like something out ofMary Poppins, with carriage rides and theater shows and the 1890s as they probably never were.”
“I can’t quite imagine kids pestering to go to something like that.” Scott laughed.
“Which might explain why it didn’t last,” Justin agreed. “Now it’s a public park.”
“It’s a nice greenspace,” Scott agreed after they circled, “but no trace of the village.”
“Let’s go to where Time Travel Today used to be.” Justin steered off again. “This one’s long gone.”
“Time travel?”
Justin nodded. “It was right afterStar Wars, and anything spacey was hot. Cool idea, but it didn’t make it.”
The site below was now a large neighborhood. Scott got photos anyway. “It seems out in the middle of nowhere for a space park,” he mused. “I’d think it would have worked better close to a NASA site.”
“I heard there was a big telescope, and out here you can get really nice views of the night sky without light pollution, but that wasn’t enough.”
“What’s next?” Scott asked.
“Would you believe dinosaurs?”
“I’ve got to hand it to the park creators; they had a lot of big ideas,” Scott laughed. “I can see kids being more excited about seeing a T-Rex than a Victorian song and dance routine, and if you squint, I guess this could be the forest primeval.”
“The original park got lucky and sold to a larger developer, so it still exists inside the bigger park,” Justin told him. “Not exactly like it was, but pretty close.”
The amusement park sprawled over the hills with rides and buildings below them. They were too high to see the animatronic dinosaurs, but it wasn’t hard to imagine them surprising visitors along the forest trails.
“Mother Goose Land also got folded into a bigger park, and so did the Mystery Forest,” Justin narrated. “Like with the dinos, the new park kept pieces and added some other things. Those are mostly for families with little kids.” Once again, they circled over the park as Scott scribbled notes and took photos.
“Last one for today,” Justin said. “Water World had a long run, but the swimming season is shorter up here, and I guess there were just too many days people didn’t feel like getting wet. The last I heard, most of the waterslides and pools were still there, abandoned. There’s talk that a neighborhood might go in, but nothing’s happened yet.”
“Oh, that looks really good,” Scott said when the defunct park came into sight. “They really did just leave everything where it was, didn’t they?” He snapped photos, practically glued to the plane’s side window.
“I’m sure there are bootleg photos online,” Justin said. “Not that you could use them, but it could be interesting to see how things look now from up close.”
