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American Adventure Park

Goes to show in its final years if the new attraction for 2005 was an indoor play area. 20 years old I last went and it was dead biggest mistake on adding anything major to the park after the mid 90’s.
 
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Spark said:
That house of play indoor play frame, did they replace the slide with a straight drop one?
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The straight slide was there for many many years. Most of these art boards and concepts are from around 2005, so I wonder if this is from when they were remarketing at the family audience with the focus on kids attractions?

There’s no date on the board unfortunately, but the use of a website for the company suggests it’s later on!
 
Makes sense,

In some ways the AA was years ahead of its time with regards to the indoor play area being open all year round. Just look how big the kids play center market is now days
 
Sazzle said:
Amazing what you find in the back of a cupboard…





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This one's interesting... The Missile on a 2005 map cover. We speculated at the time the closure was not planned much in advance, this seems to indicate that was indeed the case. Also the Sliver City Shootout which was cancelled that season (but back the next).

No Nightmare Niagara tho so presumably they knew that was irrecovocably screwed.

Spark said:
Makes sense,

In some ways the AA was years ahead of its time with regards to the indoor play area being open all year round. Just look how big the kids play center market is now days
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The remnants of Pioneer Playland were removed completely in the late 90s/early 00s and replaced with a giant Crown Leisure arcade not long after THG took control.

This was then replaced with a new, off the shelf one play area (intended for pubs and whatnot) which is the one you see advertised here.
 
Thanks so much for sharing! It is so interesting to see that original plan for the 2005 map cover and is basically confirmation that the New Frontier of Family Fun branding (without Missile and the shows) must have been a VERY last minute decision.

They must have saved a fortune in 2005 having not just Missile and Nightmare Niagara, but also the Rapids and the Yankee Clipper closed all season as well as no live entertainment and the shows not running.

I can only assume that they were told they couldn’t have the budget for all those little Zamperla rides they added, without making some savings elsewhere? You can’t blame them for trying I guess, the park was stagnant from around 1998 to 2004, so some sort of more drastic action needed to be taken.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
Thanks so much for sharing! It is so interesting to see that original plan for the 2005 map cover and is basically confirmation that the New Frontier of Family Fun branding (without Missile and the shows) must have been a VERY last minute decision.

They must have saved a fortune in 2005 having not just Missile and Nightmare Niagara, but also the Rapids and the Yankee Clipper closed all season as well as no live entertainment and the shows not running.

I can only assume that they were told they couldn’t have the budget for all those little Zamperla rides they added, without making some savings elsewhere? You can’t blame them for trying I guess, the park was stagnant from around 1998 to 2004, so some sort of more drastic action needed to be taken.
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The Zamperla rides were all leased, and were not ordered in time to arrive on park for the start of the season.

My working presumption is that they knew Nightmare Niagara probably wouldn't run again but they believed The Missile and the Rapids would. Over the course of the closed season it became clear that both required significant investment, which wasn't forthcoming. I think the 'family focus' plan was always the strategy (there had been a couple of cheap kids rides added in 2004, I think), but their hand was effectively forced by the compound effect of years of neglect under THG.

Attendence, predictably, fell off a cliff and didn't recover significantly in 2006 either.
 
Does anyone know what lead to closure of Nightmare Niagera? What would have been needed doing to keep it operating. My last visit was 2004 the last year Missile and Nightmare Niagera operated, both headline rides at the park.
 
WillPS said:
The Zamperla rides were all leased, and were not ordered in time to arrive on park for the start of the season.

My working presumption is that they knew Nightmare Niagara probably wouldn't run again but they believed The Missile and the Rapids would. Over the course of the closed season it became clear that both required significant investment, which wasn't forthcoming. I think the 'family focus' plan was always the strategy (there had been a couple of cheap kids rides added in 2004, I think), but their hand was effectively forced by the compound effect of years of neglect under THG.

Attendence, predictably, fell off a cliff and didn't recover significantly in 2006 either.
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I think that Roger Lloyd was very good at putting a positive spin on even the most dire situations, which is what the park did in 2005 when they realised that they couldn’t run those rides. Clearly they thought the rapids and Yankee clipper were worth saving as they did both re-open in 2006, but I do think that costs played at least some part in the decision to go all out family in 2005 and close those rides.

I mean, Missile could be saved, it has been, it’s still running to this day but they obviously thought that the cost of fixing it was too high. Seeing the originally planned leaflet for 2005 also makes me wonder why they axed the live shows. I can only assume that during the closed season they realised they’d have to find the money somewhere to hire in those Zamperla rides, and the only option was to cut the shows.

It’s amazing to think what would have happened if AA had kept the Rapids and Missile running in 2005, spending the required money to get the issues fixed. Even with Nightmare Niagara gone, I think it could have survived a bit longer. Visiting in 2005 was just depressing though and it really sent out a bad message having three main rides and several other support rides closed. It would have taken a lot more than a few Zamperlas and a re-opened Rapids the following year to come back from that.
 
pjanvil said:
Does anyone know what lead to closure of Nightmare Niagera? What would have been needed doing to keep it operating.
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Based on the last time I saw it operating and photos of its later days, probably tearing the whole thing down and starting again 😂 At the very least re-lining all of the troughs and basins. It was in a right sorry state towards the end.

I remember it being clad on the edges with feather-edge boards and half of them missing or hanging off, rotten. It’d also be interesting to know how much more life the mountains had in them. I seem to remember them looking really shabby and having holes in the concrete and the yellow base showing through. Amazed they didn’t crumble and fall down on their own to be honest!

Massive shame it never made it. It was a great ride. Still one of the most memorable flumes for me.

On the topic of NN, and apologies if I’ve raised this before (can’t remember if I have or not!) but does anyone remember some sort of walkthrough pathway inside of the mountains? I seem to distinctly remember hearing someone mentioning one previously somewhere, but I’ve never really found any evidence to support it…
 
Ian said:
On the topic of NN, and apologies if I’ve raised this before (can’t remember if I have or not!) but does anyone remember some sort of walkthrough pathway inside of the mountains? I seem to distinctly remember hearing someone mentioning one previously somewhere, but I’ve never really found any evidence to support it…
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Yes you could access part of the mountain from outside, up some stairs and the walkway ran above NN. It was the indoor section that showed the mining before the start of the second drop.

These red arrows show the entrance and exits
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Ahh awesome! Thanks @Spark! It’s a shame the park didn’t last another couple of years. It closed just at the point where it seemed like we’d probably have started seeing more photos and videos of things like the scenes inside the mountains, what with camera phones and smaller digital cameras starting to become more commonplace.

Always disappoints me how many less documented parts of the park there are where you have to rely on your own memories or accounts from others. I can remember a lot of parts quite vividly, but other bits far less so.
 
I know i am the same, obvs the majority of pictures are when the park closed and was in a run down state, I know full well my mu, will have a box of pictures from about 1989 when i came home with a pink oversized cowboy hat 🤣
 
I do have such good memories of American adventure, we used to go at least once a year as a child with my family (the same with towers, Thorpe and chessie) and usually on school trips as well. In my mind I can remember the park so well. I imagine my dad would have a few pics of the park and I’ve definitely got some on ride photos at home as well.

Luckily I didn’t go in it’s dying days as I was a bit too old for the park then, but I do remember even as a child thinking they never invested much compared to the likes of Alton towers
 
That is a great video. Looks relatively well maintained there, which makes sense given the park had only recently changed hands.

I remember on my final rides on it, on a glorious rainy September inset day in 2004, it was continually stopping - a ride op kept being despatched to near the foot of the second drop where they had to wiggle something to bring it back to life. It felt so improbable that those would be my final rides on it but the signs were painfully obvious in retrospect. As you mentioned all the decorative trim was falling off around the channel but I imagine that was just decorative - the problem was they exposed a channel which was overdue a relining and as a result resembled a colander in places with the amount of water it was losing.

The Log Flume and the Rapids were the things that made the place worth visiting, in a park of mostly OK-but-mediocre rides, I think most would agree. And the shows were fun too if that was your jam.

They lost £3.8m in 2005 and £1.6m in 2006.

Interesting looking over the companies house filings.

2006 season - £1.6m loss
2005 season - £3.8m loss (including exceptional write off of assets to the value of £900k - I'm sure we can all guess what that related to)
2004 season - £2m loss
2003 season - £1.2m loss
2002 season - £1.35m loss
2001 season - £880k loss
2000 season - £945k loss
1999 season - £728k loss
1998/1997 seasons - £3m loss over both seasons (they changed their accounting period so these two individually are a little off).

Basically they never made any money from the place over 10 years running it... it's amazing it lasted as long as it did.

One assumes Granada never made much from it either given the bargain basement price it was sold off at.

Another interesting tidbit from those accounts is that John Broome and an associate were directors of the company until November 1998, but never held stock in Ventureworld - instead Broome was paid consultancy fees of £56k in '97.
 
Thanks for sharing the video, I only had vague memory of the watermill inside Nightmare Niagara and forgot how big it was. I also remember the animated skeletons working to the banjo music :laughing: Its's a shame what happened to American Adventure, I remember queuing outside the entrance in 2005 having no idea about the difficulties going on and there was a staff member walking up the queue asking guests if they had visited before. If you said yes they told you about the 'new' family image and the closing of The Missile and Nightmare Niagara. We ended up going to Drayton Manor instead.

Edit - my first visit was 99 and after reading WillPS post its lucky I went there at all
 
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