Ever dreamed of packing up everything and moving to another country? Here are the most livable cities in the world, according to a study by The Economist.
21.07.2023 - 08:09 / roughguides.com
There's something tragically beautiful about an empty, rusting roller coaster, condemned to spend the rest of its life as a useless hunk of metal. You can almost hear the joyous screams of the children who once rode its tracks. Abandoned amusement parks have piqued travellers' interest all over the world – so from Malaysia to the English countryside, here are ten of the eeriest.
Operational from 2000, Six Flags New Orleans closed temporarily in August 2005 to prepare for an approaching storm – unfortunately, that storm was Hurricane Katrina. When the park’s drainage system failed it flooded with several feet of brackish water, which were left to stand for over a month, causing enormous damage. The park has now become famous in an odd way, both as a symbol of Hurricane Katrina’s effects on the city, and as a creepy backdrop in several Hollywood films.
This is one seriously mysterious place. It opened in 1973 250km north of Tokyo, then closed in 1975, either due to poor ticket sales or a high number of fatalities. It reopened 1986–99, then closed for good. Allegedly it was demolished in 2006, but in 2007 Brit Bill Edwards was walking alone in the area and apparently found an abandoned, rusting park. He took several photos, but only one came out: the mist-shrouded entrance, with an impassive young girl in a white dress standing by the gate, looking straight into the camera.
© RobertKuehne/Shutterstock
Opened in East Berlin in 1969 as Kulturpark Plӓnterwald, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 it was renamed Spreepark. By 2001 visitor numbers had fallen and the park was closed. In 2002, company president Norbert Witte moved to Lima, taking some of the attractions with him under false pretences. Clearly his new park was not a successful venture; in 2004, Witte was arrested for trying to smuggle 180kg of cocaine into Germany, hidden in a flying carpet ride. Spreepark still stands empty today.
Mimaland in Malaysia is in a stunning setting, and was hugely popular for over two decades (1971–94). Eventually it closed following concerns about safety – a young boy died in 1993 in an accident on a giant surfboard – and a landslide. Remains of the park are still easy to find, and many of the locals are keen to see it redeveloped, but for now it’s slowly being reclaimed by the forest.
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The Disneyland-style Nara Dreamland amusement park was extremely popular for a while after it opened in 1961. However, by 2006 the novelty seems to have worn off; declining ticket sales meant it had to close and, apparently to minimise costs, everything was just… left. This makes it a perfect place to see nature slowly reclaiming the most gaudy of man-made spaces, which is what a fair number of urban explorers do – if
Ever dreamed of packing up everything and moving to another country? Here are the most livable cities in the world, according to a study by The Economist.
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