The Amusement Park That Wasn't?

Six and a half years ago my wife and I arrived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and we began our journey to become southerners. Last week I had the opportunity to stand in from of the Myrtle Beach welcome sign and get my picture taken as you see below.  A number of tourists have their picture taken in front of the sign, so now I am officially welcome in Myrtle Beach.

This week I discovered that the amusement park I had heard that wasn't built in 2008, it actually was built and failed twice, in 2008 and 2009.  I was getting an oil change and taking a walk around the building when I veered off to a very large empty parking lot and figured that this was where the park would have been built.  My service rep surprised me when he said it was built and I looked it up and here's what I found out.

The first park that opened in 2008 was Hard Rock Park and when it failed five months later due to financial problems, it reopened in May 2009 with the name of Freestyle Music Park.  The parks were built on 55 acres which I had just walked through some of it.  It also failed that year due to financial problems and lawsuits.

There were five roller coaster rides and the names of the different places were all about music, such as  The Led Zeppelin roller coaster, a Nights in White Satin ride, Life in the Fast Lane roller coaster and a Moody Blues ride and many others.  I think the picture below is the Led Zeppelin ride.  The Eagles and The Moody Blues performed on opening day. The water in this picture is nowhere to be found today.

The park was filled with unusual and amusing things.  One person commented on a video of the empty park before it was destroyed, "There was a fountain at The Hard Rock Cafe and if you ran your fingers through the water streams, it would play like a guitar."  Another person said, "There was a statue of a cow and when it saw you, it disrespected you and then sprayed water at you."  They had a British Invasion section and below is the large picture of  The Abbey Road studios that The Beatles made famous.  Tourists still go to this intersection in London and mimic The Beatles Abbey Road cover. It looks pretty real.

Today, all that remains is a couple large parking lots and a very large Fed-Ex facility.  Below is a diagram of what it once was in 2008-2009.