Wild West World Discussion Thread

[chris70]

its the end of the line for WWW . They are filing bankruptcy.This sucks with the coupons they put out more of my friends would have been able to go.

anyway heres the article

http://www.kwch.com/Global/story.asp?S=6762543

[Shavethewhales]

It's not the end of the line, it's just close. They've been having trouble catching up to their starting expenses, but I've no doubt the local councils will come through and WWW will be given some kind of pass, until the crash and burn again.

 

From what I've heard, most of the days that weren't rained out were pretty active, so even as small as it is, the park has some potential. If they could just live long enough to get a couple thrill rides in they might be fine.

[chris70]

I hope your right. but with the park closed immediately it sucks for those of us who purchased season passes. And I'm not sure someone would want to buy a failed park.

[Swoosh]

Well I honestly questioned the sanity of the people building the park in Wichita to begin with -- it's not like Wichita is a big time "TOURIST" destination. Honestly, where did they expect that they would draw people from? Most of the people that they would hope to draw in go to Worlds of Fun already. Let's see "honey where would rather go today? Worlds of Fun or Wild West World?" -- I don't think that it would be too hard to guess what the answer would be.

[christianscoasters]

I hope the park finds a good buyer. I know that the park wasn't that good, but it has sooooooo much potential. We can all agree that the buyer probably won't be Six Flags or Cedar Fair, maybe PARC? What is PARC's website?

[chris70]

They should have given it more of a shot than that. Just 2 mths!maybe the people they paid to do the studies were no good at what they do.

[coasterdude5]

I was really hoping this park would get past this "slump" but it looks like they won't be.

 

These small parks don't have a chance...

[Shavethewhales]

Well I honestly questioned the sanity of the people building the park in Wichita to begin with -- it's not like Wichita is a big time "TOURIST" destination. Honestly, where did they expect that they would draw people from? Most of the people that they would hope to draw in go to Worlds of Fun already. Let's see "honey where would rather go today? Worlds of Fun or Wild West World?" -- I don't think that it would be too hard to guess what the answer would be.

 

I dunno, remember how many people bought season passes? It's possible for people to go to both WWW and WOF. I would have gone several times if I were closer.

For a park to have crowds, they don't need to be in the heart of tourist country, they just need enough well-off families around, and Wichita surrounding area has enough... it's just that the park wasn't structured right.

 

Anyway, unless the park gets a miraculously stupid buyer to come in, it's doomed. Thomas may start to sell of assets in a last-ditch attempt to pay off enough debts to re-open the park, but we all know what kind of spiral that leads to.

[christianscoasters]

I think that the park should have bought a small starter coaster that was THRILLING like a vekoma boomerang. To us TPRers, those things aren't that great. But the GP would LOVE it! It's a great starter coaster that is thrilling and has inversions.

[coasterdude5]

^ I doubt they had enough money to buy a boomerang.

[christianscoasters]

^I know, but they shouldn't have built a park in the first place if they didn't have money. They wanted the park to cost approx. 17-20 million but it was 30. They didn't buy anything to attract people.

 

BTW, I just watched the segment on the news and they are 24 million dollars in debt OMG.

[sscamatt]

I hope the park finds a good buyer. I know that the park wasn't that good, but it has sooooooo much potential. We can all agree that the buyer probably won't be Six Flags or Cedar Fair, maybe PARC? What is PARC's website?

 

http://www.parcmanagement.com/

[Tanks4me05]

Need I say again that PARC just spent a lot of money buying those parks, and is potentially spending huge capital on Darien Lake, so I have a feeling PARC is out of the question.

[jedimaster1227]

http://www.kansas.com/934/story/1161936.html

 

WICHITA — As the defense began presenting its case today in the securities fraud trial of Wild West World founder Thomas Etheredge, it tried to paint a different picture of Etheredge's previous business ventures and personal tax liability.

 

Margaret VanSkiver, an accountant, said she prepared an amended tax return for Thomas and Cheryl Etheredge that showed they were actually owed a federal refund of $226,000 for 2005. Prosecutors had said the Etheredges owed $227,000 in federal taxes for that year, which they never paid. The difference, VanSkiver testified, is that she applied a carryback loss for 2005, which resulted in the refund.

 

Accountant Gary Hamilton, who did contract work for Thomas Etheredge and later served as chief financial officer for the theme park, also testified that Etheredge's Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper made money each year with the exception of its partial year of existence in 1999. Under cross-examination, Hamilton also said Etheredge later moved money back and forth from the Prairie Rose and Wild West World in an attempt to prop up both entities.

 

Also testifying was George Dueck, who is from the Central American country of Belize. He and Etheredge were partners in an aloe vera plantation in 1985. The jury was shown numerous pictures of the operation.

 

Prosecutors, who rested their case Wednesday, maintained that Etheredge either misrepresented facts about his past or omitted information when he solicited investors for the theme park.

 

Investors represented in the nine counts of securities fraud gave Etheredge a total of $735,000 to help him complete the theme park, according to testimony and evidence presented by the state.

 

In his opening statement, defense attorney Steve Joseph said 98 percent of the state's case is tied to information from a book, "Real Men, Real Faith," and testimony from Etheredge's ex-wife, Debbie Taylor.

 

Joseph told the jury that Etheredge's chapter in the book wasn't meant to completely detail his life and that the facts as Taylor remembered them from 20 years earlier "are just wrong." Joseph also said that Etheredge will testify in his own defense this week.

 

Judge Ben Burgess ruled this afternoon that a KAKE series about Etheredge and Wild West World in September 2005 could be admitted as evidence. The state had objected to the series being admitted. The series had detailed some of Etheredge's problems.

Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle

 

Thomas Etheredge listens to opening statement during his trial on Wednesday. Etheredge is charged with misleading investors who loaned him money to construct the Wild West World park in Park City in 2006 and 2007.

[jedimaster1227]

http://www.kansas.com/news/story/1175963.html

 

The complex and lengthy securities fraud trial of Thomas Etheredge ended Wednesday with a jury finding the founder of the failed Wild West World theme park guilty on seven of nine counts. "It was a very complicated case," said Kansas Securities Commissioner Chris Biggs, who helped prosecute the case. "There was a lot of paper, a lot of detail. "We knew in this case, the jury was going to have to take some time."

 

Sentencing is set for March 12 in Sedgwick County District Court. Etheredge, 55, faces a maximum of 14 years in prison, according to Steve Joseph, his defense attorney. Joseph said that he will ask Judge Ben Burgess to take Etheredge's health into account in handing down a sentence. Etheredge, who has been in jail since his arrest May 1, has Parkinson's disease and had a stroke a few months ago, Joseph said. Joseph also said there would be an appeal. "There are a number of really, really hotly contested issues of law in this case," Joseph said. "I think we have a very strong grounds on appeal." He said he would file the appeal notice on the sentencing date but that a public defender would represent Etheredge from there.

 

For now, the latest chapter for Etheredge and the theme park is over. The state had charged Etheredge with convincing investors to give him money for the park — nearly $750,000 — by either providing false or incomplete information about his past. After hearing testimony from nearly 40 witnesses — including one accountant twice — seeing stacks of evidence over the last three weeks, the jury of six men and six women went into its second day of deliberations Wednesday before reaching its verdicts. "We're not in a position of collecting scalps," Biggs said. "We want to see that justice is done. And obviously we wouldn't have brought the case if we didn't think it was something the evidence supported."

 

Etheredge, who served three years in prison for another securities fraud conviction in Kansas in 1987, smiled slightly and winked at his wife, Cheryl, and daughter, Emily, as he came into the courtroom about 2:15 p.m. to hear the verdicts. As the bailiff read the decisions, Etheredge sat at the defense table and looked occasionally at the jurors. He showed no emotion. The man who founded Wild West World in May 2007, then saw it close and go bankrupt two months later, was quiet. Just before Etheredge was taken back to jail, he smiled thinly as he looked at his wife and daughter.

Etheredge was found not guilty on two counts. The counts involved $150,000 he received from Marvin Whitson, his wife's uncle, and $10,000 from Patrick Bullock, an associate pastor at Summit Church. Because Whitson was a family member and Bullock went to Etheredge about investing, Biggs said, "That may have made a difference."

 

Joseph said the defense was hurt by the judge allowing the prosecution to close its case last Friday by showing a videotape of Etheredge speaking to an audience at Wichita's Central Christian Church on July 4, 2004, in connection with a concert. Etheredge's talk contradicted his testimony at the trial on several points. "(Playing the tape) right at the end of the case was a very poor way for the case to end as far as the defense was concerned," Joseph said. "The judge refused to admit that (video) three times, and the fourth time he finally relented and put it into evidence."

Religion was a constant theme throughout the trial. Etheredge and all but two of the investors listed on the criminal complaint, including two pastors, attended Summit Church.

 

The defense maintained Etheredge provided enough information about his criminal past — largely through the book "Real Men, Real Faith" — that investors should have been prompted to dig deeper if they really wanted to know more. The prosecution claimed that same book led investors into a false sense of trust in Etheredge because he claimed to have had a religious conversion during his prison stint for the previous securities fraud conviction. Etheredge also professed his innocence in the Bethany Trust case, which resulted in his securities fraud conviction in 1987. He did so in the book and continued to do so at the trial as information about that case was repeatedly brought up by the prosecution. "The Bethany Trust case was tried all over again," Joseph said. "The object of the prosecution was... to make Mr. Etheredge look bad for something he did 25 years ago.

"We fought hard to keep as much of that out as we could."

 

While the prosecution closed with the videotape, the defense's last attempt to influence the jury was to put Etheredge on the stand for 2 1/2 days last week. He started slowly, then warmed up, sparring frequently with Biggs during cross-examination. "I've never seen another witness dominate an attorney in the courtroom like he did," Joseph said. "It was an amazing performance."

[Airtime&Gravity]

The founder of Wild West World, Thomas Etheredge, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

 

Thomas Etheredge will spend at least the next five years in jail on multiple charges of securities fraud that stem from his efforts to raise capital for the failed Wild West World theme park in Park City.

 

Etheredge was sentenced Friday, three weeks after he stood trial and was found guilty of seven counts of securities fraud. The Kansas Securities Commission said Etheredge defrauded theme park investors by failing to disclose information about his past criminal history, which includes previous securities fraud convictions, and his failure to pay taxes. He also induced, a Sedgwick County jury ruled, fellow church members to invest by touting a religious conversion that allegedly occurred while he was in prison in the 1980s.

 

The case was prosecuted by former Securities Commissioner Chris Biggs, who now serves as secretary of state, and Rick Fleming, general counsel for the Office of the Securities Commissioner.

 

Wild West World opened in May 2007 and closed two months later with $24 million in debt.

 

 

Link

[jedimaster1227]

http://www.kake.com/news/headlines/103334399.html

 

Plans to reopen the closed Wild West World theme park are now officially dead. An auction is planned for parts of the property. The former amusement park has been empty since it's failure shortly after it opened in May, 2007.

 

AHG Holdings currently owns the property after buying it in 2008. A sign at the gate to the Hydraulic entrance to the park advertises an auction of all the heating and cooling equipment and electrical systems.

 

Doug Spangler, a minority partner with AHG, told our partners at the Wichita Business Journal Monday that the company has not been able to find an operator to run an amusement park.

 

"It's just growing up in weeds," said Park City resident Donald Hodges. "They need to do something with it."

 

"I think it's pretty sad that they're going to do that," said Tara Miller, another Park City resident. "I was actually hoping, for at least the children, that something would happen.

 

AHG bought the property in 2008 for just over $2-million, with plans to invest an additional $12-15-million in a revamped theme park. Spangler says that won't happen now.

 

"People were all excited about it," said Chris Wolff. "They put money into it and then there were expectations that Park City was going to grow along with Kechi and Bel Aire."

 

AHG says the property will be used for other development, but Spangler won't say what that might be. The Wyandotte Nation has expressed interest in building a tribal casino near the property. Wild West World opened in 2007, but closed after only two months of operation.

 

"I hope they can get somebody to buy it who will actually do some good for the land instead of watching it go to waste like it has been the last couple years," said Miller.

 

The Wild West World property has been closed and gated since July, 2007. The former owner Thomas Etheredge was convicted earlier this year on numerous fraud charges.

[jedimaster1227]

http://www.kansas.com/2010/11/06/1576430/buyers-find-bargains-at-wild-west.html

 

The last pieces of the failed Wild West World amusement park went up for sale at a public auction Saturday — the buildings, including the Johnny Western Theater, the 100-foot neon sign along I-135, all the fencing and even the trees. AEG Group, the Florida investment group that bought the Park City park out of bankruptcy, held the sale.

 

It was standing room only at the auction, held at the Sleep Inn & Suites. The hotel is next to the land where the park was open for two months in 2007.

 

Bernie Ryals, who lives in Wichita and owns two horses, said he came try to buy a building to use as a horse shed. "We're just looking for a good deal," Ryals said.

 

"And there appears to be some good deals here," said Tim Smith, a Haysville resident who also owns horses. But, "you have to have somebody to tear it down and put it back up," he said of the buildings for sale.

 

Businessman Wink Hartman bought two sections of what had been the amusement park's Main Street — the southwest and northeast parts — along with the Texas Jacks Pizza building, for his home on 600 acres in Rose Hill. "I'll take it home and have my own Cowtown," Hartman said with a laugh.

 

Thurman Davenport of Thurman's Pools bought a small building for his property at Grand Lake. He paid $650. Because of the business he's in, moving it isn't a big deal.

"It won't cost me nothing," he said.

 

Watching the sale was difficult for Rick Regan, who had worked for more than two years park as creative director for park owner Thomas Etheredge. Regan said he created the theater's buffalo heads, did all the murals, designed the signs and picked the park's colors. Now, Regan said, "it's like a ghost town. ... It's really kind of a sad thing. So many people worked so hard to make this happen." One day, he went to work and Etheredge drove up to lock the gates. "It was a shock to us," Regan said. "None of the us had a clue." Regan came to the auction to try and buy the buffalo heads he'd made. The prices that things were going for were "unbelievable," he said.

 

Coldstone Creamery spent $250,000 to put in a store at the park. "They just sold it for $2,500," Regan said. And the Johnny Western Theater cost about $300,000 to build, he said. It sold for $40,000. "That theater is a state-of-the-art theater," Regan said. "Somebody got a really good deal."

 

AEG Group is preparing to tear out the concrete and blacktop and level the site for an unspecified project, auctioneer Eric Malone of Malone & Associates Auctioneers said earlier this week.

 

The Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma owns land adjacent to the park and wants to put a casino there.

 

Etheredge is serving five years in prison for securities fraud after a Sedgwick County District Court jury found him guilty of misleading private investors. According to documents from the park's bankruptcy proceeding, it became insolvent in late 2006 as Etheredge struggled with construction cost overruns and excess spending on park equipment. At about the same time, Etheredge began soliciting private investors.

 

The park opened in May 2007. It closed two months later. The total debt on the park was $24 million.

 

Etheredge blamed the rainy weather and construction cost overruns for the park's failure. However, theme park experts said it was poorly themed and developed with cheap, poorly repackaged rides.

[SharkTums]

Best part of the article "It won't cost me nothing"

 

Quality of the people involved from the beginning to the end are amazing!