Photo TR: Tribute to Astroworld

[johnychen]

October 30, 2011 will be exactly 6 years since Astroworld in Houston, TX closed its doors forever. As soon as I found out on 10/14/2005 that the park was closing, I went and bought a season pass. I went every day that I could until the park closed and tried document the park as much as possible. I was lucky enough to squeeze four last trips in before park closed forever. I was also on the last public ride of the Texas Cyclone and was one of the last to exit the park.

 

I was born in Houston, TX one year before the park opened and have been going at least once every year ever since it opened. It was my middle and high school hang out.

 

 

My first trip was to the park after hearing the news was on 10/14/2005. I arrived at the park after work. This is before I bought a better camera. The quality of the pics will get better as I post each of the trips.

Brake run of the Texas Cyclone

Inside the TExas Cyclone Station

Control panel of the Cyclone

Blue train in the station

The outdoor AC system in the station that attempted to keep you cool in the summer

The new entrance sign to the Texas Cyclone.

Go carts next to the cyclone

Horizons, use to been a 180 degree theater where you laid on the ground and looked up at the dome. They had a movie featuring BGE's Lochness Monster.

Schwarzkopf plaque on front of the Greezed Lightnin. Astroworld had 3 Schwarzkopf coasters at one time.

Greezed Lightnin in station.

Greezed Lightnin

Greezed Lightnin's shack that houses that great flywheel.

Greezed Lightnin going at warp speed

It's really that fast.

One of the trains

The gunslinger, Viper, Dungeon Drop, and SWAT (now Catapult in SFNE)

XLR8 the ride of the Future. At least back in the 80's

Another poor Von Roll bites the dust.

Mayan Mindbender

Texas Cyclone, lift hill to oblivion.

Edited October 28, 2011 by johnychen

[jzoole]

God, I get really emotional looking at pics like these. I STILL can't believe AstroWorld is gone. I used to go once or twice a week. I know it sounds lame, but a huge part of me died when this great old park was razed. Great pictures.

[montezooma]

I have a new favorite thread. I can’t wait to see more! I miss AstroWorld.

[johnychen]

Here's pictures from my next trip to Astroworld on 10/21/2005. Fright Fest was on, which was appropriate since the park was about to die.

Entrance to the parking lot.

Texas Cyclone at sunset.

Giant spider on the cyclone.

One of the old video screens in the cyclone line.

Maze of lumber and steel holding up the Cylone

All clear

Cyclone with Le Taxis.

Entrance to the Coney Island section of the park.

Looping Starship.

Ghostly apparitions on front of horizons.

Utratwister

Astroway Station

Ultratwister behind the Batcave which use to be the Alpine Sleigh Ride. Best Dark Ride Ever!

The Wagon Wheel

Western Junction Train Station

Greezed Lighnin' station

Spare train, with ultratwister, and kiddie section.

Another attempt at capturing lightning.

the 610 limited.

Myan Mindbender entrance

Entrance to Thunder River, first river rapids ride in the world. Tech was invented at this park.

Bamboo Shoot.

Bamboo Shoot station

Victims of the SLC, Serial Thriller

That's the last of the Bamboo Shoot pics

Another angle of the Mayan Mindbender

Exit from Thunder River

Mr. Six

Ghosts at the Orient Express train Station

We end this trip with a shot of two rides that are at SNE now.

[kirkf1tz]

Gosh I miss Astroworld. It had its bad years (as did many SF parks at that time), but it was definitely on a huge upswing as it closed. All the new paint, cleaned up property, and modest investments really started to make an impact.

 

Well, the rodeo has more parking now

 

—Kirk "emotional now" Fitzgerald

[gisco]

Cool pictures. That last set is the night I think I was there. I wish I had more time to see the park. I was only there for Friday night and Saturday. The park was packed on Saturday so it was mostly a picture taking day.

[KickTheSky]

What's amazing to me is that Houston is still without a main amusement/theme park! You'd think with all the oil money in the area, there would be some individual (or even, gasp, corporation) that would have the capital to build a well-marketed park. By well marketed I mean sponsored. There are obviously tons of issues with starting from scratch, but what an opportunity to learn from all of the hits and misses of the past 100 years.

 

I simply can't imagine a park not being at least marginally profitable if they had a decent management team....just seems like there is way more than enough of a population base to support it in that area.

 

Great pictures, was never able to go to that park but it obviously had quite a bit of history - I'm always saddened when I see a long-since-torn-down sky ride.

[johnychen]

I agree, surely the fourth largest city in the US can support a major theme park. From what I heard, Astroworld was actually profitable when they killed it. It was always crowded when ever I went there. Which makes destroying this park even more senseless.

 

Check out this link for a good read on the history of Astroworld and the reason it was closed.

 

www.mikerobinson.net/astroworld.htm

 

 

Here's a clipping from the link above.

1 Why was Astroworld closed?

 

A real estate company in Oklahoma City took over a park called Frontier City. The real estate company quickly realized that running theme parks was a lot more fun than buying and selling real estate and and became Premier parks. Premier parks hired some ex-Six Flags execs and went on a buying spree, purchasing small to medium sized parks around the country. Six Flags had become a real mess with Time Warner buying the chain trying to compete with Disney.

 

In 1997, Investors that owned Six Flags Over Texas (Which is not owned by Six Flags, just managed by them a unique situation to Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Over Georgia.) were not happy with Time Warner's investments in Six Flags over Texas and approached Premier Parks to Manage Six Flags Over Texas. Time Warner had to scramble to make the investors happy and moved capital investments from other parks to Dallas. (Mr. Freeze was suppose to be installed at Astroworld next to the Texas Cyclone and that is why an empty Car Dealership sat next to the Texas Cyclone that was used for Fright Nights.) Premier Parks then approached Six Flags and offered to buy the entire chain. Time Warner was willing to sell the chain as they had acquired quite a bit of debt when they had purchased Six Flags and branding the Six Flags Chain with Warner Brothers Characters did not transform Six Flags into Disney. Premier borrowed a ton of money to buy the Six Flags chains. Premier parks then became Six Flags. A few years went by, the debt grew and a lot of questionable investments were made that made Kieran Burke, the CEO of Six Flags desperate. Premier bought Sea World Ohio, several parks in Europe, a park in Mexico and re-branded many of their parks to the Six Flags Brand. The park in Ohio, a combination of Sea World and Geuaga Lake was sold to Cedar Fair at an Incredible loss after millions of dollars were invested. The parks in Europe were sold for a huge loss. At the same time, a deal was made to manage Jazzland, which was a struggling park that was destroyed by Katrina. He had the stockholders breathing down his neck and had to do something. Six Flags was in debt for 2 to 3 BILLION dollars. Burke thought the could make over 100 million of the sale of the property. So he decided to sell the property Astroworld sits on, telling everyone that the value of the land was far greater than the value of the park itself. Contrary to what Burke said, Astroworld was VERY profitable. Based on the fact he entertained no other offers, it is my belief that he had deal in place to sell the land before the announcement. Since the demo of Waterworld started pretty much immediately after the announcement, I think he had a very aggressive timetable to meet to clear the land.

 

Other than that, there really is no good reason. Burke was so desperate to keep control of Six Flags, he thought any infusion of cash would make the stockholders happy. He proceeded to put the chain up for sale, another desperate move. He then LIED to the stockholders saying he was getting offers when in fact we found out that was not true. This actually hurt the chain even more as the accounting books were made public to anyone who expressed interest in buying Six Flags. Of course other park chains looked at the books and laughed at the fiasco that Six Flags had become.

 

Burke was a pathetic man, a poor leader and had no business running Six Flags. He did more damage to the company than any of the previous owners combined. Burke quickly accumulated more than 2 BILLION dollars in debt making very poor business decisions such as signing a long term lease for Jazzland, Sea World Ohio and purchasing rides the chain could not afford. So looking at those facts, is it hard to believe he could screw up so bad he costs us our park that we loved? Like Bud Adams (owner of the Houston Oilers and later the Titans when he moved the team to Nashville), Burke screwed over the city of Houston and Harris county, tuning their backs on the very people who had supported them for many years. Despite the fact the little to no investments were made to Astroworld, the park was the 7th most profitable park Six Flags owned.

 

Burke was removed by the Stockholders and walked away with Millions of dollars that was paid to him to go away. Now in place is Mark Shapiro who seems much more qualified to run Six Flags. Shapiro has a team in place that is made of the best (Well, shown to be very average but still better than Burke...) in the business (but they sure do like charging for lockers....) so hopefully an occurrence like this will not happen again. (We hoped, but it is happening again with Kentucky Kingdom, which Six Flags is walking away from and taking their rides with them.)

 

I am still not very impressed with Six Flags parks and after my last Visit to Fiesta Texas, have not returned to any Six Flags park.

 

With Six Flags clearing only 57 million dollars that only paid for three new rides to open in different parks the year after Six Flags closed Astroworld. That is what The selling of Astroworld did for Six Flags. It paid for rides in California, Georgia and Canada. Three rollercoaster's. That's it.

Edited October 28, 2011 by johnychen

[donkeyman18]

This is great i just dont understand why they took this amazing well themed park! What a six flags move...