User blog:RCTFan2002/Whatever Happened to... Episode 4: Whatever Happened to...Fun Spot Wisconsin?

Hi everyone, welcome back to the "Whatever Happened to...?" series. Today's episode will address the RCT3 park "Fun Spot Wisconsin", which was briefly mentioned in one post of Fraroc's other RCT3 park "Kings Paradise". This episode was requested personally by Stacy4554, so shout out to them!

Introduction
Fun Spot Wisconsin opened in 1980 as a small family owned theme park, featuring bumper boats, a Scrambler ride, a spiral slide, a Zierer Wave Swinger, and two coasters - Galaxi, a Pinfari Galaxi (actually a Zyklon Z47 model) coaster, and Lazer Loop, an Arrow shuttle loop coaster. The park saw little expansion over the years, such as a 100-ft tall swinging biplane ride (think of Barnstormer at Opryland USA) in 1982, a smaller version of a park model Ferris Wheel in 1985, a Mondial Supernova ride in 1990, an Arrow looping coaster (the relocated Corkscrew from Kings Paradise) which replaced Galaxi in 1991, a Fabbri Kamikaze ride in 1992, a Vekoma Mine Train coaster in 1995 (that, oddly enough, had wooden supports unlike the other Vekoma Mine Trains), a Wisdom Dragon Wagon coaster in 1999, a Zamperla Disk'O ride that replaced the Fabbri Kamikaze in 2005, and, most recently, a Zamperla Windshear/Backflash ride that replaced the Mondial Supernova in 2008.

Last we heard of the small independent park, it sold off Corkscrew, aka GravityMAX, to the traveling fair circuit at the end of the 2009 season and replaced it with Python, a one-of-a-kind Sartori Rides looping coaster that brought quite some attention to the park due to the coaster being the only model of it's kind ever built by Sartori. But what happened to the park since then? What does it look like now in 2022? Well, find out right here, right now!

Fun Spot Wisconsin: A Brief History from 2010-2022
Python opened in May 2010 to quite some attention, given that it was the only sitdown looping coaster model that Sartori ever built. Despite this the ride received mixed reviews when it opened, some criticizing that it was too rough. To rectify this problem, the park owners replaced the custom built Sartori trains just a year later with new, sleek KumbaK trains to hopefully smoothen the ride experience.

2011 also saw a major change come to the park, but not in the way you might think - in February of 2011, the park was threatened with a lawsuit by none other than Fun Spot America, the small theme park chain that, at the time, owned two small theme parks in Florida. Due to Fun Spot Wisconsin's name being too similar to that of Fun Spot America's own parks, the latter threatened to sue the former's owners unless they changed the name of their park. The owners, not wanting to waste thousands of unnecessary dollars on a lawsuit, complied and when the park opened for the 2011 season just 2 months later, it opened as "Wisconsin Springs Family Park". Fun Spot America, satisfied with these results, promptly dropped the potential lawsuit.

2012 saw nothing new either, but Lazer Loop did get a refurbishment that year, including a new coat of paint and a Premier LIM launch replacing the ride's original winding launch. It was also the final year for Dragon Wagon at the park, which was removed in September of that year and relocated to Delray Beach, Florida, where it reopened at a small family entertainment center in 2013 as the park's first coaster. As for Wisconsin Springs Family Park, they replaced Dragon Wagon in 2013 with Reverse Dragster, a Gerstlauer shuttle family coaster. When it opened, it immediately proved to be a bigger hit with families and kids than Dragon Wagon was.

2014 saw the park getting a minor expansion. A new pathway was built in between the spiral slide and Ferris Wheel, leading to an unofficial new kiddie area with 3 new rides - The Great Race (a Zamperla Samba Balloon), Berserk Bus (a SBF Visa Flying Bus), and Crow's Nest (an SBF Visa Drop N' Twist). This addition gave the park some much needed kiddie rides and made the park look a lot more appealing for children.

In 2015, the original owners of the park, now past retirement age and wanting to finally settle down, sold operations of the park to Premier Parks LLC, who took over as the park operators starting that year. The park was still owned by the original owners though. In 2016, Premier Parks, taking quick advantage of their newfound operations over the park, added Brain Drain, a Larson Super Loop, right across from the Disk'O and Windshear rides. Despite not being that exciting of a ride, it certainly brought a lot more thrill seekers to the small park.

2017 saw a Zamperla Endeavour being added near the park entrance, a pathway being built between the Bumper Boats and Wave Swinger to get to the ride (because of this Wave Swinger had to close early for the 2016 season so a new queue for the ride could be built). Again, it brought plenty of thrill seekers to the tiny yet exciting park. But then, in the middle of the 2017 season...just when things seemed to be looking up for the park...it happened.

At 8:25am on August 15, 2017, just before the park opened up to the public for the day, the rides were all undergoing their daily morning test runs. Two employees were on the test run of Rock N' Roll Express, the Vekoma wood/steel hybrid Mine Train coaster. The test run started out perfectly fine, the ride being just like it was every other day...then, halfway through the ride, the employees suddenly felt like they were swaying, and heard cracking noises from underneath them...then, suddenly...without any warning...the coaster abruptly collapsed mid-ride, killing 1 employee and almost crippling the other. The park had to abruptly close off to the public for the day while emergency responders rushed to the park, and when the official report later came out, it was revealed that the cause for the coaster's collapse was that the wooden supports for the ride had been horribly aged and weathered, causing them to become extremely weak and unable to support the ride, and so they finally just...broke apart. The only relief was that it happened early in the morning during a test run, and not during the middle of the day, when the ride usually had a full train of riders on it...

Wisconsin Springs Family Park reopened the following Monday, August 21st, but the incident had caused a lot of people to become wary and nervous of the small, seemingly unsuspecting park and, as a result, attendance for the rest of the season was nearly at an all-time low. 2018's attendance was a little better...key word being "little". Rock N' Roll Express remained Standing But Not Operating for the majority of the 2018 season, while Premier Parks initially planned to rebuild the coaster with all-new steel supports replacing the old, aged wooden ones. However, they seemed to abruptly switch gears at the last second, as starting in August of 2018, people began to report that they saw Rock N' Roll Express's track being dismantled into pieces and trucked away. Indeed, after lots of careful consideration about the park and what would be best for it's future, Premier Parks decided to instead scrap the 22-year-old coaster, and replace it with an all-new coaster. When this news became public, there was immediately lots of debate about what the new coaster would be, suggestions ranging from Vekoma, to B&M, to Mack, and even at one point an RMC Raptor. There were plenty of ideas, but in the end only one could be true...

And ultimately, in 2019...a Conqueror took over the park! Conqueror, an RMC wood/steel hybrid coaster and one of very few built from the ground-up, opened in Rock N' Roll Express' former spot. It can be considered as sort of a predecessor to the RMC family hybrid coaster that was later announced in 2021 - it had a 50.8 ft tall lift hill, a 75 degree first drop, and two inversions - a barrel roll and the first ever cutback inversion to be featured on a RMC hybrid coaster. Needless to say, when it opened in April of 2019, it seemed to bring the park back from the abyss, coaster junkies flocking from all around the country to the tiny Wisconsin park just to ride the small, yet exciting-looking new coaster. Everyone seemed to forget all about the tragic incident with Rock N' Roll Express, and park attendance soared that season up to nearly 145% of what it'd been in 2018. The ride certainly seemed to redeem the park in the eyes of many, and once again the park was on it's way to success...

...then COVID hit in 2020 and the park was forced to lockdown, it's typical April 2020 opening canceled. Any progress that Conqueror seemed to make with restoring the park to it's prime and glory was erased by the ongoing pandemic, which forced the park to remain shut until August of 2020, and even then the park was only open for 1 month AND saw limited attendance due to the COVID-19 guidelines. To make things worse, one of the park's original owners passed away in September of 2020 at the age of 80 (NOT because of COVID though), causing his wife to now struggle with owning the park all by herself. Reluctantly, in January 2021, she gave up ownership of the park to Premier Parks, making it only the second theme park that Premier Parks LLC ever had that they both owned and operated, the first previously being Clementon Park from 2011-2019. The park reopened like normal in April 2021, but still saw low attendance due to the pandemic. Because of the severe loss in attendance and the financial distress both induced by the pandemic, Premier Parks decided during the middle of the 2021 season that it would be best for both the company and the park to sell the latter to another, much more stable and successful company...

...and in October of 2021, it was announced that Wisconsin Springs Family Park would be sold to Palace Entertainment. After buying the park from Premier, Palace Entertainment announced that they would be adding several new family rides to the park for 2022, to hopefully help increase park attendance. The new rides included a Larson Flying Skooters, a Paratrooper relocated from Kennywood, and a pirate ship manufactured by SBF Visa., all located near the Zamperla Endeavour When they opened with the park in 2022, they did indeed help bring back some of the park's attendance and bring in some more revenue. It wasn't anywhere near record breaking, but it was certainly an improvement from 2020 and 2021. Python also received a fresh new paint job that year.

Despite going through some rough times as of late, Fun Spot Wisconsin, aka Wisconsin Springs Family Park, has certainly seen some improvements in the past 12-13 years. It may not be the most thrilling theme park out there, but it is certainly on it's way up the list as it continues to shine year after year with unexpected new additions like the Conqueror. There's no telling which way the park could go next, but it certainly doesn't seem like it'll be going back down anytime soon.