North America's Worst Theme Park

sometime in early 2018 i was picking up food and saw a flyer for an amusement park all too familiar to me chocolaty [Music] marineland has been a staple of my hometown area for years i've watched their commercials play after cartoons all my life yet i've never actually gone i've known about their troubled past before but never paid much attention to it at least not until i saw this flyer for the park on the last page it essentially lays out a defense against critics reading radical animal rights activists have relentlessly and viciously attacked marineland then showing a tweet from phil damaris who spearheaded the effort against the park this is a real advertisement for a theme park and when i saw this i thought what the hell is going on at this place so let's find that out this is my review of marineland niagara falls and why in my opinion it might just be the worst theme park in north america now obviously there's a pretty big elephant in the room or maybe make that an orca in the room there's a lot to say about their long history with allegations of mistreatment of their animals and the actual charges brought against the park and their late owner i'll touch on a little bit of that towards the end of the video but i still encourage you to do your own research if you wish to educate yourself further on the matter i'll be focusing more on the park itself in this video but everything is alleged unless stated otherwise and all of this is of course my opinion but with all that out of the way let's enter the park jake can you believe we're going to marineland today [Music] oh my god this is bumpy the cost of entry is 43.95 for children or seniors and 50 and 95 cents per adult in years past you can upgrade to a season's pass for just five extra dollars but this year it's completely free so that's exactly what we did as we'll visit the park twice for this video the total for the two of us plus tax was 115 dollars and 15 cents canadian not exactly a bargain for what you're about to see who needs to be an annual pass holder at walt disney world i got a marineland fun card let's let's see the map i mean why why does this dolphin look like it's been smoking for years of its life it looks like it drinks a diet coke every night watch out the parking lot is inside the park apparently marineland opened in 1961 by a man named john holler he slowly expanded the park over the next 50 years and by the early 2000s marineland now encompassed a staggering 1 000 acres of land which for comparison is larger than all four walt disney world parks put together in reality though only a fraction of that land is actually being used the rest is largely undeveloped so marineland really doesn't have a layout of a traditional theme park i don't even think you can really even call this a layout at all actually it's more like a series of meandering pathways just one walk around the main path alone is already a few miles of walking now there is a tram service called the marineland express which is essentially just one of those mall trains for kids that wasn't even running both days we were here so we were walking a lot the pathways themselves are absolutely enormous enough to where you can fit seemingly four lanes of traffic on them they feel even wider than the widest footpaths in magic kingdom there's also a train line that runs right through the front of the park this isn't a current attraction it's an industrial train line that connects two factories on either side of the park's property it's just very weird some of these pathways would also just literally lead to dead ends in one case over an arctic cove there's just a massive pathway that has no signs and seems to just lead to nothing i think this was the intended path to a never-built attraction but i'll get into that a little later sprinkled throughout these barren wide footpaths are medieval structures that are in all honesty not bad in terms of theming some themed buildings have nice details and if it weren't for their surroundings could be quite immersive to be fair i don't think they were going for escapism here i suppose it was popular in the 60s and 70s to make things look medieval but i'm not exactly sure what the storyline is here and why there are random turrets and villages sparsely spread around this massive park plus this is all alongside the regular buildings which just look like they were built in the 70s they were modern back then but now just look incredibly dated although i will admit they are charming in a way the entire property has this hometown theme park feeling really though being in a park this large with such a weird layout was made even weirder by the lack of people now we went on a thursday so i thought maybe we had just picked a particularly slow day of the season so we returned on a saturday and there were quite a bit more people but the sheer size of everything still made the park feel empty you could easily walk on any attraction without a weight and sometimes you could just walk into random areas of the park and be completely isolated there were so few people on our first day there that vehicles would often drive down the guest pathways i mean we saw golf carts mercedes suvs pickup trucks construction equipment and even an old tractor it got to the point where we were seeing more vehicles than we were guests with such vast space and the hot sun beating down on you with little shade you'd think that marineland would at least have well-placed food and drink stands right yeah no there are technically two quick service restaurants at the front of the park only one of them were operating the other had strollers working at the kitchen so i guess nobody wanted to eat there there were probably another five or six food stands spread around the park that were just not open at all only one of the food stands was open apart from the main restaurant making it quite the walk if you wanted to bite the eat i could chalk that up to staffing shortages in the pre-summer season though but this is an amusement park so what about the rides well marineland has a total of 16 attractions pretty much all of them are off-the-shelf flat rides 13 of which were designed for small children with only some of those attractions themed to cohesively fit the park some not even operating at all and easily mistakeable for being abandoned and just some simply showing their age now there are three of them that provide a little more intensity the most famous of which is the skyscreamer functioning as their e-ticket attraction and kind of serving as the park's icon now i don't like drop towers so i didn't go on it but from what i understand it's pretty good solely because of its unique view of niagara falls the only issue is that it's on top of a very large hill that you have to climb over a very long and steep pathway then there's the newest attraction to open at marineland star voyager just like many others it's a pretty standard off-the-shelf ride from the zaire company before this though the infamous topple tower attractions stowed on the site it opened in 2007 and constantly had maintenance problems until they just stopped operating it altogether it sat abandoned for years until they finally replaced it with this a pretty generic flat thrill ride in 2021 there's also a water play area which is also a relatively new addition which apparently is only open in july and august finally there's the roller coaster and oh boy is this a weird one dragon mountain is marineland's one and only roller coaster and it is the very definition of bizarre the park touts it as the world's largest non-stop roller coaster covering a staggering 30 acres of land the original plan for this attraction was extremely ambitious as jon holler wanted to build a large mountain with volcano elements several tunnels and a quarter scale replica of niagara falls so aerodynamics designed a coaster to meet this vision unfortunately the budget was deducted halfway through and the attraction opened pretty much unfinished in 1983. it had stayed that way for years afterwards with metal framing surrounding the helix where the volcano was intended to go where the falls replica was slated just a tunnel of steel framing was constructed and left that way until 2006 when it was finally torn down the same year also saw the volcano helix get completed but everything else was just never finished which is why the track layout is just so strange coaster studio's video was much more in-depth from an enthusiast point of view and you can go watch it through the link in the description below but for me personally this was a rough pretty unenjoyable ride nothing about this felt very safe or even maintained its track is the opposite of smooth and its jerky design elements feel like someone built it on roller coaster tycoon 3. because this ride never saw its entire vision built there's now just entirely straight sections over a field there is something to be said on how weird this roller coaster actually is which makes it kind of cool in that aspect it's also neat to see a high-speed train travel through a forest like this even if it feels like your head is going to be chopped off by tree branches what's much less fun to laugh at are the animal exhibits this is marineland after all so what do they have for marine life three times daily there's a dolphin and other marine mammals show which marineland calls the educational presentation i find it pretty blatant that they're spinning it in a way that's supposed to be completely educational when it's really just a trick show with facts sprinkled into it over at friendship cove and arctic cove you'll be able to see the beluga whales and one orca while the underwater viewing areas will almost guarantee you a clear view of these beautiful animals the sheer lack of size in their enclosures is extremely depressing kiska their last orca just swims around in circles in the comparatively small tank i will say it is a unique experience to see the intelligence of the beluga whales i just wish it was in a different venue in addition to all of these they do have some rather unremarkable land animal displays including a bizarre exhibit with a shocking number of deer finally there's the aquarium where you can apparently see penguins however none were to be found here just below that 1970s style stadium is a liminal space fish tank hell really at least in my opinion all of these enclosures are pretty much the bare minimum for these animals and none of the environments are remotely natural looking with all of this being considered there of course have been multiple controversies plaguing the park now the park's former and late owner john haller has a long personal history of what i would consider to be just straight up mistreatment of animals there have not only been allegations of him shooting random neighbors dogs but also not giving trainers enough resources to properly care for the animals in marineland's care phil demaris along with other former trainers have spoken out against the park and created a huge wave of outrage now every year a protest is held which has led the park to put up a wall around the entire entrance parking lot so from the road you'd barely even know what marineland is in response to all of this backlash marineland went on a pretty aggressive pr campaign with the creation of two youtube videos directly addressing the controversy one that specifically addresses the recent claims and another rather strange one that basically says if marineland closes it would have a devastating effect to the local economy which i'm not too sure about in 2016 the ontario spca the society for prevention and cruelty to animals charged the park with several counts of animal cruelty now it's important to note that these charges were dropped with the prosecutors claiming they had no likelihood of conviction in 2019 canada passed legislation outlawing the shows that used marine animals for entertainment marineland was then criminally charged for allegedly continuing to run the shows that did just that the park denied these allegations saying the shows were used for educational purposes only and the charges are being returned to court in early 2022 but really that's just scratching the surface of marineland and specifically john holler once again i encourage you to do your own research but quite another shocking act took place in 2004 when hauler purchased the green oaks mobile home park across the street from marineland in 2009 holler evicted all 47 families living at green oaks against their wishes many of whom claimed they didn't have the means to find other housing and thus a huge amount of pushback and protesting ensued but the eviction went through leading to the suicide of 62 year old paula millard who wrote this on her wall the entire trailer park is now abandoned and demolished the property was never put to use all right moving away from the more depressing stuff with the park's creator and long-time owner john holler now gone the long-term future for marineland has been put into question there have been several big plans for future expansion in that defense video for the park they stated this they are already working on river country where visitors will take boat and train rides through a new exhibit where they will experience amazing new animals from africa and asia from the looks of it this boat ride seemed to have been partially constructed with the waterway path clearly visible in satellite images this has yet to open on the back of my 2018 flyer they advertised a new exhibit called aviary safari from up above you can actually see the developed area with ponds and planted trees along with a small gazebo this is actually where the path from arctic cove was leading to while this was advertised and obviously somewhat built it too never opened there is a lot of undeveloped land with many opportunities all of which however needs lots of investments and judging by the amount of patrons here i'm not sure they have the resources to do so the official owner as far as we know is the hauler family amusement company and despite rumors of selling off their land and even being acquired by another theme park company like six flags nothing has yet materialized in my opinion marineland kinda sucks it's hard to navigate exhausting to walk through and provides a little payoff as a theme park institution it fails on almost every front except for the nice people working there sure you can ride skyscreamer or gawk at the weirdness of dragon mountain but other than those it's honestly pretty boring you can easily see and do everything by 1 pm and that's all for 50 dollars a person plus tax that's a lot of money for what you're getting here it feels like a cheap hometown theme park but also one that has legitimate theme park rides so it fits in the middle of this very strange venn diagram you just don't feel good when leaving the park whether you feel ripped off or you just feel ethically bankrupt in my personal opinion i doubt the animals are being mistreated to a serious extent anymore however it is also in my opinion that no marine animal this large should be in a tank this small an animal that objectively dives 300 feet and can travel 100 miles in a day if you want to learn about these creatures go watch a documentary or read a book i am highly skeptical of the fact that people go to these parks to learn about the animals and the only reason to keep them around is to teach people about them i stood at the tanks for quite a while and observed how people reacted most would just come in take iphone photos and walk away the vast majority were not learning anything at least to the extent that marineland says they are if we're being serious here i'm not sure who can really make a sound argument that john holler in the 1960s created this park for marine education and preservation this has always been about using these animals for spectacle and getting tourists to spend money here it has always been about using them as props it's honestly pretty condescending that marineland would come out swinging with a video claiming that protesters want to eliminate jobs and that they want to destroy a sound institution of education so the next time a radical animal liberation activist hands you a pamphlet ask them why are you so determined to kill jobs in niagara falls it's more than fair to feel bad about animals being held in captivity in this way so i have no problem believing that there has been serious neglect and unethical treatment to animals here in the past but it is all alleged and it's important to keep in mind that nothing has resulted in actual charges i am in no way a lifelong and devoted animal activist i'm just a regular person with a conscience i get the feeling there is new management and responsible minds at the helm these days but it's a dirty and dark legacy that feels like it has tainted any future marineland has and the controversy will likely follow them unless they reformat in a big way really i don't see why anyone would come to this park in the future if you want to see animals in a more appropriate environment visit the toronto zoo or better yet appreciate them from the comfort of your own home if you're looking for thrills go to canada's wonderland or six flags darien lake all of which are cheaper to get into than marineland so with all of this considered i think there is a long way to go for the park if they ever want to gain the trust of the public back it seems like the only people who visit the park now are tourists that are unaware of the bad press i think the best course of action for the park is just to eliminate the animal displays altogether they will never be free of controversy until that's done but maybe this part could be a little more in the style of animal kingdom if the park was given the proper investment and vision but until then for me at least i think this might just be the worst theme park in north america thanks for watching everyone

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 2,016,751

Keywords: review, phil demers, niagara falls, canada, america, theme park, bad theme park, coaster studios, roller coaster, drop tower, marine land, dead theme park, theme park review, Jake williams, bright sun films, amusement park, never built rides, abandoned ride, Disney world

Id: OqsPF8dx1GU

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/papapudding]

90s Canadian Kids will remember their ads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXUR1gSnd7M

[u/jwcolour]

When I was young I went there, in the deer enclosure/experience I had a deer go into my pocket and eat a $50 Bill that my mom had given me for the day.

More or less all I remember from Marine Land.

[u/RussellBrandFagPimp]

Ahhh yes… fond memories of feeding the malnourished bears marshmallows in the 90’s

[u/hgaterms]

God damn, that owner sucks so much ass. Evicted 40 people just so he could what -- demolish their homes and let the land rot? Fuck that guy.

[u/thisonetimeonreddit]

This place is absolutely disgusting. Multiple well-documented animal welfare violations, always seems to be an ongoing investigation etc...

Anyone who patronizes this place should be ashamed of themselves and anyone who works here should be prosecuted.

[u/brothercake]

I don't get it. Theme parks go bankrupt all the time, yet this park still running?

The park is already bigger than all of the Disney Worlds put together but they only have 16 rides, most of then can also be found on a local fare (and yet they still needed to evict a trailer park on the other side). There is a gigantic roller coaster ride that still looks unfinished after 40(!) years. There are hardly any places where you can get something to eat and drink. There are more employees driving around than visitors.

How can this park break even? Was John Holer secretly a billionaire? Did he have all the Ontario politicians in his pocket for several generations? Is this a money launder scheme? Tax evasion scheme? Real estate scheme? Investor scheme?

[u/Ok-Zookeepergame8425]

Well made video. Thanks for sharing

[u/booty__liquor]

Niagara Falls Ontariooooo....

[u/badboy3420]

wow