Reminder that failure is an option

by philg

I stumbled on Closed for Storm in Amazon Prime (it is wedged into a corner of the app behind “Black voices” and “Hispanic & Latino voices” (no “Latinx voices” category?)). It covers Jazzland, which opened in 2000 and was converted into Six Flags New Orleans in 2003. Katrina hit in 2005.

I recommend this for anyone considering a business investment. It is a great reminder that failure is always an option.

Separately, it is unclear why the park couldn’t be reopened. The metro area population was about 1.34 million in 2000 and today is 1.27 million. Americans love theme parks. Why do they generate infinite money in Orlando, but are risky elsewhere?

6 thoughts on “Reminder that failure is an option”

  1. > Why do they generate infinite money in Orlando, but are risky elsewhere?

    Everyone knows what’s in Orlando and the industry there is so completely developed that nobody is insecure making it their vacation destination. I used to love Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey – we must have visited 20 times in my youth – but I can imagine that the combination of *insurance expense* to keep the park open day-to-day during the down times has to be a huge drag on profitability. In Orlando, even the “off season” is busy. Nobody visits Great Adventure in the middle of the winter, and they have to maintain all the attractions and rides, even in “hibernation.”

    Then, on the slow days, you don’t make enough money to keep the parks afloat paying the electricity, staff, maintenance, security, etc., etc.

    • It would be fascinating to see the power feed lines for Disney in Orlando. How many megawatts are they pulling down on an average day?

  2. > Reminder that failure is an option

    Dr. Robert Malone (mRNA inventor): “What If The Largest [Medical] Experiment On Human Beings In History Is A Failure? … Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64”.

    https://archive.is/wip/YHGgj

  4. I haven’t seen the film but is there any indication that the park was ever financially viable? It is a convoluted story but it seems that the initial financing was from the federal government, rather than private finance, which suggests that the project was not financially viable from the outset. According to Wikipedia two of the developers who were involved went bankrupt and at some point the city of New Orleans became the owner. Seems that if the park was abandoned 17 years ago and in the interim no one was able or willing to put together the pieces that, for whatever reason, the scheme was probably poorly thought out to begin with. Sounds like one of these convention center ideas, that if someone will pay for a convention center it will pay for itself many times over with increased tourism and so on. It rarely works out that way.

  5. Thank you for suggesting this documentary. My days of experiencing fast spinning or gravity-defying rides are behind me, but what I do enjoy are the business aspects of Theme Parks. I enjoy the business side so much, that after returning from a visit to Universal Studios in Orlando one year, I began to get the updates from the blog “Theme Park University”.

    This documentary is a good reminder that my experience in “Project Management” with documenting risks is always important. Although one may not have documented the risk on this project that “If a never before seen hurricane hits, it will close the park as it is underwater”, with any mitigation strategy that would be cost effective, it still serves as a good reminder that risks on a project or corporate level exist and need to be considered. It makes me wonder what the Orlando Theme parks have as a risk list.

    I wonder if the team at Canobie Lake (https://www.canobie.com/) ever considers flooding as a risk to their business?

    JJD – Back to *If, Then, Else* statements.

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