Archives

HBJ decided a total retheming of their newly aquired Circus World Theme Park was called for, so they shut it down, re-built, and on Valentine's Day, 1987, re-opened as "Boardwalk and Baseball". The theme was now a turn of the century seaside boardwalk, so they built one, covering most of the concrete pathways with wood. Circus acts were out, the Royal Lippizaner horse show was in. Circus displays vanished, making way for exhibits borrowed from Cooperstown. A baseball stadium was built north of the park and the Kansas City Royals were lured away from Terry Park in Ft.

The 1980's had just begun, and the future was on its way to Central Florida. Specifically, EPCOT Center, the long awaited "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow" that Walt Disney had promised the state in the early sixties, was finally opening.
That EPCOT was not the experimental city of Walt's dream but just another theme park is another story. (Celebration, the upscale housing development that the Disney Company finally built in Osceola County, isn't it either, for that matter.)