April 2nd, 1999

I love abandoned amusement parks.

But out of all the places I’ve been to across my urban exploring career I unfortunately haven’t encountered one. Serves me right for going to school in bumfuck Pennsylvania but whatever. I don’t know if I can properly explain the appeal of abandoned theme parks to someone who isn’t into urbex. Most people would probably find a place like that creepy fuck. I guess they’re right, all abandoned places have that eeriness to them. I’m not gonna sit here and say I’ve never come a little close to pissing my pants in an abandoned hospital in the middle of the night. I think part of it has to do with the innocence of it all being stripped away by time. Statues of mascots that were once friendly and inviting are deteriorating and covered in rust. An area that used to be filled with happy memories and people is now completely desolate. The only evidence of human life is what’s left of the park and the graffitied swastikas everywhere.

Theme parks are pretty interesting to look at to start with. Just walking down Main Street in Disney World is enough visual stimulation to make your eyes melt out of your skull. Now imagine it’s been abandoned (Which would never happen because Walt Disney is making more dough in his grave than I’ll ever see in my entire life but I digress…) and everything is faded and falling apart. I guarantee you won’t be any less interested in your surroundings. Freaked out? Yeah probably. Personally looping It’s a Small World a couple of times is enough to make me lose my cool anyway, so I’d be putting up with emotional distress either way.

I also believe part of the appeal comes from when you find a new abandoned location and it's untouched– I’m no graffiti or empty beer bottles and cigarette butts. A completely virgin location that hasn’t been touched in a decade. In some ways, it feels like your spot, like you own it. Obviously, that's not actually true. If cops knew where to look they’d put their donut down to cuff you in an instant. But when it’s just you and your buddy exploring a place nobody else has it feels like it's yours, at least for the moment. And who the hell doesn’t want to own their own amusement park? I may not be his biggest fan, but if I could get dropped into a hole besides Walt and buried in the money of tourists earned from my personal theme park empire I could consider that a life well lived.

Now, it’s very likely if you're viewing this blog that you’re not here to listen to me rant about childhood innocence and Walt Disney. I promise this is all relevant to the news I’m about to share regarding my latest urbex endeavors. More accurately the lack of them. I’ve been kinda swamped with school and haven’t been able to find anywhere worth traveling to over the weekend. That was until I was browsing this other guy's blog. Which I’m not gonna link here because he is a pretentious asshole! Basically he was spewing about this abandoned water park he and his friends found. Of course, this piqued my interest for all the reasons mentioned above. I know this guy lives in PA and is fairly local because that's the only reason I keep up with his site. Otherwise, all his entries are criminally barebone. He doesn’t take any photos, I don’t think he owns a camera at all. That's fine I guess, like it’s whatever not everyone owns a camera. I mean fuck I only have mine because I got it for Christmas when I was like sixteen. So anyway, this guy made a post about this waterpark. You’d think for a guy that can’t take any pictures he’d at least take some time to describe the location eloquently or otherwise not bother to post at all. Instead, he writes a shitty paragraph the bulk of which focuses on the tit size of the girl he and his friends dragged along instead of the actual water park itself. Shocker! What I could gather from the post was that the location still has a big statue of the mascot, a Starfish with sunglasses, fully intact. It’s the same deal for all the waterslides and pools, except they’ve all been drained and are now filled with leaves and gunk.

Obviously, I want to go to this place and see it for myself. Unlike this clown, I could actually take some decent pictures and notes. I might not be the first to find the location, but I can be the first to document it. So I shot this dude an email. I tell him I’m local and that I’m interested in seeing the waterpark for myself, taking a few pictures, and whatever. I even send him my blog so he knows I’m not just gonna go there and cover the place in spray paint. You wanna know what this douchebag responds with? One single email, no subject, just the message: “I’m withholding the address from the public. If you wanna see it, find it yourself.”

Yeah, okay. First of all, finding it myself based on the way he described the place is like finding a needle in a haystack. That’s like trying to direct someone to a road by describing the stop sign at the end of it. Second of all, I don’t know when I as an independent person started to be considered the public. Who deemed him the bouncer of a deserted waterpark? Actually, I can answer that. Nobody! I understand not posting the cords online where just anyone can see them. But come on. I’m not gonna do anything to damage the place, and I really don’t think he actually cares about that. He just likes the imaginary ownership of the place and doesn’t want to share it with others. Or the waterpark isn’t real at all and this guy is just a fraud posting about a bullshit urban exploring location that doesn’t fucking exist for attention. I honestly should have assumed that from the get-go. There is no way a hot girl with big tits would ever hang out with a moron like him.

April 5th, 1999

Okay, so it turns out the abandoned waterpark I mentioned a couple of posts ago is real.

I had some free time and I was pretty much bored out of my mind. I decided to go down to the library and do a little bit of research on new locations. Mostly because I feel like I haven’t found a good location in forever. Like Pennhearst was cool and all but I didn’t find it, everyone and their mother has been there. So anyway I didn’t really intend to look into the water park because at this point I was pretty sure it was all made up. But I wasn’t really getting any other results so I decided I’d just type “abandoned water park PA” into the search engine. Nothing interesting came up, it was all articles just about big parks that are very much still open. But then remembering the statue, I added “starfish mascot” to the end of my search. Still nothing.

I realized I was searching like an idiot. I was more likely to find an article on the water park's closure than someone reporting on the abandoned location. So I typed in “water park in PA closed starfish”. Yeah quite the request, but it finally got me results. Well I should say it got me a result because only one thing popped up. It was some theme park archival site and seemed to be run by one guy with a unique passion. I’d link it here but the website itself is totally busted. All the images were corrupted and I don’t think it’s been touched for a couple of years now. Anyways— He had this list of water parks. It was organized in alphabetical order and everything with the park's name, state, when it opened, and when it closed if it wasn’t still in business. It took a lot of scrolling past parks that were still open, and some that should be closed (Action Park!) and checking to see which ones were from Pennsylvania. It was a tedious process, and I wished they were organized by state. But finally, I found a promising result:

Starby’s Water World, PA (May 1st, 1985 - July 17th, 1986)

I’m really hoping this is the place. Starby sounds like the kinda thing you’d name the Starfish mascot that you’ve built a statue of. Also, the water park's short time in business would explain why I’ve never heard of it. I would’ve been only five when it opened. My school library has a pretty extensive newspaper archive so that’s where I’m gonna check next. Now that I have an opening and closing date I can start there. Maybe there’s an ad or something that will give away the address. I’m gonna wait until tomorrow because the process will probably be tedious and I’m already sick of scrolling. I’ll keep you updated.