United States Freestyle Music Park (Hard Rock Park)

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Park Status
Defunct
Location (US State)
South Carolina
Mushroom said:
Why is it reasonable that beach tourists may venture there at night, but not reasonable that they would make the same trek earlier in the day?

I would contend that Medieval Times might even have more of an uphill battle with the location, since like you said, it’s essentially a glorified restaurant. I would think that it’s much harder for a restaurant to convince people to go out of their way to visit it, rather than a theme park which requires lots of planning anyway.
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Maybe you're right, but considering the restaurant has multiple locations it's possible that many of their guests/customers already had positive associations with the brand and it's far easier for them to make an impulse visit for dinner while still having plenty of time for the beach during the day.

And, unless I'm mistaken, they usually do everything indoors which helps in the high heat/humidity of the coastal South... Or during inclement weather.
 
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Ice said:
The location is absolutely an issue. Just because an area has a lot of visitors doesn't mean that a business can do well.

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Parks of this tier don't belong in vacation towns. Smaller parks succeed in vacation towns due to the high accessibility and low time requirement, and insanely large parks like Disney and Universal survive because they attract the vacationers themselves. Parks of this size need a continuous and sizable local audience as well as nearby travelers to break even, since they definitely weren't running the place on the cheap side. Competition was never an issue, it was simply just a market that didn't exist.
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I don‘t know enough to claim to know which set of factors cause it to shut down, I’m not sure this generalization holds up. Williamsburg is essentially a vacation town, not a theme park destination.


Jonesta6 said:
If this was a larger organization such as a regular park chain that could move money around to keep it open or if they scaled down the park and grew it over time, it may have survived.
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Looking entirely from the outside, Hard Rock seems to have a lot of successful resorts and casinos. So, I’m not sure about that assumption either.
 
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There are so many factors that went into HRP not being successful that it’s kinda hard to point to just one.

#1 - Extensive spending in build out. Not only were most of the rides not off the shelf they had additional custom elements to them. So they were going to need a hot start because of that.

#2 - The Great Recession. People weren’t looking to add onto their vacation when they could take one. In fact in most cases people were shortening their stays instead of adding onto them.

#3 - Location. Now I’m not talking about being where it was per say rather they picked a market that had no competition from a park standpoint; but had massive competition for just something to do.

#4 - Lack of local tie in/rental market. I’m lumping two together. They lacked ties to local hotels to package it as part of your stay with transport tied to it. Additionally with the number of individually owned rentals that have no incentive to promote you hurt.

#5 - Confusing price points. Someone else pointed this out but it had some confusing price points.

#6 - Who is it marketed for? It played on nostalgia for some. But had rides that had a different groups. Was it a place to let teens go for a day or was it a family place or was it for people who grew up in those eras of music.
 
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warfelg said:
#3 - Location. Now I’m not talking about being where it was per say rather they picked a market that had no competition from a park standpoint; but had massive competition for just something to do.
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The location in general was a factor for its failure. A theme park of this size needs to be close to a major city and have fairly easy interstate access. Look at all the Six Flags, Cedar Fair and SEAS parks locations - they're all near big cities and situated off major interstates. The closest metro areas to Hard Rock Park are Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham both at 3.5 hours away and Atlanta and Hampton Roads about 5.5 hours distance. As far as interstate access goes, the park (and the Myrtle Beach area itself) is located over 60 miles once you get off the I-95 exit where the Flying J Travel Center is in Latta, SC. It seems like they were banking too much on the tourism draw of the beach and didn't look at the overall demographics of the area.
 
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My wife and I visited the preview center for this park while it was being built. It had artist renderings, videos, models, and some rock n roll memorabilia. I bought a cool t-shirt which I still have. She wanted to take me back down there once it was open, but I said no since we had just recently been to Myrtle Beach. I figured we'd wait a couple years. What a big mistake and source of regret that turned out to be.
 
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