After spending 1004$ repairing my car’s brakes on Saturday, I decided that today I would reward myself with some actual urban exploring. Not that exploring ghost towns isn’t urban exploring in a sense, just that it always feels much more like rural exploring to me. Either way though it was nice to be in some semblance of a city today as real cities are few and far between here. Even Kansas’s state capital, Topeka, was much more like my hometown of Binghamton than anything else when I visited. I wish Wichita wasn’t 2 hours away because there looked to be plenty to explore in terms of abandoned buildings and what not. In any case, on with the show!

A Brief History on the Joyland Amusement Park:

The Joyland Amusement Park was open for 55 years from 1949 until 2004. It also briefly opened in 2006 although it was shut down once more as a result of it not being profitable enough. Originally it was run by the Ottaway family and then bought by the Nelson family in 1960 and operated by them until 2004. The group that attempted to reopen it in 2006 was the T-rex group who had managed to reopen a couple of amusement parks in Washington although the project ultimately failed. Currently local residents are attempting to get the funding together in an attempt to once again refurbish the park and open it again citing 2013 as the intended start date for the project. It should be noted that the park is on 2801 S Hillside St Wichita, KS 67216 as I had seen other addresses for it.

Safety Precautions:

There is a fence running around the perimeter of the park that blatantly states you shouldn’t trespass or loiter, so explore at your own risk. Furthermore as the park was established in the 1950’s, many of the structures are wood so watch it if you are climbing on the roller coaster track or going inside the buildings. The wooden bridge that runs through the park was rotted in some parts and you definitely don’t want to fall through.

Exploring the Joyland Amusement Park:

It’s an amusement park, and in this case I feel that a video and pictures are worth a thousand words! So here are some choice pictures as well as a link to the video I took briefly and the album on facebook!

Facebook Album: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.266664476750222.63707.248729741877029

Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCdJobDMSUo

Choice photos: