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On this site you will find Photos, Videos and the History about Wild Waters Water Park in Ocala / Silver Springs FL and why it was closed.
Wild Waters in Silver Springs Florida was built by ABC Television in 1978 and it’s one of the South’s first Water Parks. It was one of the first Water Parks to use fiberglass slides. It provided over 60 summer jobs.
The sister park, Silver Springs Park was one of the nations first national attractions opening in the 1800’s. It’s the home of the world famous Glass Bottom Boats and was owned by ABC Television from 1962 to 1984. Movies such as Tarzan, Creature from the Black Lagoon, scenes from Legend and James Bond were filmed at Silver Springs. It’s also where TV shows such as Sea Hunt was filmed.
Silver Springs & Wild Waters helped nearby Ocala, FL to prosper from tourists for many years until Orlando became the primary Florida tourist destination due to Disney World and other major attractions.
The Closed Six Gun Territory Florida | Expedition Extinct
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Other attractions in the Ocala / Silver Springs area included Six Guns Territory which opened in 1963 and closed in 1985.
From a Facebook post by Layla Sanford – 11/5/2023
“For those of you who never visited the Six Gun Territory attraction, it will be hard to believe but this is a photograph of the theme park. If you look on the right-hand side of the photo you can see the tops of the ‘old west’ buildings.
Six Gun Territory faced one problem as soon as it opened, another problem a few years later, and an even bigger problem ten years down the road. As attendance dwindled, Six Gun added things like the Sky Ride and the rides in the photo to draw people into the park.
By the time the attraction opened, the number of western-themed movies and television programs had begun to go down. In 1959 there were 30 prime-time western-themed television shows. There were only three television networks then and each network had at least one western-themed program on every single night of the week. The shows were both thirty minutes and sixty minutes in length. In the early 1960s, the rising cost of renting horses and the introduction of color television – which was more costly to produce than black-and-white – did away with the thirty-minute-long programs. By the end of the 1960s the sixty-minute-long programs began to lose popularity and were cancelled. The popularity of western-themed movies also decreased so fewer and fewer were made. The lack of exposure to western-themed programs and films probably influenced attendance at Six Gun Territory.
A problem Six Gun Territory faced a few years later was I-75. The attraction was a lot closer to US 441 than it was to the interstate. People who might have visited the park when they were already in Ocala on 441 because it was so close gave it a pass when they were all the way out on I-75 headed south for other things. This leads to the problem that killed Six Gun, Rainbow Springs and eventually Silver Springs as attractions. Walt Disney World opened in 1971. Its popularity caused more attractions to be built in the Orlando area. There was not enough tourist time and money left over for the older attractions”.
Palace Entertainment had been managing Silver Springs & Wild Waters since 2002. Governor Rick Scott let Palace Entertainment out of their contract in 2013 which was supposed to run until 2029.
As a result of Governor Scott letting Palace Entertainment out of their contract, Wild Waters & Silver Springs was put under the control of bureaucrats from the Florida Park Service and Florida Department of Environmental Protection who decided to close Wild Waters even though over 3,400 people signed a petition demanding that it not be closed.
Here’s some photos of Wild Waters.
Click on any of the photos below to enlarge the size.
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