Abandoned: The Rise, Fall and Decay of Disney’s River Country | Hacker News Reader

Abandoned: The Rise, Fall and Decay of Disney’s River Country

themeparktourist.com

75 pointsbrudgers11 comments

Not specifically related to Disney, but if photos of abandoned places are your thing, I recommend Derelict Places[1]. I have no connection or affiliation outside of being a user (lurker, technically) of the site.

[1] http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/

I'm struck by the lack of obese folks in these pictures in the early 80s. It's not like we were consciously any healthier back then, I don't think. Kinda drives home the fact that America's "obesity epidemic" is mostly manufactured and relatively recent.

And the rather wild rides - the big drops and lack of 'one at a time please'.

It's almost like the photos are from a time when people were able to measure risk themselves!

On the obesity thing - I guess all the modern junk food was still in its infancy and people probably brown-bagged their lunch. I know if I had went when I was a kid that's what my family would have done.

I don't think junk food was any less prevalent then. One thing that has changed is portion sizes. A "large" soft drink at McDonald's was 21oz. A milkshake was 16oz. Today they are about twice that size. There were also no free refills. Similar story on french fry sizes.

Candy bars, chips, everything is about double the size I remember from my childhood.

I think it was less prevalent. This is a small sample size, but my parents talk about drinking a Coke once a summer as a huge treat. Otherwise it was water from the hose.

I think if I concentrate and think hard, I could probably remember all the times my family went to a fast food place. It would be once a year or less, and only when all other options were exhausted.

I have friend that take their kids more than once a week.

Junk food, and food in general, is cheaper in real terms - inevitable result of competition and iterative improvement of technology.

Could it also be what was in the food then versus now? But the portion size is a big factor.

The two can be related: it was in the mid-1980s that Coca-Cola switched from using cane sugar as its primary sweetener to the comparatively much cheaper high-fructose corn syrup, and the lower cost of HFCS made it feasible to sell larger sizes without having to increase prices at the same rate.

> Candy bars, chips, everything is about double the size I remember from my childhood.

The funny thing (to me) is that to a child, everything looks huge. So normally you remember things being bigger than they actually are.

Ah I went to River Country! Was there in '94 when I was about 14, loved it. But damn the water was cold, went in December - we hadn't been in the water yet and jumped on the main slide, feck it was freezing, and we knew when we got dumped into the lake at the bottom it was going to be worse...it was. But awesome place, sad to see it in ruin

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