Quote:
Originally Posted by pbenjamin
For a theme park to be anything more than a local attraction like Castles and Coasters or Legend City it has to pull people in from other places, i.e. vacationers. The prime time to take a trip to visit a theme park is summer when school's out. Why would anyone from outside of Arizona want to come here in the summer when it's 110 when they could just as easily go to California? The reason that theme parks work in cold climates is that their summers are relatively comfortable. The heat is exactly the reason why a theme park will never work here.
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One big flaw in your point you've made;
1. Phoenix High-Season for out of town tourists/vacationers & conventions & events is NOT during summer during the "prime time" as you call it. That is true of many families when choosing when to travel - that is, unless they're coming TO Phoenix - summer is NOT where we get most of our tourism dollars as it stands - so a theme park of any sort would be seeing most out-of-town visitors during our Fall-Winter-Spring season anyhow.
2. the 6,000,000 people in the Phoenix-Tucson areas combined could potentially support a larger local attraction through summer if it were seen as something that could compete with an out-of-town vacation for local families - especially those that can't necessarily afford to go out of state (of which there are arguably a large percentage in AZ) - I think our local population would provide enough patronage to keep things open through the short June-September season . . . it's not as though it'd have to close all together like many in cold climates do, even if certain rides are closed/inoperable at times. In a cold climate, it's not uncommon for attractions to close from October/November through April/May . . . no one bats an eye.