While traveling up the East Coast of the United States, I made a stop in Myrtle Beach, SC. While I was here, I went to the recently opened Hard Rock Park. It's a small theme park, but the few attractions that the park has are pretty good. This is a food blog, but before getting to the food, I'm going to post some pictures and thoughts about the park.
Here's the Hard Rock Park Parking Lot on a Thursday morning during the summer. There were probably twenty cars in the parking lot when I got there. When I left later in the afternoon, there may have been about a hundred, but that may be pushing it.
The front entrance to the park. It's very reminiscent of the entrances to both of Universal's Orlando parks. It was here that the signs started showing up announcing that the park is closing at 11:00 PM rather than the 1:00 AM that was advertised everywhere else, including the Hard Rock website and the park maps handed out that day. They really should update those things...
Once inside the entrance, you see some more Universal similarities with this bridge with an entry and exit quote. Only a bit like Islands of Adventure? The entry quote was by Nirvana and the exit was The Beatles. The underside of the bridge had a rock & roll themed recreation of
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling...
After passing under the bridge, you walk along a giant guitar paved into the sidewalk until you reach the lake. Across the lake is the park's centerpiece, the giant Gibson Guitar. Notice the guy standing on the top of the roller coaster's lift in the background. That's an obvious sign that it's not open for riders at the moment.
The main attraction in the park seemed to be the Led Zeppelin Roller Coaster. It was a good ride, but nothing too exceptional. To start out, the preshow that you need to sit through doesn't quite work. They show you some Led Zeppelin interviews and concert footage, and then are free to board the ride. The problem with the preshow is that nothing really happens in it, and I found it quite boring, especially when riding a second time. With the preshow, they should have added a story to go along with the ride (think Rockin Roller Coaster) rather than concert footage. Building some sort of tension in the show would have been a good thing to get you excited about getting on the ride, but the only thing I was left wondering was when the preshow would be over.
The music playing along with the ride was nice, but I didn't feel it really added too much. The first drop was very nice, but after that the coaster seemed to get a bit generic. The whole sequence of events that happened on the ride didn't feel like anything original. I actually thought the first half of the ride was quite similar to Sea World's Kracken. Once hitting the brakes halfway through the ride, the coaster seemed to fizzle out, and nothing much happened worth noting between there and returning to the station. Like I said, it was enjoyable to ride, but wasn't a ride that will stand out when compared to other roller coasters.
One last comment about the ride that I have is about the Zeppelin that the station is located in. They build a big blimp building to go along with the ride, but the problem is that you can't really see enough of the building from inside of the park to really tell what it was. King of a waste in my opinion...
The next big ride I came to was the Maximum RPM roller coaster. It was located in the British Invasion area of the park, and when I got there I found that it wasn't open yet for the day. I am guessing because of the lack of people in the park, they didn't open this ride up until noon. I returned later and gave it a ride. It's a really unique roller coaster, with it's ferris wheel lift. The whole lifting process was the best part of the ride in my opinion, watching the tracks lock into place, and all of that cool stuff. The ride itself was way too short, and then they slowed it down with brakes halfway through the very short ride. There was music playing on here as well, but again, I didn't find it did much for the ride. It was definitly a fun ride, but it needed to be longer.
The next big ride was Moody Blues: Nights in White Satin- The Trip. This was the park's only dark ride, built inside of a former shopping mall. You walk into the building, and you are immediately handed 3D Glasses. Unlike most parks where you are told not to wear your glasses until seated, here you were encouraged to wear them all the way through the line. The whole building was set up like a 3D Haunted House with black-light lit walls causing the brighter colors to pop out at you. Everyone walked through a nice vortex tunnel and then arrived at the ride vehicles. Since the park was so empty, it seemed the ride operators were only filling every fourth train, which actually took some time. I'm not entirely sure of my opinion of the ride itself, but I think I liked it. The ride consisted almost entirely of moving past more black-light lit objects, some moving, and some stationary. There were some other scenes past movies, but there wasn't much else. There were no animatronics or anything of the sort on the ride. There wasn't much of a story, besides from having something similar to a drug induced hallucination. But it was a dark ride, and I like dark rides. I have to give Hard Rock credit for attempting a ride like this, even if it didn't come out perfect...
The Hard Rock had a carousel as well. Nothing special actually. I want to know why they required EVERY rider, even the adults to wear seat belts on the horses. They even went around to make sure everyone was wearing theirs before starting the ride. I can't think of any other carousel anywhere that makes everyone wear a seatbelt. Yes to the kids, but not the adults as well...
Slippery When Wet was the next coaster I rode here. This was another ride that didn't open until later in the afternoon. It's a nice little coaster and is also pretty unique. I've never seen this type of ride before, but apparently they have been around for a while. Small cars of 4 riders are lifted up a vertical lift and go around a track through various water features. It seemed the people in the forward facing seats got very wet, while the people in the back maybe got a slight spray. It was a cool little ride...
The last major ride in the park was The Eagles: Life in the Fast Lane Roller Coaster. This was a small mine-train roller coaster. Out of all of the coasters in the park, this was my least favorite. It was bumpy, and nothing much happened on it worth noting. It lacked theming that can make mediocre mine-trains good, so that didn't help much either. At the end of the ride a statue burst into flames, but that was about it. The name "Life in the Fast Lane" really didn't seem to match this rather slow coaster either.
Throughout the park, there was a whole bunch of details that were all pretty cool. I found them to be mostly random and put wherever they were without much reason, but they were still pretty cool. The ones that did have reason were even better...
I think I may have gotten carried away with writing about Hard Rock Park because this is a blog about eating. Time to get back to the focus. While I was there, I looked at a few of the restaurants in the park. Most of them seemed to have standard theme park food, with slight variations at each to meet the theme of the restaurant. The restaurant I ate at was their Carnaby Street Cafe.
It was in the British Invasion section of the park, so the Hard Rock served their version of British food here along with the standard food that was at every other restaurant. Going with the unique food to the restaurant, I tried the Fish & Chips and the Bangers & Mash. The fish wasn't all that great, but at least it was recognizable as an actual fish rather than a fish stick type product. The Bangers & Mash was the better of the two dishes with sausages served over mashed potatoes, all topped with gravy.
Hard Rock Park was a nice place, but I foresee problems in the future really soon for them. There definitely wasn't enough people in the park for them to be making a large profit for the day, or even breaking even. My main problem was that there really wasn't enough to do there for the price charged. Admission was $45, and that is really for four good rides and a couple of shows. The whole park could have been seen in a few hours if rushed (and if everything was open in the morning). Hard Rock definitely needs to add another large attraction (and not necessarily a coaster) sometime in the near future, or I don't see them lasting more than another year or two.
UPDATE: It turned out my predictions were correct and the Hard Rock Park has since closed since I originally wrote this post. The future for the park seems to be uncertain at this point on whether they will reopen again. The park is up for sale, but there were no bidders on the park in it's entirety. The park may be split up and have it's ride sold off one by one, or there is always a chance that someone will take over and operate it with or without the Hard Rock name.
