Season cut short
The owner of Hard Rock Park, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and the 55-acre park has closed for the rest of the season. The attraction will reopen in 2009, however.
Because of the current credit crisis in the US, Hard Rock Park has been unable to borrow money to continue operating. Of the 2,000 employees the park had during peak season, 75 non-seasonal employees will remain throughout the off-season.
When it opened in April, the $400 million park said it expected to see up to 30,000 visitors a day during the peak season and about three million for the full year, but those expectations proved to be unrealistic. By August the park acknowledged that attendance was not meeting expectations. When it finally closed, the park’s website thanked the “hundreds of thousands of guests” who visited.
