Splendid China

Everyday as we drive to our Florida pool house we pass by an abandoned property surrounded by a white wall. The area is perhaps a mile or two up the road from our house. The white walls have strange oriental symbols, heavy overgrowth, and as we drove around the outside it was impossible to tell what lie within. We thought maybe it was a mansion or an old country club left abandoned.

I did some Google research to find out what lay beyond that wall. You'll never guess what I found. Splendid China! 



Splendid China was located on 75 acres as part of a 315 acre partial at the corner of Funnie Steed Road and Famousa Gardens near Buck Lake. The entire land stretched from Funnie to the west end of Rt. 192 (Bronson Memorial Highway). 

Splendid China was an amusement park that opened outside of Disney in the 90's. It was only ten or fifteen minutes from where Animal Kingdom is today. It had a China focus, entertainers from China, and many of the important icons of China presented in a smaller scale. It took $100M to build the attraction between 1989 and 1993. 

The park had miniatures replicas of sites in China. For example, the Great Wall of China stretch for half a mile, and a replica of the Leshan Buddha was four stories tall. 

Even though the park of a large success for vacationers, the park attracted repeated protests from human rights groups because it was owned by China. That ownership gave protesters an opportunity to send a message to a China owned entity about freeing tibet and human rights.

After September 11, the travel industry took a hard hit, and Splendid China couldn't keep their park open. They closed in 2003, 14 years after ground breaking. 

Today? The park has been vandalized, many items stolen, and it is heavily overgrown. In 2013, new owners started taring down the park to prevent continued vandalization. Encore Development plans to develop the land as a $700 million mixed-use residential resort that will include, among many things, a 3-D movie complex.