Niagara Amusement Park and Splash World — Attraction in Town of Grand Island

FIRST and FOREMOST, I CRY inside and out for what the new owners have done to this place to DESTROY a ONCE beautiful and magical FAMILY place, and ruined and scarred a childhood memory of what once was a perfect family place! The new OWNERS AND MANAGEMENT should be outright ASHAMED of themselves for what they did to a wonderful family park! Greed and ignorance now run rampant among the COUNTLESS rides that DON'T RUN!! The employees are nothing but rude, ignorant and NOT AT ALL "family oriented" as they were "allegedly trained to be"!

1. The price is an outright JOKE! For almost the same price, you can go to ANOTHER amusement park where ALL of the rides and amenities stands are OPEN AND FUNCTIONAL! And the staff are actually friendly and speak!

2. Parking, you now charge for what was once free! As if it isn't enough revenue from the attendees and, where and WHEN or IF the concession shops and stands are open, the horrendous price for subpar portions and options.

3. The "claim" that the park is under renovations is a boldfaced joke! To start, a lot of the childrens rides that used to be under a canopy are now out, uncovered and in the direct blazingly hot sun! The kiddie boatride is completely filthy and disgusting with CLOUDY WATER compared to what I recall as a child and even 5 years ago when I brought MY children! SHAMEFUL!! And for the "new rides" such as the "Cinderella pumpkin ferris wheel" that is CLOSED?! NEW RIDE.....CLOSED?? Sound like a) not enough staff to run the "closed for repair" rides, and or b) untrained staff that arent allowed to operate the rides period! Thats simply ONE example! The train that used to ride around the park, broken, and the operator rude and condescending towards families and their children! The canoe ride, water was full of sludge and fith and wreaks of sewage as mentioned by other reviews. The lawn care, athough not part of any rides or even anything, it's LACK of care directly correlates to the FACT that they simply do not care and definitely detracts from what sliver of ambiance is left. It shows they can't even keep up with the most basic of operations, let alone any real work required. Observed a little boy riding the semi truck mini merry-go-round and the operator had to stop the ride because the door swung open, while the childs hands were on the steering wheel.

4. Water park and Wave pool. Allegedly under repair, SINCE 2017? And as replied to by the "owner", a negative posting from 1 month ago by another dissatisfied person, owner claims and stated it was under renovations since last year and reasoning was to upgrade it to minimize the interruption of frequency the waves were stopped for. Well, it had a sign posted showing it was closed for the season and confirmed by other reviewers. We all know it is by far very very expensive to operate a park like this. However, you can't lie to patrons and say attractions are "under repair" when in reality you're just making poor excuses and lies to cut your operating costs, even though patrons are expected to and are paying for full price, but only recieving LESS THAN HALF of what they paid for! I'm also sure the Ph balance in any open water attractions are not where they should be or at least not safe. In closing, I'm positive that I'm not the only one who cries after seeing what a wonderful place has become! It truly is the definition and reality of what a living nightmare is! Any and everyone who can remember as a child how special this place once was, and for those lucky enough to bring their children here while it was still beautiful before it became such an atrocity can agree with me that these new owners care nothing more than to take your money for whatever short time they can, and then will run! And I say short time because for however long they keep this up, they will be forced to close due to lack of attendance and business. I'm sure everyone agrees with me that this is really sad what these careless people did to this park, from the prices, the parking, lack of basic maintenance and the rude and...

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME AT FANTASY ISLAND THIS YEAR. Your destined for a bad experience. I have been going to fantasy island since I was a child. I used to live on the Island it was where I grew up. I have always loved and preferred fantasy island over all other attractions in Western New York. The Fourth of July....Fantasy Island is just my family and my tradition. This is 2019 I was disgusted with fantasy island. From the moment we pulled in...the lady at the parking stall did not know any information about the fireworks or hours of operations. We get to the payment stand and we see season passes are literally the same exact price as it would be for a daily pass. So we decide hey why not we usually go a few times each summer, it would not have been very intelligent to have just paid for the day. We get our receipts with no guidance on where to go to get our cards, walk in they did not check our bags or even greet us. There were 3-4 employees just standing there with the most miserable looks on their faces. Yay a great welcome that was. They were bothered with my asking if my family and I could walk through and where to go to get our passes finalized. First stop we needed a wagon for my son and bags. We go to the gift shop to ask and the kid had no clue that they even offered wagon rentals. I’m already thinking, this is going to be fun. That was a complete nightmare. I get In to where I need to rent a wagon.....the littlest room possible. She asked if I had passes I said yes she was so rude to me, and the 12 other people standing in this little shack. She did say she did the passes I did not know I was supposed to go to the western town for this, I thought it was just what she was there for. So okay she does the wagon rentals and passes. I’m in the right spot then. No guidance I see the form and grab it myself to fill it out. So I am standing there in the only spot available and she says mam these people are before you in the rudest voice. I mean obviously they were here before me, I just need a place to stand here. That was a 45 minute ordeal. We have our passes and wagon.... yes let’s go to the kiddie side to have some fun now. We get there and there were maybe 6 rides in total and only 3 had workers running them. Okay so kids don’t get to go on rides because there isn’t anyone working? I don’t know maybe they were broken. It was 90 degrees and I’m staying happy, and as positive as I could for my family. We ride the few rides that were available. Let’s eat. Walk across the park. Get slushees mmmm. They were good and the service at that stand was good. The stand right by the green algae filled water right before the bridge. The smell and look of this water is enough to make someone sick. We get to burger/hotdog place. Stand in the line and I tell the employee I do not want the chips that come with the hot dogs or cheeseburgers just ring me up for 2 cheese burgers, 2 hotdogs and 4 fries. He argues with me that I have to take the chips. Okay buddy I’ve already about had enough I’m sorry you can’t comprehend that I do not want the chips. The best worker in the whole place stepped up and took excellent care of us and apologized. We ate it wasn’t too bad okay I guess 48$ wasn’t so bad for it. We go to ride more rides. Half of them were shut down so we rode what was available. It’s really hot let’s go get our swim wear. We get to the water park and it was stinking closed. My gosh okay! That was my breaking point. It was time to go. We couldn’t wait to leave. 300$ day at fantasy island for nothing but misery. My family and I were treated like dirt by 90% of the employees. They didn’t offer much assistance on any of the rides. This trip was seriously a nightmare and fantasy island owners should be ashamed of themselves for running a business like this. I will be contacting the better business bureau and others to share our experience. They can’t run a park like that or treat their paying customers the...

For over 50 years, Fantasy Island has provided families the best in summertime fun, for low affordable prices and (for the most part) a great sense of safety and security . . . until the 2018 season. After the continuous downfall of the park, I am easily not renewing season passes for 2019.

RIDE SAFETY / CLOSURES: I've never felt as unsafe at an amusement park in my life. Worst of all, this used to be the park I trusted for safe and fun rides. Now it's the complete opposite.

Why are rides running improperly? Why aren't parts for rides being ordered to fix them? Overall, what has changed so much in the maintenance department that makes it seem as if the rides aren't being fixed as quickly than during the previous ownership? Especially with where prices are going these days, (but more importantly at anytime), don't compromise safety.

Oh by the way, the wave pool closure was to increase wave intervals by very minimal totals . . . that was completely unnecessary. It worked just fine before, with maybe a 10 minute period in between waves, which is standard as far as I've seen . . . "if it isn't broke, don't fix it."

NEW ATTRACTIONS: While the park has "invested" into such attractions as Fairy Tale Forest, Double Dare Falls, and even the Strike-U-Up, I am personally unimpressed as to how the outcome of these "new" attractions were. Personally, I wish that Apex would've just bought new rides and slides, that work properly, rather than relocated used attractions and a "renovated" piece of junk slide complex that left me with minor injuries, as both Raging Rapids and DDF.

I heard rumors about injuries that occurred on DDF, but it seems as if their issues weren't acknowledged until the 4th of July, and at least a week after that . . . adding on to the already huge list of closed rides, the blue slide was closed. That ended up occurring a few times throughout the season, even after "tweaking" occurred. I wonder why . . .

LIVE ENTERTAINMENT: Do I have to say any more? The live entertainment has gone downhill throughout this season. Why are we screaming into microphones so loudly during the Shoot-Out? Why are we slipping the word "sucks" during the children's show (If the Shoe Fits, the new children's show)? More importantly, where's Marshal Dan, Calamity Jane, and Black Bart? The good ol' days are going away quickly in that department!

GENERAL "AMENITIES": $6 for parking? The "over 48" ticket" price goes up $3 already this season (from $35 to $38)? No outside food / beverage, but there's either little to no food and beverage available, or low quality options available? Nope. That's completely unacceptable at a park that functioned as well as it did for most of its history (when corporate BS didn't take place).

Seems as if that can't even afford the necessary amenities, but have more than enough to put up a bunch of useless signs for their confusing parking lot.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: "Horror-ible" to say the least. What's up with the 1/2 hour long queue line, in an extremely dark pavilion, for the haunted house? Yeah, it's supposed to be scary, but not to the point of uncomfortable (where you can't enjoy it). I only saw 3 or 4 restaurants open on what looked like a large crowd (probably only because 1/2 of the park was closed off, not just rides closed).

Don't use your $37 season pass deal as fish bait for all of this, because people are not buying it (literally) after this year's debacle. Listen to your customers . . . if you want to even have a chance of surviving, give your 2018 pass holders free passes, not $4 off like this past September (what an insult). Most importantly, follow through on your promises.

Until things change, I urge everyone to save their time and money to enjoy other attractions in the area, especially as Six Flags is making amazing changes at Darien Lake. Apex Parks Group, you should be ashamed of your joke attempt to bring "new life" into...