Cypress Gardens Closing For Winter; Drops Rides, Animals

Cypress Gardens Adventure Park will close Nov. 17 and reopen in March without its ride or animal attractions.

In an effort to ensure the park's long-term presence, it will open reopen with an expanded water park attraction, officials said.

About 200 employees will be laid off temporarily and will learn in the next few weeks whether they will be retained, Jennifer Mansfield, the park's marketing manager, said this morning.

"It was a move necessary at this point to keep the long term in mind and sustaining Cypress Gardens as people know it," Mansfield said.

The water show and extensive, exotic displays of foliage have been the signature elements of the 72-year-old Winter Haven park known as Florida's first tourist attraction.

Mansfield said details will be provided in the near future on specific plans for attractions.

The park's butterfly exhibit is being cared for, but no plans have been determined for what other attraction or zoo might take it and animals such as a jaguar that were part of Cypress Gardens displays.

Patrons holding season passes should monitor the park's Web site, www.cypressgardens.com, for updates on options that might be developed, Mansfield said.

Renovations will take place at the park during its typical slow season and be ready for spring, when the park is busiest, officials said.

Last year, Cypress Gardens had 50 to 200 visitors on weekdays during the fall season. This fall, the park trimmed its operation to weekends, like other smaller attractions such as Silver Springs in Ocala.

Since the early 1970s and the development of Orlando and Tampa theme parks, Cypress Gardens has been shaped by a series of ownership and management changes. In recent years, the park branded itself as a local and regional attraction compared with nearbyattractions offered by Disney, Busch Entertainment and Universal.

The park does not release attendance figures, customary for the industry. However, attendance reportedly averaged about 800,000 annually in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before the park closed in April 2003. At the time, attendance reportedly fell by 42,000 in March that year to an undisclosed number, then-park president Bill Reynolds said at the time.

A Georgia entrepreneur, Kent Buescher, purchased Cypress Gardens and reopened it later in 2003, but the park suffered $25 million in hurricane damage in 2004 that Buescher could not recover from insurance.

The most recent ownership group, a Mulberry real estate company that bought Cypress Gardens in October for $16.8 million after Buescher was forced to put the park into a bankruptcy auction, said the park drew 82,248 visitors in December, down from 99,283 in December 2006.