{"id":32848,"date":"2023-06-15T17:07:58","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T21:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=32848"},"modified":"2023-06-15T17:08:02","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T21:08:02","slug":"only-mounds-of-rock-rubble-remain-where-orlando-theme-park-stood-for-decades-holy-land-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/06\/15\/only-mounds-of-rock-rubble-remain-where-orlando-theme-park-stood-for-decades-holy-land-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Only Mounds of Rock & Rubble Remain Where Orlando Theme Park Stood for Decades: Holy Land Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mounds of rock and rubble are all that remain where once a vibrant and bustling Orlando theme park recently stood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Orlando, Florida, has served as a veritable mecca for visitors and tourists from around the world for decades, and the influx of travelers, both domestic and international, can largely be credited to Walt Disney and his decision more than 60 years ago to build his second family theme park resort amongst the tens of thousands of acres of swampy lowlands in Central Florida. When Disney arrived in the Orlando area in the early 1960s, the city wasn\u2019t anything like the vibrant, hotel- and amusement park-packed tourist destination it is today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of Disney\u2019s success in the Orlando area, other theme park owners followed suit, choosing to build in the same general area. Universal Studios Orlando Resort<\/a>, Legoland Resort, SeaWorld Orlando, and others now populate the Orlando area. And while the Walt Disney World Resort takes the prize as the largest theme park resort in the area with the most visitors annually, another theme park in Orlando did something none of the others could.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Rather than offering visitors an experience bent on magic, movies, minions, and mayhem, like its counterparts, the Holy Land Experience in Orlando offered an experience with a message\u2013one of hope. For nearly 20 years, the Holy Land Experience theme park, located just off I-4 at Conroy Road in Orlando, welcomed guests through its gates to experience several themed lands, each one inspired by events chronicled by the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The park could be seen from the interstate and was an established member of Central Florida\u2019s bustling massive theme park district. But while Disney World, Universal Studios<\/a>, SeaWorld Orlando<\/a>, and others offered visitors interactive attractions and heart-pounding rides, The Holy Land Experience offered guests a heart-changing message of hope and peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bible-themed family park featured reenactments of Jesus\u2019s resurrection, a scale miniature model of the city of Jerusalem in the first century, the Scriptorium Museum, which showcased the Van Kampen Collection of Biblical artifacts, including ancient Bible scrolls, manuscripts, and early printed editions of the Bible, as well as a replica of a Gutenberg printing press. The Holy Land Experience also featured an animatronic likeness of the 14th-century Bible translator John Wycliffe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2007, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN)<\/a> acquired The Holy Land Experience and began renovating the park to include the construction of the Church of All Nations auditorium, which held seating for 2,000 guests, the creation of a state-of-the-art theater in which live theatrical and musical performances took place, the development of the Smile of a Child Adventure Land area, and the construction of several restaurants, shops, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, however, after 14 years of operations under TBN\u2019s leadership and 20 years of operations in the state of Florida, the 14-acre theme park was sold to AdventHealth Services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TBN announced<\/a> the land had sold, stating, \u201cAfter fourteen years of operation and millions of visitors to the park, TBN sold the property in 2021 during the COVID pandemic to Advent Health Services, whose mission is \u2018To extend the healing ministry of Christ\u2019 in order to better serve the greater Orlando area with healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 28, demolition crews arrived to begin dismantling and demolishing the now-closed theme park<\/a>, which included several large structures, including the massive coliseum called \u201cThe Church for All Nations,\u201d which could be seen from the interstate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the last structures to be removed was the Coliseum. The photo below, dated May 31, shows the partial demolition of the coliseum.<\/p>\n\n\n

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As the demolition project is extremely complex, work on the project continues, though from photos of the demolition\u2019s progress, the project looks to be nearing completion. This week, the massive coliseum, which seats more than 2,000 people, was finally taken down, as seen in the photo below, leaving a huge void where the iconic structure once stood as a beacon to visitors in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AdventHealth plans to build a brand-new medical facility where the Holy Land Experience once stood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mounds of rock and rubble are all that remain where once a vibrant and bustling Orlando theme park recently stood. Orlando, Florida, has served as a veritable mecca for visitors… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[5232],"class_list":["post-32848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-only-mounds-of-rock-rubble-remain-where-orlando-theme-park-stood-for-decades-holy-land-experience"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32852,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32848\/revisions\/32852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}