The abandoned ghost town theme park left to rot after actor died on stage
A well-loved theme park has been left to rot for more than a decade after tragedy struck during a live performance.
Het Land van Ooit, or The Land of Once, was once the most popular theme park in the Netherlands.
But now the park is overgrown following its permanent closure in 2007.
The theme park was founded by Marc Taminiau, who hoped to create the perfect children’s theme park, and it opened its doors in 1989.
Its theme was knights, allowing children to become ‘knights and knightesses’ along with their ‘lackey’ parents, and involved a dramatic fight between four soldiers in suits of armour each day.
At the entrance to the theme park visitors showed their ‘visa’ to enter The Land of Once, and there were costumed actors walking around the park and interacting with children throughout the day.
But disaster struck when an actor playing a ‘black knight’ was fatally stabbed during one of the performances in January 1999.
The 2,600 people, mostly children, watching the performance didn’t seem to recognise the seriousness of the situation.
In the final act of the show, which the stunt team had performed hundreds of times, the winning knight was supposed to drive his sword into the sand next to the black knight’s head – but instead, the sword drove into the performer’s skull.
31-year-old Radek Kulon, a stuntman from Poland, died in hospital overnight.
The number of visitors started to decline following the tragedy, and Het Land van Ooit received less attention from its owners.
Its boss then founded a similar park in Belgium, which brought about further financial troubles because it went bankrupt three months after it opened.
Despite repeated attempts, the park closed for good just 18 years after it first opened – and the owners in part blamed poor weather for the park’s closure, as most of its attractions were outdoors.
At first the park mainly focused on the theatre experience, but from the mid-1990s some faster rides were brought in to try and attract more visitors.
Not a lot of the original park still remains, but its pink Disney-esque castle still stands amongst the trees.
An area themed on the Battle of Waterloo – a field full of statues of French soldiers – is the most eye-catching part of the former theme park.
The statues used to stand inside a fountain which gradually filled and made the soldiers disappear under the water.
Plus the Thundering Thunderball – an attraction where children crawl around inside a large moving ball – closed in 2005 and was never demolished.
Parts of the abandoned park, including the castle, were repurposed by the local authorities after its previous owners auctioned off the land and sold at a loss.
And in a major fall from grace, in 2012 Marc Taminiau was convicted of fraud.
What used to be a dream holiday destination for Dutch children is now a shadow of its former self for people to visit and reminisce.
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