Earth Quest Adventures (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio: hotel, buy, construction)

[Guerilla]

http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18489664&BRD=1574&PAG=461&dept_id= 532249&rfi=6 (broken link)

"The dinosaur park, a $500 million project, will be built in East Montgomery County with the intention of having a dinosaur museum for children and adults to learn about the animals, a theme park consisting of roller coasters and water rides and a thematic hotel and spa that will be built within the park.

More at the link. This is great. At 150 acres, it is double Astroworld! I hope we get some big roller coasters, too. This will finally fill the void in the Houston metro. Houston is slowly becoming a family-friendly destination again. With the rumored addition of land at Schlitterbahn, the new roller coaster in Kemah, and the redevelopment of the Flagship Hotel in Galveston into a larger version of the Kemah Boardwalk, Houston residents are bound to have fun again! Also, at 150 acres, this puts it at roughly the same size as Six Flags Over Texas.

[madmann101]

Originally Posted by Guerilla

Houston Community Newspapers Online - Plans move forward on dinosaur park (broken link)





More at the link. This is great. At 150 acres, it is double Astroworld! I hope we get some big roller coasters, too. This will finally fill the void in the Houston metro. Houston is slowly becoming a family-friendly destination again. With the rumored addition of land at Schlitterbahn, the new roller coaster in Kemah, and the redevelopment of the Flagship Hotel in Galveston into a larger version of the Kemah Boardwalk, Houston residents are bound to have fun again! Also, at 150 acres, this puts it at roughly the same size as Six Flags Over Texas.

wooo! I'm just happy that their not going with the sixflag approach and actually doing something new.

[Guerilla]

It will be like Busch Gardens and at 150 acres (they will probably buy at least 300 and save the rest for expansion), it will easily be able to compete with the other parks in Texas. They are expecting 2.5 million visitors a year at this thing within a few years of opening. It will have a hotel resort and spa in the middle as well.

[Spade]

^^ You see the similarities of Busch Gardens like I do. Hopefully it's the one like in Williamsburg instead of Tampa. But I hope this is built. I hope there are alot of roller coasters too.

[tgannaway89]

I must say this is a brave developer. Houston isn't really as a much of a tourist city as it is a business city.

Lets look at the 30 most visited attractions in Texas:

San Antonio has 7 of them with Austin having another 5 to bring to San Antonio/Austin region a total of 12. (San Antonio/Austin region is the biggest tourist hot spot in Texas)

Dallas/Fort Worth has 7. (Dallas/Fort Worth comes in second, but also boast a tremendous amount of business visitors as well)

Another 5 are located in South Texas in and around Corpus Christi. (A popular destination for Texas residents)

There are 4 located in the Houston/Galveston region. (Then comes the Houston/Galveston region, by no means left out. Certainly more business oriented than a personal leisure getaway.)

College Station boasts 1, as well as Amarillo.

And believe it or not Texas isn't one of the top tourist "states". Hopefully it will be VERY popular with the locals.

[Guerilla]

Well, with the new roller coaster in Kemah, and the redevelopment of Galveston (Tillman Fertitta is building a Kemah boardwalk style development at the Flagship Hotel), Houston is becoming more tourist friendly. This Earth Quest Adventures will add onto that.

San Antonio/Austin isn't a region too me yet.

[Rocket City]

Good news! It has been reported in Houston Business Journal that the park has now increased in size to 250 acres and the budget will be over $600 million. This is starting to sound like a serious theme park now. The Texas governor signed legislation on 7/12/07 that created the tax incentives that the park needed to start construction.

I was happy to hear that the park had gone from 50 acres to 150 a few weeks ago, but this is really great news because now this park will have enough acres for future expansion. I wouldn't imagine that the actual part of the park with all the attractions will be all that large when it opens, but having 250 acres to play with will allow this park to be competitive with the big boys in the future.

I hope the extra $100 million they just added on to the budget since the last report all towards roller coasters. A park could build a lot of great coasters with that kind of money. When this project was first announced last November the budget was only $25 million. There must be a lot of confidence in this project.

I can't wait to see renderings of what this park will look like. It should put the late and unlucky AstroWorld (the park everyone loved to hate) to shame. Although it had gone to the dogs, I sure miss it anyway. Summer just isn't the same in Houston without it. But this new park (the article is calling it Earthquest now) is giving me some real hope for the future of family entertainment in Houston.

Here's the link:

Perry signing is major boost for planned theme park - Houston Business Journal:

[Guerilla]

Wow, 250 acres! That means it is larger than Six Flags over Texas!

[stoneclaw]

This is amazing. And this could be a way of Houston telling Six Flags to go to hell!

I'm just curious about the roller coasters. No where in the article do they mention any plans of a roller coaster yet. Is it a sure thing? I do think that if this park hopes to attract the masses it projects, a roller coaster or a few thrill rides will definitely be needed.

[jfre81]

This is awesome.

They will most likely bring in rollercoasters - they even have them at Sea World now. They might not have if Astroworld wasn't an overgrown empty lot now, but in its absence they'd be foolish not to. It could even bring about the return (or possibly replication) of Astroworld rides - Greezed Lightnin' is up and in Lubbock now. Maybe they could get it back?

Astroworld was full of great memories, but let's face it - at its end, the park sucked. Six Flags ran it into the ground.

The city needs to get that developer that bought the AW site to either get off its **** and build something or at least keep the grounds kept up....kinda offtopic, but I had to say it since I drive by it almost every day.