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Park News - (2/8/10) Freestyle Music Park sent out an announcement late Friday that due to limited funds remaining while attempting to finalize negotiations to take on a new investment partner they would be closing their business office until further notice and laying off the remaining 30 full time staff. I’ve included some excerpts from the final announcement sent out from park staff.
    “While park management continues to pursue negotiations with potential investors, we have limited funds and need to use those assets toward the goal of bringing new investors to the park,” said Freestyle Music Park General Manager Steve Baker. “We fully anticipate one of these deals will be satisfactory to the current owners. It’s a tedious process and is just taking much longer to come to final agreements than expected. Deals on the table are contingent upon the Park opening this season. With the time difference in Russia, we will be working around the clock to make these deals happen in the coming days – not weeks - days.”
    Due to the seasonality of the theme park industry, the park has been operating with a limited staff throughout the offseason. According to Baker, the remaining staff will be laid off until an investment agreement is finalized. Until that time, the board of directors and executive management will continue to meet with potential investment groups and communicate with the current owners to finalize the agreement. Once an agreement is reached, the management team will bring employees back to work, create a plan for vendor repayment and announce the plans for the 2010 season.
    Baker says the success of the 2009 season was very encouraging. He cites the worldwide economy and recession as the reason the current Russian investors are seeking additional funding to operate the park. The out of state parties remain in Myrtle Beach and committed to seeing the deal through, he adds. “We still take our financial obligations seriously and will do everything we can do to resolve them. There’s a great future for this park. It just needs a chance and hasn’t had that yet.”
    (2/4/10) I’ve only got one quick update to the whole Freestyle Music Park story. Word has been sent my way confirming that Steve Dooner and the Las Vegas WET people are in no way involved in any of the negotiations taking place with Freestyle Music Park right now. More when we find out!
    (2/2/10) According to an article posted at Discover Myrtle Beach one of the former Hard Rock Park, Felix Mussenden who was also the CFO, is now seeking to take back the park with the aid of new investors. According to the story, Felix’s partner may be Steve Dooner who was backing the Las Vegas Wet project for years before it all went silent for the recession. Dooner had some monster plans for Vegas, so I’m curious to see what his involvement could be with Freestyle Music Park.
    Two other parties are also said to be involved in their own bids to get the park, one being Southern Star Amusements (who have been fumbling around trying to revive Six Flags New Orleans for the past several years without success). Meanwhile there is still a third mystery investor by the name of Exploration Holdings. I don’t know much about Exploration Holdings but a quick search did reveal a connection between the founder (Tara Perry) and Jim Fowler and Barbara Farris. Looks like some bad blood went down between them all back in January 2008 according to this article.
    (1/26/10) With Spring quickly approaching, I’ve been sent a few e-mails from people wondering when Freestyle Music Park would post their 2010 operating schedule on their website, as they have yet to do it so far. So far I’ve been unable to find any solid date mentioned on their Twitter, Facebook or official websites, so anyone with an official connection like to let us know when the park is planning on opening for the season?
    (1/25/10) Screamscape has heard that one of the issues slowing down the current progress of Freestyle Music Park is that there are up to four different parties currently in talks with them about either investing or even purchasing the park itself. While one player was rumored to be Barbara Farris, we’ve also heard the “Merlin” name dropped as well. Of course Merlin has been all over the news lately with the purchase of Cypress Gardens to turn it into Leogland Florida. I’ve got to wonder what they would do with Freestyle Music Park if given the chance. Anyone else know more about the players involved?
    (1/15/10) If Freestyle Music Park didn’t have enough other problems, now they are being sued by BMW over the use of Mini Cooper looking cars on the Round About coaster.  Meanwhile a judge has also ordered that the park pay all their debts in the next 30 days.
    (1/11/10) Freestyle Music Park has filed a request for a little more time to pay off their debts. While they are still in negotiations with possible new investors, they wont be able to finalize any deal with them until mid to late January.  Speaking of the investors… we’ve been sent an odd rumor claiming that the unknown blond woman seeing at the park previously may actually have been Barbara Farris, the owner of the Blue Dolphin II development in Florida as well as a book author. She has also long been a force behind the proposed development of Jim Fowler’s Life In The Wild animal park concept.
    Off the top of my head, her involvement with Freestyle Music Park seems a little off track to me, unless it’s just a means to an end perhaps. Honestly, it would almost make more sense for her and Fowler to try and pick up Cypress Gardens on the cheap right now to bring his animal park concept to life, but that’s another story. More on this as we dig it up.
    (1/6/10) A few news bits for Freestyle Music Park this week as people are waiting to hear more about these new investors coming in. According to the older news reports, they had expected to seal the deal by Jan 15th, but so far there hasn’t been much else. Unofficially, I’ve also heard rumors that seem to indicate that the same investors who were seen poking around the park around the end of the season (possibly headed up by an unknown woman) are still involved.
    Meanwhile Freestyle got hit up with two more debt payment requests, according to this news update. Poking around the park’s website, it also seems a little odd to me that they aren’t trying to push season pass sales right now, nor did they over the Christmas season that I could see. While it would seem the park’s own Twitter account has been dead since their last Tweet on July 27th, for whatever reason it looks like they have another Twitter account posting and still active… it’s just that the official link from the park page goes to the old Twitter account. (Hey… update it already!) However they do seem to be keeping an active Facebook page at least.
    (1/5/10) While I don’t have the link to the article, I’ve been told that the local news reported that Freestyle Music Park was expected to finalize a deal with new investors sometime in mid January. Hopefully at this time we’ll find out if we can expect anything new to be added or not.
    (12/7/09) Despite a ton of rumors about some possible new “wet” attraction being planned for the 2010 season, locals tell us that so far there has been no sign of any new construction taking place at the park yet.  So if something new was on the way... it’s unlikely to be ready for the start of the season.
    (11/18/09) I don’t know any details, but a new rumor is starting to go around claiming that a deal may be in the works to sell Freestyle Music Park to a new owner for as much as $40 million. Anyone know more?
    (10/22/09) In what has become a trend, the 17th lawsuit against Freestyle Music Park has been filed, this time from Zamperla who is seeking over $100,000 from the deal earlier this year to add four new kiddie rides to the park (a Samba Tower, Convoy, Kite Flyer and Magic Bike).
    (10/19/09) It seems the rumors that Freestyle Music Park was working to get new investors involved were true. This news article confirms that a new group of investors from Florida and Ohio have been brought in to add a little extra cash flow to the park. It also mentions that the Russian company “has since decided that the park is too far away to support.” No word on if we can expect any new attractions next season or not, though the cash will pay off those bills that are owed and guarantee that that the park will open as expected in Spring 2010 for a 3rd season.
    (10/2/09) Discover Myrtle Beach believes that an announcement is on the way from Freestyle Music Park where a new investment partner could be involved.
    (9/16/09) Pics taken during the final weekend celebration at the park have been posted to Discover Myrtle Beach as well as a look back at the park’s first season as Freestyle Music Park.
    (9/15/09) Got a new rumor about a possible new addition to Freestyle Music Park in 2010. According to one source they may be taking a serious look at adding a bumper car style attraction to the park, which is interesting because that was about the only ride promoted for Hard Rock Park that was never built.
    (8/25/09) Freestyle Music Park talks to the media about how their 2009 season went. In general… it wasn’t what they had hoped, but far from being terrible. The park is in no danger of closing and will return better than ever for the 2010 season. The park will close for the season at the end of September 13th and has set March 1st, 2010 as next season’s opening.

2010 - Unknown - Nothing is known at this point in time...