CYPRESS GARDENS

By Lee Miller. August 5, 2026

Cypress Gardens was Florida's premiere attraction for over 30 years. Its creator, Dick Pope Sr., was an early promoter of water skiing and choreographed many of the stunts that became standards at the park.

Pope established Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven, a small town that had profited off the 1920s land boom, the same boom that triggered a massive road-building push to funnel tourists toward Bok Tower.

He even got a local citrus growers' association to donate building materials - in exchange for naming the whole park after their product. 

By the year Walt Disney picked Florida for his new park, Cypress Gardens was pulling attendance on par with the Grand Canyon.

Fittingly, Roy Disney had actually visited Cypress Gardens back in 1955, before Disneyland even opened, and reportedly called Walt from Pope's own office to rave about the concept.

When Disney World opened in October 1971, it looked at first like a gift from heaven for the older guard.

Visitors flooded in from around the world, packing hotels from Daytona to Tampa and spilling over into local attractions while they waited their turn at the Mouse.

Cypress Gardens saw attendance jump 30%. Dick Pope, ever the promoter, welcomed the competition, saying "anyone who's gonna spend $100M near me is good, and a good thing".

Pope even took out a full-page newspaper ad welcoming the Disney brothers to Florida, and Roy Disney gifted him the first lifetime pass to the Magic Kingdom.

Pope would end up with plenty of time to use that pass. Orlando built hotels fast enough to absorb the demand, and the sugar high for everyone else's attractions crashed.

Attendance at Cypress Gardens and its peers went into steady decline, and the park changed hands repeatedly through the '80s & '90s - first to the entity behind SeaWorld, then to Anheuser-Busch, then to a group of its own former managers.

It finally closed for good in 2003, after tourism cratered in the wake of 9/11.

Merlin Entertainments' Legoland now sits on the old Cypress Gardens site, and it kept a few of its original touches alive like the botanical gardens and the ski shows.

Legoland also kept Pope's "Island in the Sky" ride going for a few years before shuttering it for good over chronic mechanical problems.

This new park is doing far better in Central Florida's brutally competitive attraction space than its predecessor ever managed in its final act.