Anyone seen the commercial? It’s the ONLY commercial on tv with all white people. Lol

I haven’t seen the commercial but thought I would share my Alabama Adventure story.

Alabama Adventure was originally called Visionland. It was an idea born from disgraced politician Larry Langford. He managed to get the cities in the area to partner together and pledge financial support towards the bond payments used to finance the construction. The park was well attended but suffered financially and it soon became obvious the venture was doomed to fail.

At the time I was working for the City of Bessemer’s Industrial Development Board. Bessemer decided that it was take its portion of the future commuted bond payments and run the water park portion for a summer while trying to find a buyer for the park. So I quickly had to learn how to manage an amusement park. While I didn’t lead this effort I was heavily involved due to my position.

We became by reviewing operations at the park and soon realized why it was failing. We found out that Langford largely called the day-to-day shots previously. According to the vendors we talked with he would demand they make a “donation” to some charity he was tied-in with. This led to such decisions like buying ice from a company in Anniston when there was an ice company just a few minutes from the park. There were pallets of dishwashing detergent and no dishwasher on site. Larry also printed up his own “lifetime” passes and handed them out like candy. Also, there were no checks and balances in place when it came to closing out the cash registers which was leading to a lot of theft.

During the week I was largely in the offices find more and more shenanigans that went on under Larry’s oversight. During the weekend I was serving as a volunteer lifeguard, largely pushing fat women down the slides. My fiancé, now wife, was volunteering at the ice cream kiosk. A number of folks in town worked in such a volunteer manner with most hired employees handling lifeguard duties.

We began confiscating the life-time passes and fixing the other issues. Vendors were demanding cash on delivery due to previous experience with the park. We got things straight and actually turned a profit that summer. We also found a buyer which got the park out of public hands and eventually led the park to success. Now it’s family owned and the owners have heavily invested in new rides and other improvements and seem to be doing quite well.

It’s a nice park. I haven’t been in a long time but have heard good things from locals. Apparently the current owners also dealt with an issue with unaccompanied minors running around fucking shit up which was a problem at one time.

Very interesting story. No surprise at all about Langford.

I laughed at the commercial because last I heard it was a mess out there with the “unaccompanied minors”

Thanks for sharing that story. We've gone a few times over the last couple summers. Not really my crowd, but we've had fun. Everyone was well behaved.

My son was a lifeguard at splash adventures for three years, until he started his freshman year at UAB.