A new entertainment park is about to give Cedar Point a run for its money, as developers announced plans yesterday for a $2 billion entertainment park outside of Columbus in Delaware County.
Planet Oasis is being billed as the “ultimate entertainment experience,” according to developer David Glimcher.
The completed park is expected to be 350 acres, making it 265 acres larger than Disneyland.
Attractions filling up the massive park are set to include indoor skydiving, an indoor water park, restaurants, specialty retail shops, a hotel and a conference center, a rollercoaster, skate park, indoor surf park, BMX bike park, indoor climbing walls, a Medieval Times-esque experience, virtual reality games, E-Sports arena, a butterfly museum, 25-story skywheel, indoor electric go-karts, a bowling alley, laser tag, virtual golf and a 20-acre saltwater lake with sand beaches.
According to Glimcher, accommodations and opportunities for fun will be available at “all price points.”
The park is estimated to bring nearly 15,000 jobs to Ohio. Construction is projected to begin in December with the first phase of the project expected to open in 2019.
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2018.
I hope theyre planning more rides!!
I was just thinking how do they think they are going to compete with Cedar Point with (a) roller coaster.
If they’re really going to have all of that, all I have to say is, too bad they couldn’t have built that in Aurora, OH, on the former site of Geauga Lake & Sea World/Six Flags of OH. That area has been needing redevelopment desperately by the local economy since Six Flags left the area a decade ago and even the outdoor water park ceased existence a few years ago.
So, destroying open spaces for crap that consumes energy, ac and heat alone will consume our earth energy, the waste, the garbage, for yet more entertainment. Try volunteering somewhere folks instead of being entertained. These jobs will be low wage, part time, no bennies…..traffic unreal….make me gag.
Eh doesn’t seem that interesting to me. And why detract from the fresh water of the Great Lakes? It’s a key feature of being in this region. And I really dislike that they show footage from other theme parks (which doesn’t match the narration at all), and they show architecture footage from all over the world instead of actual renderings or models of this specific project. Also, I hate the name. Okay, haters rate done. =)
It sounds amazing yes the Geauga Lake site would have been fantastic but Columbus area is only a couple of hours away and I personally cannot wait to see this fully completed close enough to home that you can go and comfortably spend one night and let everyone do what they want as far as activities. I just hope it is as affordable as presented in the video. We are all not in the same socioeconomic group to afford going to Disneyland.
I can’t wait. What a great family fun place and the fact it will be near Columbus instead of Aurora or Cleveland is even better. I love the idea of Saltwater and sandy beaches is so wonderful since we are so far from the real ocean. Saltwater is so much better then fresh water and there is freshwater beaches and lakes are everywhere in Ohio… This place seems so family friendly and even allows gaming teens a fun place to go with family.
Will just add to already horrific traffic in this area!
I’m curious how long it’ll take till completion and if it’ll run out of funding before then. Maybe they’d be better off narrowing down the entertainment niche. I like the idea of having a variety of extreme sports available. Can’t wait to see what comes of this!
All I can say is I hope they budget properly, there have been too many places that went to build the full park in one shot and had to abandon it. They need to start with what they think is crucial to the survival of the park, then add the other things later down the road
Cedar Point is known for its roller coasters. I doubt this place will compete much without more rides (roller coaster). I’ll do the indoor stuff in the winter and do CP in the summer when you can be outside. I agree Columbus traffic is horrible. I’ll have to see if Planet Oasis is worth the time, money, and travel. Price will play a big factor. I have season passes to CP. Will the price be comparable for a pass at Planet Oasis?
It hard to compare something like this to Disneyland. Not sure about having 1 amusement park ride as a coaster. Sounds like it could be fun but will you be able to buy passes to do all activities or will you charge separately for each thing. If what they have listed is it sounds more like a day trip vs somewhere you would stay for a couple of nights. Will have to see.
Why doesn’t anyone ever consider south central Ohio for places like this? The only thing in the southern half of the state is Kings Island and it is a located in the southwest corner of the state. That is great for southwestern Ohio, southeastern Indiana and northwestern Kentucky. I think investors and developers would be surprised how welcomed they would be to this area!
EXCITED!
I recently sat through a time share presentation. While looking at a giant wall map of the US of A I asked why are no time shares stars on the states of Ohio, Indiana & Illinois (except Chicago)? The woman said that is an easy answer. She said they survey thousands of people a year and the reason there are not any is because Americans do not think if these states for vacationing. WOW? What a surprise. But when was the last time you heard someone say I am headed to Cincinnati for vacation. My opinion, this needs to change and this new park will play a major part in turning around investors who want to build it first and then watch them come.
Glimcher is the developer behind the Polaris area north of Columbus. This guy’s not a fly-by-night operator. He’s putting this in the fastest growing part of the state, across from a brand new outlet mall. Columbus is growing fast, and this area’s the center of the growth. It’s also where the suburban wealth centered, near places like Dublin, Westerville, Lewis Center, Powell, Worthington. There’s a reason Ikea located near here. There’s also a ton of money going into development in downtown Columbus, especially the Short North.
Awesome. We’ve needed an amusement park closer to Columbus! Traveling 2 hours is a pain! Cant wait!
Sounds like I’d rather go to Disney Land lol
I like how he keeps saying “We have”…no….you don’t have. It hasn’t even broken ground yet. You don’t have anything until the gates open and it’s been a success for a couple decades. THEN “You have”. And how big is it compared to Disney WORLD??? Screw Disneyland…that’s a joke. And if you don’t have 20 world class record breaking roller coasters, you’re not hurting Cedar Point AT ALL.
People in certain areas of Ohio could truly benefit from a billion dollars to survive. An amusement park cannot help homeless children, those that are hungry or have lost employment. I like to have fun too but my mind is on helping others get on their feet, not further filling the pockets of corporate executives. I do not mean to offend anyone, just asking you to keep in mind that the struggle is real amongst human beings of all ethnicities to some degree. Thank you. Mr. Glimcher, I hope you see these comments.
This will never give CP a run for their money. Young kid and teenagers may like this. I don’t think this will be a family destination.
I enjoy reading these. Funny to laugh about a business expanding and its somehow their fault for not giving away their money… thats called socialism. They have that in Canada If you are interested. Also funny to listen to the advise of how to build a theme park to be successful…guessing the billion dollar company can probably manage and didnt just throw the plan together and get financial backing without a solid business plan.
Lets be positive… this is going to bring more jobs to central Ohio. Are they going to be $50/ and hour no… but they will have various opportunities both in and around this business. I swear everyone wants to be negative about everything these days.
Screw all the negativity. I’m excited to see what will become of this. With CP & KI being at the Northern & Southern parts of the state, Central Ohio could really use a park like this. Sounds like it’s gonna have something for all ages. I only hope they can keep it affordable for all families. With ticket prices at our 2 major parks being $72, most families can’t afford that. Hoping for a huge success
Gilmacher is only out for the money, Built mall’s and charged outrageous rent’s that the stores could only operate a wile and would have to close. I don’t think he will be competing with Cedar Point or Disneyland. He don’t have the stuff it takes to compete with them or the money. His operation will go the way of Geauga Lake .
Cedar point will make them run for there money
This should have been brought to southern ohio. The area could benefit greatly from the tourism dollars and there are no traffic nightmares to deal with.
For starters this is no competition for cedar point because their are no roller coasters. 2nd I think expectations are way to high. I see a massive fail. I have no desire to see any of it. Cedar point on the other hand, yes!! A few times a year with fast pass.
Anything to do in the Columbus area is needed. We have nothing. Clevelanders, come on.
Go figure, where we live in Ohio its 3 hrs to Columbus over 2 hrs to cedar point…so we
Wont be traveling to there… If were going to travel it would Olorando Floida or Tennessee.. worth the travel there.
I think I just realized why they want to put this in Columbus and not Aurora or Cincinnati or elsewhere. It is because Columbus is purported to be one of the top cities for young, urban professionals to live, and because they want to compete with or compliment the high end shopping suburbia that is Easton. (Easton 2.0?) Hence too the comparison to Disneyland, which is near Los Angeles, etc., Planet Oasis wants to be near where the most amount of money, and/or the most young adults (age 18-34) are located at in the state of Ohio. :/
sweet a rollercoaster, just one???
WOW! OH, WOW!Just what Ohio needs…yet another cockamamie abusement park with tickets zillions of activities and tickets at a hundred bucks a head. Yeah, that’ll draw the yahoos from Indiana and Kentucky, like flies on…rice. How do two parents divide themselves up if five kids want to do five things at the same time? Magic?
And an even bigger wow…just the buzz about this wannabe Ahia Dizzyland has generated dozens of comments and literally hundreds of likes and dislikes…what a windfall for SCENE…the biggest one since that hoo-ha about the Cleveland Orchestra playing too many tunes by dead white guys for audiences of mostly nearly-dead suburbanites.
If this new circus in Columbus is even half as popular and successful as this thread has been, they’ll have the equivalent of a license to print money. But they won’t have the cool lake breezes…It gets as hot as hell down there. No thanks, pal…I’d rather have the lake than the bake.. .
Idk if I have faith in this. I mean he said AI means VR and AR experiences.
Sorry, but doesnt sound like it holds a candle to Disneyland. From the description, sounds like some Park I wouldnt want to spend money to patronize.
This is a gigantic sports style complex, not a theme park, like Disneyland, Cedar Point, or Kings Island. I doubt Cedar Point or Kings Island, will even blink an eye, as they’re two completely different types of parks. I was hoping for a Disneyland style theme park, closer to home, so this is kind of blah.
Do the words pipe dream mean anything, gullible news media (and I clicked through to local Columbus reports, which were equally oh, wow, how about this!!). Google search finds this company dates back only to last December meaning there is no track record to see if there is the faintest possibility of this happening.
Great concept and great location off I-71! In response to some of the comments I briefly noticed… of course, in an ideal world, it would be better to have in a more depressed area of the state to help it economically, but then the location and access isn’t as great and there would unlikely be enough people to fill the jobs. Major logistical issues! The types of jobs being created are perfect for Columbus with so many students and other young people needing jobs. Also, Glimcher is a huge developer. They may have just started this company for this project, but Glimcher organization is a well known family in Columbus and extremely successful. My impression is they care deeply about Columbus and at this point, don’t do anything just for “the money.” Sounds like a passion project for David Glimcher, but I’m sure he’ll want it to be financially successful too! I do think this will be something nice to do during the winter gray months for people in the region, and hopefully it won’t break the bank for the average family, and be too big and overwhelming. Traffic – yes, could be a bigger problem as it’s already pretty horrible around Columbus. What can you do? It is out of control with building and has been for a long time now. Lot’s of people are moving there from all over. More people means more accidents and inclement weather doesn’t help. But overall, it’s a good, prosperous place to be for the Midwest, so I wish them luck with this project!
Disneyland is way larger than 85 acres. Try 1100
Pay attention, doofus…all this will be on the test:
Disneyland (the park) is in California. It is on 85 acres of land,. and the entire complex is on 571 acres. Disney WORLD is in Florida, on 1,100 acres, and is just a small part of the Disney Resort, which covers more than 27,000 acres (43 sq. mi)
So maybe you need to get real, instead of being the anonymous spamming troll that you are.
Close to home and looks fun! However, nothing will compare to Disney!
Stock footage of other parks? They just blurred out Orlando Studios. A video an average highschool student could have made. This has investment scam written all over it. AI=VR+AR? Butterfly museum? “One of our partners is action sports” What does that even mean? Research this man’s history and the list of “experts”. This man is a con artist fooling the gullible into his hype.
My boyfriend said that this is a hoax and isn’t going to happen!!!! Is he right??
nobody seems to care they’re destroying 350 acres of land that produces oxygen and housing for animals to build a f****** theme park
They’re called planet Oasis but what they’re creating is a Mass producing garbage Zone destroying our air and oceans
This sounds extraordinarily lame, and very similar to the ill fated Xanadu project in New Jersey. No one is clamoring for this type of “entertainment” build in a greenfield 30 some miles from the center city. Also, as per usual for Columbus, if this does in fact become popular, which is a big if, there is not even close to the traffic infrastructure to support it. What a nightmare.
For those of you who think no tourists come to Ohio for vacation, you are wrong. Cleveland attracts 18 million visitors a year alone. I see and talk to tourists in Downtown Cleveland all of the time. They really like it here because it is not crazy crowded and super expensive like so many other tourist destinations in this country.
I don’t hold much hope for this place if Glimcher is involved not with the way he let the malls he owned get run down and wouldn’t put any money in them at all. Doing that would mean death to many.
People worried about the jobs not being enough money hourly also need to realize that they are going to be also hiring doctors for the wellness part of the park. Which means they will probably hire nurses as well. 15000 jobs are still 15000 jobs. Plus Cedar Point is only open for half the year. This looks like those same jobs will be kept year round. It looks fun and exciting. I will never understand how people can be negative when something is going to bring jobs back to the state of Ohio. Also to the people saying they should build it in Aurora, Cedar Point owns that land. If you’re going to complain about that then complain to them. Why Cedar Point would allow them to build there is just stupid. Online gaming is becoming a major entity because of Twitch and other streaming websites. The arena will be awesome and attract thousands if not millions of people. If this does become reality then I see this as a positive for a State that sure could use some.
How people can be negative when something is going to bring jobs back to the state of Ohio?
There are JOBS…and then there are “jobs”–like the ones in an abusement park.
How many shitty theme park jobs does it take to equal the pay of ONE good manufacturing job? Five? Ten? More? This is all smoke and mirrors. Put down the pipe and do the math.
There was talk of “20,000 jobs” when the Jake and the Q first opened. TWENTY THOUSAND???
Yeah, right…part-time seasonal jobs, that paid peanuts. And nowhere near 20,000 jobs.
Same BS here, only more of it. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.
We will just have to wait and see. I’m glad its coming sick of driving 2 hours to go to cedar point and kings island. Screw Disney land! Cost me 8000 for my family of 8 to go for a week. Besides that disney is gay anyway!
How gay is it, Mark? And how old ARE you? Still using high-school slang from a decade…or more…ago?
Dad: Going to Disney will be a gay old time.
Mark: Dad, that’s so gay.
Dad: I’m glad to hear you’re so happy about it.
Mark: No, it’s lame and boring and expensive. Disney sucks! WAAAAH!