Long before Universal Epic Universe, 1993 saw the grand opening of another ambitious theme park in Central Florida. Splendid China, located in the Four Corners area of Osceola County and owned by the government-run Chinese Travel Service, sparked immediate controversy with some of its replicas of Chinese landmarks, including a recreated Tibetan palace where the Dalai Lama lived before the Chinese takeover in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
Although the Sentinel published a fawning introduction of the park to its readers, the coverage quickly turned sour. Low foot traffic, internal woes and accusations of the park being a vehicle for Chinese government propaganda, which itself led to high-profile protests and complaints to federal authorities accusing its owners of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, all marred its reputation.<\/p>\n
The park finally closed in 2003, as poor marketing and mismanagement ensured it would never compete with the likes of Walt Disney World and other, more popular theme parks. Buildings and props from the site were auctioned off in 2004. One Lake County man bought the 42-foot-long Little Great Wall to use as a backyard fence.<\/p>\n
After being semi-abandoned for years and suffering through a long stretch of revolving-door ownership, the property finally became an outpost of another powerful empire: Margaritaville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long before Universal Epic Universe, 1993 saw the grand opening of another ambitious theme park in Central Florida.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[53370,28,114,266,115,139,141,140,53371,1976,109,2411,106],"class_list":["post-423247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-flashbacks","tag-florida","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-orlando-sentinel-150","tag-osceola-county","tag-social","tag-theme-parks","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}