Opening a theme park can be a perilous business.

While the most popular destinations — the Disneylands, Universal Studios and Alton Towers of this world — continue to pack in the punters in their millions every year, it’s a different story for others.

Take the case of Pleasure Island, the Cleethorpes park which now looks like a scene from The Last Of Us.

Or the abandoned Wild West park in Japan. Then there’s those that cost a fortune but never even opened at all.

And then there’s this one. Parque Europa Baku was once a popular tourist destination, home to sharks, seals, birds and reptiles among its many attractions.

However, since it closed in the early 2010s, it’s been lying abandoned.

When urban explorer and photographer SeanUrbex paid a visit to the site, he discovered just how badly the place has been left to rot.

Located in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, the 159,000 square metre site was viewed as a big family leisure spot when it opened its doors in the early 2000s.

As well as its aquatic creatures, reptiles and wildlife, the park also played host to a recreation of Christopher Columbus’ famous ship La Santa Maria.Other attractions included a haunted hotel, botanical gardens, live performance venues and even bingo halls and a bowling alley.

Despite so much promise, the park quickly fell into financial difficulties, with many of its attractions subsequently closing down, before the whole place closed its doors altogether in 2010.

And SeanUrbex’s photos taken at the site reveal structures covered in grafitti as well as rooms and other areas in states of disrepair.

Having accessed the remains of the park easily, simply walking into it from the main street, he revealed that ‘the first thing we see is the striking shark statue still remaining, overlooking the once busy park’.

‘I originally thought the park was a zoo,’ he explained. ‘But actually, I have been corrected by locals that it was a water park with other attractions such as a live shark in a water tank below the old statue.

‘Sadly, we only managed to see about a third of the site, as many homeless locals have made the place home, living in old pools and display water features, with no roofs but clothes hanging up drying and makeshift beds with blankets.’

Adding that homelessness is a real problem on Fuerteventura, he said: ‘The most shocking thing was the amount of homeless squatters who now called the old park home.’

As well as falling into such disrepair, the site has had other problems over the years, from items being stolen through to an arson attack in May 2019 which saw the replica La Santa Maria destroyed by fire.

By the end of that year, its operators Ociopark Corralejo had also accumulated losses of almost €31.2million (£27million), according to accounts listed in Spanish newspaper newspaper Diario de Fuerteventura.

However, there is one small bit of good news for theme park fans on the island as the connected water park adjacent to Parque Europa remains open.

Acua Water Park underwent renovation following the closure of Parque Europa, and re-opened in 2014.

The park, which features swimming pools, slides and other facilities, is open on a seasonal basis from March to early November.

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