Indiana Beach to Reopen in 2020 With New Ownership

Rumors of Indiana Beach’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. In a two word social media post earlier today, the park announced that it would indeed open for the 2020 Season.

“Once again it will become a family run midwestern amusement park,” new park owner Gene Staples told the News & Review of Monon, Indiana. Depending on the current pandemic status, Staples is hopeful to  open Indiana Beach in July.

Staples, who lives in the Chicago area, is a US Navy veteran who loves to pay attention to the details. He plans to do just that when it comes to managing Indiana Beach.

“It’s still a vintage amusement park and we’re going to take care of what we can take care of over those next few months,” he said. “Like I said, tracking the Hoosier Hurricane. We’re going to do lots of painting. We’re going to do lots of small improvements that some people may know, some people may not know, but it’s important improvements that we talked about may not provide a return on investments, but to me, the one thing that’s lacking is a lot of attention to detail and we’re slowly going to be doing that attention to detail.”

The new park owner grew up visiting Indiana Beach, and saw the opportunity to continue to make memories with his own family.

“I had family growing up from Indiana, aunts and uncles and relatives and visited the beach, probably not as often as we should have, but still some good childhood memories coming down,” Staples told News & Review. “I have my own four kids, age ranges from 13 through 22. So while they were growing up, I brought them down. Self-prescribed, I would say, amusement park aficionado, but I consider it more of a kinetic art, right? Roller coasters, the mechanical art and the vintage amusement park obviously has a special place.

“Growing up with, and with my own kids, we lived very close to Kiddieland in Melrose Park, Illinois, which was lost to a Costco store a few years ago. But I was sad to see that go. When I drive by the Costco, and remember the Kiddieland America. And, like I said, I couldn’t just do nothing when it came to this. And so I made the phone calls and here we are all of a sudden two months later and making big plans.”

While the immediate future of the park is up in the air thanks to COVID-19, it’s great to know that the shores of Lake Shaffer will once again be filled with the sounds of guests enjoying their time at Indiana Beach!

Stay tuned to Coaster101.com for more information when it becomes available.

 

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