Negative-G - Lost Island Theme Park - July 2022 Page Sixteen

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Across the lagoon from Lost Island's entrance the Alzanu's Eye Ferris Wheel is the visual center of the park.

The Awa Realm at Lost Island Theme Park, Waterloo, Iowa

One of the things that Walt Disney did when he built Disneyland back in 1955 was adding a centerpiece to the park to act as a focal point and draw guests further into the park. Theme parks that followed through the 1970's like Kings Island with the Eifel Tower, or Wonder Mountain at Canada's Wonderland followed Walt's idea but that seems to have fallen out of fashion with latter parks. It's nice to see those behind Lost Island going back to Walt's idea.

Alzanu's Eye is a Ferris Wheel that Lost Island's Bertch Family purchased used from a park in Taiwan. With purchasing both of the parks large coasters and several of the rides used and then having them refurbished and rebuilt ended up making building Lost Island more affordable because it saved them about a third of the cost of a new ride. This gave them the ability to put more into this park.

You do get a great view of the Awa Water Realm, Lost Island, and the surrounding area from Alzanu's Eye.

Landscaping wise there is a lot of mulch covering Lost Island but I am curious to see how the park looks in a decade as during the design of the park thousands of different plants were chosen to grow and enhance each of the realms theming. My guess is that Lost Island will really look like a tropical oasis when all of those plants that were added during construction get to grow.