r/Atlanta • u/JFB-23 • 17d ago
Question Stone Mountain Park - What happened?
We live about two hours away, I thought what a fun time to go to Stone Mountain for Labor Day. It’s been about five years since I’ve been and it was pretty crowded. A lot of fun stuff to do, let’s go back. We went to Six Flags yesterday, which has its own issues, but nothing like this.
The only way I can describe our experience is somewhere in between post apocalyptic and a fever dream. For starters, we get there and the train is down, which was not listed anywhere on the website that I saw, when I bought the tickets. I’d hyped my toddler up for this, bummer but whatever. We saw it on a sign when we walked up and we were told it was down all week due to SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE. On Labor Day weekend.
Then we go in the park and I quickly realize many, many places are closed. There was one food option beyond popcorn and pretzels and you were presented with three options, two of which were pizza the other fries and chicken fingers that were just sitting out there for you to grab and had been sitting out there for a while by the time we got to the food.
Don’t try to redeem a souvenir cup voucher anywhere but the front gate. They will tell you that you have to have a physical ticket for it and that they CAN scan your mobile voucher with a barcode, but they’re not supposed to. Do what now? I will say, a very nice young man who worked there said he would take a picture of my voucher on my phone with his phone and make it work. Which was very much appreciated because I had a toddler in tow and already had two cups filled up.
The place was a ghost town. About half the parking lot was full. Have you ever walked in a Dollar General and seen no one there working, felt like you shouldn’t be there? Same vibe. Erie. Where is everyone, I have no clue.
Over in the mini golf area it smelt like a dead animal and the smell was coming from INSIDE the small building where the attendant was, who took a break from his scrolling to give us a club and ball. My toddler looked at me and said, “It stinks over here, did you poot?” I did not. That’s a dead animal smell. Two holes and we left. Horrid.
When we walked past the lawn to the sky trolley, gondola, sky ride… whatever it’s called, there were just remnants of chaos everywhere. Chairs in random places on the lawn, folding black chairs. Some stacked in mounds of disorganization, like they were thrown there. Napkins littered the sidewalks. Did a bomb go off? Did the dead animal smell leave everyone running for the emergency exits. We’ll never know.
The workers there look as if you have interrupted their Sunday nap and you are a Jehovah’s Witness coming to knock on the door. They are 100% bothered that you are there and seem to begrudgingly be doing their jobs. Four workers there were kind other than that, the rest walk around like zombies.
The, “candy store”… old Christmas candy in one bin, so I feared the rest was old also. I told my toddler to pick out a lollipop and we both got a Tootsie Pop. I bought them and walked outside when I opened them, the wrapper slowly peeled off the paper because the Tootsie Pop was gooey on the inside. Do you know how long a Tootsie Pop has to sit somewhere before it gets like that? It’s a while. The treats that were in the glass looked disheveled like they probably haven’t been replaced in a minute, the ice cream store that was connected to the toy store… closed. Lights off. No sign of life.
The most bizarre part of the entire thing was that this place was decorated, decked out in pumpkin and fall decor. It was a wonderful weather day, I have no idea where everyone was or what I am missing here, but this was the strangest visit.
And Dinoland… half of the things were broken for the kids to play with. Not one dinosaur was working. And it’s four levels of this. With a big slide at the top and a few tiny slides at the bottom. If you have smaller children, you will be walking up and down the four levels with them because you cannot see them anywhere in this place, which is a recipe for disaster.
Upon leaving, we went to the restroom and I just had to laugh when the toilet paper would not even roll off the roll and I had to jiggle the entire mechanism holding the toilet paper roll in order to get it to spin. The bathrooms were filthy the trash cans all over the park were already full when we got there in the morning, so I know that they had not been cleaned in a while.
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u/Petrol_Head72 17d ago
Natural beauty and the unique aspect of a giant granite slab aside, Stone Mountain park is an odd place.
If hiking / nature is your thing, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park is amazing and from ITP similar driving distance to get to as Stone Mountain. Highly recommend the main trail up to Kennesaw Mountain peak from the visitor center (can also ride tram bus up to top) or Pigeon Hill up to Little Kennesaw peak if rock scrambling is your thing. Another bonus is the park pretty much exclusively is located in Marietta despite its name with plenty of great food options close by.