China spent $100M on a theme park in Florida — it drew 200 visitors a day

Splendid China Florida was the sister park of Shenzhen's hugely successful miniature park: 75 acres near U.S. Highway 192 in Kissimmee with over 60 hand-crafted one-tenth-scale replicas — a half-mile Great Wall built from roughly seven million bricks, the Terracotta Warriors, the Forbidden City, the Potala Palace. Groundbreaking came in December 1989; the park opened in late 1993, built for $100 million as a partnership between local investor Josephine Chen and China Travel Service, which bought out its American partners that same December.

The park was too quiet for its corridor. It barely advertised, and along U.S. 192 it was competing for leftovers against Disney and the mega-parks. Former executives said attendance ran 400–500 visitors a day in the late 1990s and fell to 200–300 by 2000, while reports put losses at $9 million a year by 1999. Protests over the park's ownership and school-trip bans chipped away at group visits. UCF tourism professor Abraham Pizam was blunt: 'The only reason it exists, or has remained open, is because it is owned by the government of China. Otherwise, it would have closed a long time ago.'

On 31 December 2003 the park closed for good; China Travel Service cited the 'continuing downturn' in tourism and 'significant losses'. About 40 people lost their jobs, and the property, assessed at $12.86 million, sat abandoned and was heavily vandalized. Listed for $30 million in 2009, it was demolished starting in May 2013; the Margaritaville Resort Orlando now stands on the site.