10 Florida Vacation Spots From the ’80s That Look Nothing Like They Used To

In the summer of 1985, a Florida family loaded into a wood-paneled station wagon and pointed it down US-27 toward a roadside spring where women in fishtails breathed through hidden air hoses.

That was the vacation.

Many of those stops have since closed, been paved over, or been handed over to the state.

These are the Florida vacation spots from the ’80s that look nothing like they used to.

1. Cypress Gardens

Cypress Gardens opened on Lake Eloise in Winter Haven in 1936, billed as Florida’s first theme park.

Southern belles posed in hoop skirts, and water-skiers stacked into human pyramids across the lake.

They called it the Water Ski Capital of the World.

Then the crowds thinned out.

The gates closed for good in 2009, and a British company opened LEGOLAND Florida on the same grounds in 2011.

The old botanical gardens survived the makeover, cypress trees and all.

But the pyramids are gone.

2. Wet ‘n Wild

Wet ‘n Wild ran the water-park scene on Orlando’s International Drive for close to four decades.

SeaWorld’s creator, George Millay, opened it in 1977.

For years it was the most-visited water park in the country, all slides and sunburned tourists and a lazy river packed shoulder to shoulder.

Universal owned it at the end and closed the gates on the last day of 2016.

The Volcano Bay water park went up nearby to replace it.

3. Boardwalk and Baseball

Boardwalk and Baseball rose off Interstate 4 in Haines City, built on the bones of an older park called Circus World.

Ringling put up Circus World in the 1970s as a big-top park and a winter home for the show.

New owners rebuilt it around baseball in 1987, with a wooden coaster called the Florida Hurricane and a stadium that hosted the Kansas City Royals every spring.

It didn’t last.

Busch bought the chain and shut the park down in January 1990, mid-season, with barely any warning.

Families showed up to find the gates padlocked.

Shops and subdivisions off US-27 fill the site today.

4. Miracle Strip

Miracle Strip Amusement Park anchored the Panama City Beach tourist strip along Front Beach Road for decades.

It opened on Memorial Day weekend in 1963.

Its wooden Starliner was the first roller coaster built in Florida, and generations of Panhandle families rode it with the Ferris wheel glowing over the Gulf.

The owners couldn’t keep up with rising costs and thinner crowds, and it closed in 2004.

A few of the old rides scattered to a smaller nostalgia park and other spots around the beach.

The original midway is a shopping center and condos now.

5. Weeki Wachee Springs

Weeki Wachee Springs turned a natural spring off US-19 into a stage for underwater mermaids.

A former Navy man, Newton Perry, opened the attraction in 1947 and taught performers to breathe from air hoses hidden in the scenery.

Women in fishtails sipped soda and ate bananas eight feet down while tour buses idled out front.

By the early 2000s, the paint was peeling and the crowds had shrunk.

Florida stepped in and made Weeki Wachee an official state park in 2008.

The mermaids still perform, though now they swim for a public park.

Same spring, new owner.

6. Silver Springs

Silver Springs, just east of Ocala, floated glass-bottom boats over its clear water long before Disney set foot in Florida.

Operators were rowing tourists over the springs as far back as the 1870s.

Hollywood crews shot several Tarzan films on the river, and for decades this was one of the busiest attractions in the state, complete with a jungle cruise and animal shows.

The state took full control and folded it all into a state park in 2013.

The glass-bottom boats still run over the springs, though the jungle cruise is long gone.

7. Xanadu House

The Xanadu House of the Future sat on US-192 in Kissimmee, a blobby white home spray-foamed into shape.

Built in 1983 as a showcase of tomorrow's living, it packed in early home computers, an automated kitchen, and big promises about the years ahead.

At its peak, a thousand visitors a day paid to wander the foam rooms.

The novelty wore off.

It closed in 1996, sat rotting with mold for years, and crews demolished it in 2005 to clear the lot.

A stretch of Kissimmee sprawl covers the spot now.

The future didn't last.

8. Marineland

Marineland opened on A1A south of St. Augustine in 1938, billed as the world's first oceanarium.

Movie crews built it to film sea life underwater.

Tourists showed up anyway, close to 900,000 visitors a year at the peak, decades before SeaWorld ever opened in Orlando.

As SeaWorld and Disney opened inland, the crowds followed them.

Marineland reopened in 2006 as a small operation now called Marineland Dolphin Adventure.

The grand old oceanarium tanks are long gone.

It's much smaller now.

9. Sunken Gardens

Sunken Gardens has filled a drained sinkhole on Fourth Street North in St. Petersburg since the early 1900s.

A plumber named George Turner planted tropical fruit in the rich muck, and by the 1930s he was charging tourists to walk the paths.

For years it was a fixture on the Florida tourist circuit, flamingos and all.

Then Disney World opened just up the interstate, and the traffic that fed roadside gardens dried up.

St. Petersburg voters taxed themselves to buy the place for $3.8 million in 1999, saving it from the bulldozers.

The city runs it as a public garden today, not a private tourist trap.

The flamingos stayed.

10. Daytona Beach

Daytona Beach was, by many accounts, the spring break capital of the country through the 1980s.

After Fort Lauderdale pushed the students out, as many as 350,000 of them flooded Daytona's hard-packed sand every March.

The cable channel MTV set up cameras right on the beach.

By 1986, the network was broadcasting its whole spring lineup from the coquina bandshell.

That was the peak.

Then the city grew tired of the crowds and the cleanup bills.

Officials cracked down through the 1990s, and the students drifted off to Panama City Beach and beyond.