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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Muscle Park Chitose to close end of month

Official ribbon cutting ceremony. All-Star Toshihiro Takeda 竹田敏浩, TV Host Sato Hiromichi 佐藤弘道, Monster 9 President and CEO - Ushio Higuchi 樋口 潮 (center) unidentified businessman (He might be the manager) and All-Star Kazuhiko Akiyama 秋山和彦 during the Grand Opening of Chitose's Muscle Park on July 18, 2010 ©Muscle Park Chitose

Geez.. after my tirade from the last post I thought there would be good news.. but apparently not.. the bad news seems to be pouring in again.. In what seems to be surreal news but certainly not unexpected (unfortunately), Chitose Muscle Park 千歳マッスルパーク will be closing its doors after just one year on Sunday, August 28, 2011. The sad news spread through twitter first this morning when I logged on then realized that the Muscle Park's website posted a small message on their site:

閉園のご挨拶

千歳マッスルパークは、8月28日(日)を持って、
閉園することになりました。

昨年夏のオープン以来、北海道内はもとより全国各地や海外からのご来場、
誠にありがとうございました。
またいつの日か、日本のいや世界のどこかでお会いしましょう!

更に進化を遂げたマッスルパークで、
皆様にお目にかかれることを楽しみにしています!!

残りわずかの期間ですが、皆様のご来場をお待ちしております。

The message generally says thank you to everyone during the past year. The word that Google had a hard time translating was "stop doing business/go out of business" (thanks Ube). They give a small warcry at the end saying that they hope to come back with something better.. but the message is clear. Muscle Park is done. It's a shame.. Muscle Park Chitose was not cheap.. it was built from the ground up entirely on M9 money (as they didn't pay rent in a building like they did for Odaiba) and was a freestanding building for the exclusive purpose of the housing the park. No word as to exactly what caused them to fail but I can surmise from posts online that they just didn't have enough visitors to make it solvent. The park was empty a lot.

All-Stars Kazuhiko Akiyama 秋山和彦 and Toshihiro Takeda 竹田敏浩 ©personal blog

It's a shame that there's pretty much nothing left of Monster 9's parks, shows or events going on. As you know the first Muscle Park (Odaiba/Tokyo) closed in October, 2010, Muscle Musical in Las Vegas finally finished their run in July, 2011 and the current Muscle Musical was forced to temporarily close when their theater had to be shut down because of code violations.. Then of course we know about Sasuke being delayed almost 2 months (at last rumor) to give priority to the American broadcast of the show.. even the current fan club that is supposedly forming were refunded their money recently since they are not ready when they thought they would be.. so it's not been a good couple months for Monster 9. Maybe they will think first before they act? Probably not.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't like to see it close but never understood choice of location guess next will be in America

Arsenette said...

Monster 9 can't even afford a damn website administrator.. they are going to control a foreign park with liability insurance that's worth more than the park itself? Doubtful.

lampini said...

so is muscle park closing because of the stuff you explained in your last post or was it just not very popular

Arsenette said...

With this I'm under the impression that it was just lack of sales for several reasons. a) location (it's really isolated out in the northern most prefecture of Japan) b) Tohoku region disaster. I'm sure being in the north it was affected by lack of people wanting to go up there after the disaster. While not directly affected it is still close to the region affected.

Arsenette said...

Aww thanks :) ..getting old :p

TigerOfHaughton said...

Happy birthday, Elsie!