The theme park that never was in Niagara Falls

Cathy Roy 

Niagara This Week - Niagara Falls

June 14, 2022

Throughout the years, plans for various theme parks have come and gone in the fine city of Niagara Falls. Some, like Ripley’s Aquarium and Canada’s Wonderland have been built, but not in Niagara Falls. Others, such as The Worlds of Jules Verne and the Ancient Chinese City, have never materialized. Perhaps the most bizarre theme park idea that was once destined for Niagara Falls was called Maharishi Veda Land.

In March of 1992, a news conference was held to announce the ambitious plans for a theme park like no other. The proposed $1.5-billion park was supposed to be built in the Grassy Brook area of Niagara Falls. The library has the news conference package in our historic files, and it is certainly filled with fascinating information.

I am sure that some of us can remember watching magician Doug Henning from his Broadway shows and television specials. He then became the president and creative director of Maharishi Veda Land. I am sure that others will remember His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who brought the art of transcendental meditation to the Western world. Earlier followers in the 1960s and 1970s include the Beatles, Mick Jagger, the Beach Boys and even Hollywood actors such as Mia Farrow and Shirley MacLaine. As well as being featured on the cover of many magazines (including Life, the Saturday Evening Post and Time), he went on to become the founder and creative genius behind Maharishi Veda Land.

The spectacular 1,400-acre theme park was to feature 33 attractions. The Magic Flying Chariot Ride vowed to “take visitors deep inside the molecular structure of a rose, down into the unified field of all the laws of nature, pure consciousness, from where all creation arises.” The Corridor of Time Ride was to have visitors “flying through history spirally through the infinitely ever-expanding universe.”

Perhaps the most ambitious planned attraction was the Courtyard of Illusions. Advertised as the “world’s only levitating building,” it was to float 15 feet above the water, levitating in mid-air. Once inside, visitors would realize that “you can’t trust your senses, and that there is more to reality than your senses can perceive.”

The Veda Land plan also included a new university. As well as offering all of the usual university courses, the university’s 7,000 students would also learn about the Maharishi’s Vedic science, which is not offered anywhere else in the world. The university students would all become yogic flyers. A level one yogic flyer can bounce up and down on their bottom while in the lotus position. A level two flyer is able to hover, and a level three flyer actually “flies.” The Maharishi believed that the power of so many yogic flyers would generate “peace in Canada, and through Canada in the world.”

Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, Maharishi Veda Land never got off the ground (pun intended). It seems that the company had many problems obtaining funding for their project. In 1993, Doug Henning threatened to take his theme park to another location if Niagara Falls went ahead with their plans to pursue a casino. Opening dates were continuously postponed until news of the park seemed to disappear. In 2000, Doug Henning died of liver cancer at the age of 52. Eight years later, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died in his 90s. In hindsight, it seems like the city’s choice to back the casinos was a prudent one.

https://www.niagarathisweek.com/opinion/the-theme-park-that-never-was-in-niagara-falls/article_17ecb805-65f4-5622-a37e-6b2a9379fcbf.html