John Frost writes The Disney Blog and knows a thing or two about theme parks. John and I hung out at Cypress Gardens a month or two ago. During our walk around the park he talked about a number of issues he saw with the park. In a recent post about the sale of Cypress Gardens, John talks about what the new owners should do to improve the park.

1) Figure out how to add a separate parking lot and entrance for the Water Park.

2) Food & Dining. Currently Cypress Gardens uses food like a club to hit guests over the head with. You aren't allowed to bring in outside food or drink (which is fine), but then they do things like not providing kids meals or reasonably priced food.

3) Employee training. The heart of Cypress Gardens right now is its employees.

4) A slight reconfiguration of the park. Hire a theme park architect company to come in and redo the whole area from the ticket booths all the way through to the old parking garage area.

5) Dark rides. There are no dark rides in the whole park. If you're going to spend any money on new attractions, a couple dark rides would be the first place to look

6) Theme. Identify a theme and stick with it.

John expands on each one of these points in his post, check it out.