Pripyat Amusement Park
The fairground in Pripyat that was due to open days after the disaster.
Last updated
Where it is
Coordinates: 51°24′29″N 30°03′25″E (51.4080, 30.0570) · Open in OpenStreetMap
Coordinates and connected clubs: the infobox of Wikipedia: Pripyat amusement park (CC BY-SA 4.0). Map: drawn by Codexery from OpenStreetMap tiles.
The Pripyat amusement park is an abandoned amusement park in the city of Pripyat in Ukraine. Its grand opening was planned for 1 May 1986, in time for the May Day celebrations, and was cancelled when the disaster struck a few kilometers away on 26 April. The park, and above all its Ferris wheel, has become a symbol of the Chernobyl disaster.
Last updated 2026-09-29 from the source article.
Lore & Background
The park was built as a park of culture and rest of the kind found in many large Soviet cities, and its rides were made by a firm based in Yeysk. It stood north-west of the Palace of Culture in the centre of the city and had five attractions: a 26 m ferris wheel, bumper cars, a paratrooper ride, swing boats and a carnival shooting game.
Several sources say that the park was opened for a short time on 27 April, before the evacuation was announced, to distract residents from the disaster unfolding nearby. Those claims remain largely unsubstantiated.
Reader's Guide
Radiation levels vary across the site. Helicopters carrying radioactive materials used the grounds as a landing strip, and the liquidators washed the contamination into the soil, so concreted areas are less radioactive. Patches where moss has built up can emit up to 25,000 μSv/h, among the highest readings anywhere in Pripyat.
The park features in several video games and in the film Chernobyl Diaries. In September 2017 tourists turned the wheel by hand for the first time since 1986 and then returned it to its original position. The successor of the original manufacturer was still producing the same rides to largely unaltered designs as of 2017.
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Elsewhere in Chernobyl Disaster
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Pripyat amusement park (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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