Heritage USA

Heritage USA opened in 1978, and by 1986 employed around 2,500 people. The facilities included the 501-room Heritage Grand Hotel, the attraction Main Street USA, an indoor shopping complex, the Heritage Village Church, Upper Room, a 400-unit campground, the Jerusalem Amphitheater, conference facilities, King's Castle, a skating rink, prayer and counseling services, cable television production studios, Bible and evangelism school, visitor retreat housing, staff and volunteer housing, timeshares and the Heritage Island water park and recreational facilities. By its own estimate it was the third-largest theme park by attendance, with what it reported was 4.9 million visitors per year, behind only Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Heritage USA was described as a Christian version of Disneyland; before the scandal leading to its closure, Jim Bakker had plans to expand the park.

Falwell's slide

In 1987, televangelist Jerry Falwell, dressed in a business suit, "plunged" down the Typhoon, a 163-foot (50 m) "hellish" water slide, fulfilling "a promise made during a fund-raising drive that netted $20 million for the debt-ridden PTL". This drive eventually took the PTL Club and Heritage USA from Jim Bakker. It was reported that Jim Bakker "arranged for Falwell to take over PTL in March in an effort to avoid what he called a 'hostile takeover' of the television ministry by people threatening to expose a sexual encounter he admitted to having seven years earlier with church secretary Jessica Hahn." Photographs of Falwell's water slide plunge circulated worldwide. Video of the slide is also available on YouTube.

Closure

At Heritage USA's peak, when it earned $126 million per year, the IRS revoked its tax exemption. Soon after Bakker's federal indictment and public condemnation for raping and drugging Jessica Hahn with another man in his employ, John Fletcher, seven years before, park attendance dropped. Falwell said the park competed unfairly with tax-paying attractions and that the tax-exempt ministry should be separated from PTL's business interests. Under Falwell's leadership, Heritage USA sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with debts estimated at $72 million.

In return for a promised lifetime annual four-day vacation stay, 165,000 people had donated $1,000 to Jim Bakker's planned Heritage USA hotel tower; each donor received $6.54 in compensation. Starting in 1987, Bakker's legal and personal troubles made headlines, and in September 1989, Hurricane Hugo caused severe damage to many of the buildings. Heritage USA closed shortly after the storm.