A Look Inside the Abandoned Maui Sands Water Park: Sandusky, Ohio

Here's a place I didn't even know existed, and I used to drive down to Cedar Point every summer.

This 306-room family resort was called Maui Sands, an indoor water park and hotel. It had a Hawaiian motif with all the typical water amusements: tubes, pools, etc. It also had a spa, restaurant, private cabanas, giant volcano, America's first authentic surf simulator, and the Cannon Bowl, where “you'll come out in a tube out through a deep dark tunnel and shoot out into a gigantic bowl where you'll spin, spin, spin around until momentum gives up and you get popped out the bottom into the Lazy River.”

Maui Sands opened in April 2008 as a one-stop family destination in Sandusky, Ohio. The problem was, it wasn't ready yet – it was still under construction and had to be closed just seven months later around Thanksgiving.

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It sat abandoned from 2008 until it re-opened in 2012, but only as a hotel. The water park didn't re-open until 2013 and then it permanently closed in March 2019.

The reason for closure was from (no surprise) water damage and a cockroach problem. Squatters also began setting up living quarters; one squatter even had a pizza delivered to his illegal home.....and was busted.

The whole complex has been condemned and will probably never re-open. No plans of demolition at this point. The abandoned Maui Sands sits six miles south of Cedar Point.