It was not to be. Howard said no again on Oct 3, 1977, in a zoning board vote of 3 to 1. The same concerns were cited about community impact, water issues, traffic congestion, and a “lack of safeguards.”

Undeterred, mighty Marriott was determined to keep at it. In October, even after the latest rejection, the company was still interested in Howard. “We believe the Howard County site (south of Columbia near Interstate 95 and U.S. 1) is still the best site.” They were looking into extending the time period for their purchase options on the acreage, but were cagey about details so as to prevent opposition to the project from running out the clock until those options expired.

Meantime, the company was considering sites in Anne Arundel and Prince Georges counties in Maryland, as well as Fairfax and Prince William counties in Virginia. Several municipalities were interested in wooing Marriott, but most were in less desirable locations in terms of target markets. The Anne Arundel site, for example, was situated on the Marley Neck peninsula just off the Chesapeake Bay, mainly a Baltimore location. The company preferred something midway between Baltimore and Washington.

Marriott hadn’t given up complete hope, but the company wrote off $2M in development costs for the DC project, signaling their prospects were grim. By now the projected costs for building a park were over $100 million. “We're still talking to people…we've just started at zero again in accumulating future costs associated with a possible park here…we're keeping our options open," shared Marriott’s Vice President for Corporate Affairs Thomas E. Burke. He also revealed they had looked at a different East coast market as a possible park location, but didn’t specify where. “A final decision on a Washington area park will be made after the 1978 operating (season) at our two existing parks.”

This last bit was most likely the final straw. Marriott, like others, had jumped into the theme park business because it was a shiny object, a newfangled thing that seemed to be the hot ticket. And it was, coming off the heels of Disneyland and later Walt Disney World. This is why we got all those regional parks around the country. From a financial standpoint, though, they weren’t so hot. Companies discovered that parks required lots of capital, every year, to keep them going. The small startups couldn’t hack it and had to sell out to larger companies. The large companies eventually grew disenchanted, selling the parks off to still other large companies who might or might not be all that interested and excited about what a theme park was all about.

Marriott’s two parks in California and Illinois—which had been acquired, planned, opened, and were currently in their third season of operation—never performed up to expectations. The company would eventually sell them off in 1984, the Gurnee park going to Six Flags, the California park to the city of Santa Clara. That’s why we have two regional theme parks with (nearly) the same name in two different states—and that are almost identical—in case you’ve been confused for years as I was.

Was it a mistake to deny Marriott their flagship park? What would the area be like today if it had been built, especially with the additional components originally planned like the safari park, marine life park, and so on? Of course we’ll never know; there’s really nothing special on any of the property now, so it would presumably have been a far more interesting and fun use of land. But it’s nice to speculate every time I drive through Northern Virginia, wishing I could take the exit and enjoy Great America...or Disney’s America.