That Park Place Returns January 1st, 2023: Here’s the Story

Check, check… is this thing on?

In August of 2021, That Park Place launched for the very first time after assembling a team of writers, editors and landing WDW Pro as a scooper who could pick up rumors. At the time, we wanted to news that was fun. We still do. So nothing too serious, just reporting on theme parks, movies, video games, travel. You get the idea. But then things began to shift a bit. As we reported on entertainment, there were times that fun stuff turned into areas that were serious. It’s still not our forte, but it is something we have to contend with. There are times all the news that should be fun is decidedly not so. When a celebrity dies, for example, it’s not a pleasant thing to cover. When a movie review isn’t flattering, that can be controversial. When a topic about the theme parks uncovers something that fans might not like, it pulls in scrutiny.

We also discovered over time that there were things we might report exclusively that could pull plenty of attention our way. Usually, that’s a good thing. For all but two months of our existence until very recently, That Park Place saw exponential growth in viewership. That’s not something we expected to see but it is something that made us believe we were on the right track. Even despite rarely getting onto a trend-spot with Google News or other major sources of traffic spikes, almost every month was double the viewership of the last. However, though we greatly appreciated that enthusiasm and vote of confidence from readers, we also began to gain the attention of major players who were not keen on our existence.

We don’t know how or who was behind a multi-month issue that made our website suddenly very difficult to access. We simply know that shortly after revealing Hugh Jackman was in negotiations to come to the MCU — a revelation made exclusively here and on Valliant Renegade’s YouTube show via WDW Pro — a series of events occurred that seemed to have the practical effect of eliminating us from the web. The first issue was that our site suddenly became nearly inoperable due to poor download speeds. This cratered traffic and also made it essentially impossible for us to communicate additional stories. The second thing that happened was that we saw our pre-Musk Twitter account permanently suspended without cause (the official reason was “evading suspension”), despite the account never having had a single strike or moderation previously, and none of the workers associated with that professional account ever having been moderated, suspended or anything else. These events occurred within six hours of one another.

That left us with two avenues to communicate with the many thousands of readers who frequented the site regularly. We could send out information through our seldomly-used Facebook account and we could communicate through friends of the site. Both Valliant Renegade and Doomcock immediately sent out info to their subscribers to let them know of the situation.

It would be a few days of work before the site was back to operational. But it wasn’t good. And it wasn’t in a situation that would work long-term. Whatever attack we were under was continuing. Contacting our hosting company led us to believe that our server was in a critical emergency. We then paid to move the site to a new server, one of a much higher tier and caliber. Yet doing this didn’t fully resolve the issues either. What we discovered is that we needed to do serious work on the site in order to return it to blazing-fast speed and safeguard it from any situations like this arising in the future. We don’t know what our readership will be like once we restart, but we know that if it goes anything like the first time, we may garner ill will from corporations and individuals who don’t want us to report honestly to the very best of our ability. Sometimes the truth is not in the interest of companies and their loyalists.

So in November, after the site only operating at maybe 20% its intended bandwidth, the decision was made to take the whole thing down. Significant work and recoding was performed make it nearly impossible to knock this site offline in the future. Sometimes it pays to have a web designer with a PhD on your staff. With his diligence and expertise, we’ve greatly improved the situation with the site. Our last task if fixing the TTFB response issue — something that may persist for a short time after the relaunch. If you click on a link and it takes four or five seconds to kick into action, just know it’s attempting to ensure we block any malicious actors that would flood articles and tank site performance.

We’re now almost ready to relaunch. January 1st, 2023 will be the day that not only this site, but also the WDW Pro YouTube channel will launch. When that happens, we’ll be working to closely integrate the two pieces, plus the WDW Pro Twitter account (and hopefully a future reinstated That Park Place Twitter Account) so that everything is as seamless as possible. We want to do the same with John Golf, Jonas Campbell, Dr. Michael Sturgeon, Pamela Fitzgerald and other writers. We’re working to develop an entire TPP ecosystem. As we do, just know that none of this is possible without you. So many of you have asked when TPP would be back. So many have continued to check the site even when no new content was coming out. We see you, we hear you, we’re making all of this for you. If there was no interest, the easiest thing to do would to have put all our eggs in Twitter and YouTube. But your interest, your support, means That Park Place will continue on better than ever before.

We’re ready for a fantastic 2023. Will you join us for the ride? Let’s put the fun back into the news.

For all the latest news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place. As always, drop a comment down below and let us know your thoughts!