On this day, it was announced that Busch Gardens, located on 40-acres next to the Anheuser-Busch brewery on Gellhorn, was "unprofitable", and the park had already begun shutting down its wild animal displays due to low attendance and high costs. When it opened two years earlier on Memorial Day weekend 1971, the fourteen million dollar amusement park was billed as the place where the "Far East meets West".