Looks like that box of fish sticks in the back of your freezer is going to stay there.
Space World, a Japanese theme park, shutdown their ice skating rink attraction on Sunday, because as it turns out, most people don’t consider skating around dead fish to be a winter wonderland. The theme park froze 5,000 sea creatures into the floor of their skating rink, thinking that attendees would enjoy the challenge of navigating an ocean graveyard. Space World called it “Freezing Port.” We call it “A Nightmare.”
Freezing Port received a slew of complaints from visitors and animal rights organizations. One Facebook user said, “You have no soul.” While another simply, and more practically, said, “This is the worst attraction educationally.” Apparently, only a select few found Space World's Facebook advertisements with captions that read “I am d... d... drowning, s ... s... suffocating” funny and not horrifying.
Japanese skating rink with 5,000 dead fish frozen into ice forced to close after animal rights outrage (pic via @SpaceWorld_info) pic.twitter.com/etWQZAE3VT
— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) November 28, 2016
“We were shocked to hear the reaction as the ice skate rink was very popular since it opened two weeks ago,” Space World manager Toshimi Takeda told to CNN. “We had an unprecedented number of visitors.”
“We are sorry for the project and decided to close the rink.”
CNN added the park will “unfreeze the skate rink to remove the fish, hold an ‘appropriate religious service,’ and then reuse them as fertilizer.” Cool.
So there you have it. Theme park buys locally-sourced seafood, freezes it into their skating rink, and holds memorial service for the fish after learned that people don’t like ice skating on dead fish. Welcome to Monday morning on Planet Earth.