There used to be a water park in my hometown that had a bunch of slides and a wave pool. I used to go there all the time as a kid, and even went there as a senior on a trip. I went to birthday parties there, sometimes.
It closed in 2020 and never reopened because they had apparently been avoiding paying bills for years. It wasn’t just the pandemic. It was visible from the freeway, so I watched it slowly being demolished over the next couple years any time I passed by.
I haven’t found a water park that really compared to it yet. Most are either too small or part of a larger theme park, which is fine. It just seemed like the fact that it exclusively was a water park allowed it to focus more on the atmosphere and types of slides it had.
Town centers and outdoor outlet centers are just malls, but worse. No AC, fewer small businesses somehow, parking shoved in between the stores, and (in the town centers) half-assed (at best) mixed use.
For all of their many, many flaws, a lot of malls actually fell backwards into accidentally doing some interesting things in terms of being community spaces.