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Playland's Castaway Cove's VP Says Visitors 'Won't See Much Difference' As Park Reopens Following Massive Fire

OCEAN CITY, N.J. (CBS) -- Playland's Castaway Cove on the Ocean City boardwalk is getting ready to reopen this weekend. A four-alarm fire damaged the amusement park in January and destroyed the park's arcade and offices.

Brian Hartley is Vice President of Playland's Castaway Cove and joined Eyewitness News Friday morning about what visitors can expect.

So what can guests expect at the park this weekend?

Hartley says they're hoping to have 22 out 362 rides, running this weekend.

"For the customers, they won't see much difference," he said. "We're still going with the same as last year as far as COVID-19 procedures, we're social distancing, spacing people out during the rides, and also wiping down and cleaning rides between ride cycles."

Hartley also mentioned that customers will walk into the park from a different entrance between 10th and 11th Street.

As of Friday, they are still in demolition and are trying to get the arcade building demolished but that has been going a little slower with the weather.

"We've been focused on trying to get the rides open, a lot of people when they saw the original story thought the park would be closed and would not be open this summer," Harley said. "Our biggest goal as far as ourselves and our maintenance guys and personnel department was trying to get the park open."

He also said the response and support from the community was amazing.

"We thought we were this little amusement in Ocean City that people came to it and enjoyed but after this happened, we had people reach out from all over the world, all over the country, they come here, they have memories of Ocean City and memories of our park. So, it was an eye-opening experience for us, because we never really dealt with, that we didn't realize how much it meant to people," Harley said.

Castaway Cove will be open from 12 p.m. until 5 p.m. Saturday.

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