The four-story zip line and obstacle tower that once drew families and scout troops to Maryland Heights has gone dark. RYZE Adventure Park, built on a former dumping site off Grace Church Road, has closed after four full seasons, its owners citing a run of financial setbacks that started with the pandemic and never really let up.
Co-owners Greg Hoffmann and Tony Holt opened RYZE in 2021, modeling it after an adventure-course concept popular in Europe and pitching it as one of only about half a dozen facilities of its kind in North America at the time, according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Colleen Schrappen. The park's aerial course packed in more than 100 challenges spread across zip lines, balance beams and swinging bridges, drawing roughly three dozen part-time employees, mostly high school and college students, to staff it each season, the paper reports.
But the timing was brutal from the start. COVID-related supply-chain delays pushed the park's opening season back so far that RYZE did not welcome its first visitors until late September 2021, per the same account, leaving the business to absorb a full year of expenses with no revenue to show for it.
A Confidence Builder Undone by Weather
Hoffmann told the Post-Dispatch that RYZE was meant to be a confidence builder and a collaborative activity. Tickets for a trip through the tower started at $39. A wet spring and especially hot summer contributed to losses last summer: RYZE needed revenue to grow by 20 percent, but instead lost 40 percent of its revenue, the newspaper reported.
Hoffmann said RYZE would otherwise have had to be taken down, according to the same report. It was the second time the co-owners watched a business get swallowed by circumstances beyond their control. Hoffmann had previously owned Sports Fusion, a Chesterfield venue with laser tag, athletic activities and an arcade that closed in 2020, the Post-Dispatch notes.
Applied Adventure Consulting, the management firm behind RYZE's day-to-day operations, did not respond to an interview request from the paper. The consulting group had previously been highlighted for running community discount campaigns aimed at first responders and educators, with Abby Burt serving as the park's owner and chief marketing officer as of July 2025, according to Florissant Valley News.
A Crowded Field for Aerial Adventure in Maryland Heights
RYZE was never the only high-ropes attraction in town. Maryland Heights has also been home to Go Ape Zipline & Adventure Park, a treetop ropes course in Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park that was expected to open in August 2013 as Missouri's first such attraction, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Go Ape was established through a public-private partnership with St. Louis County Parks, raising questions locally about how much appetite one suburb can sustain for treetop courses.
The city itself markets a much bigger hospitality footprint than just adventure parks. Maryland Heights draws more than 9 million visitors a year across 22 hotels, 50 restaurants and venues like the Centene Community Ice Center, according to the City of Maryland Heights.
Technical Specs and Family-Friendly Features
RYZE's tower itself was built with 110 individual obstacle elements color-coded by difficulty from beginner to expert, secured by a CLiC-iT continuous double-clip belay system designed to prevent accidental unclipping at height, per Ladue News. The property also included an 18-hole championship mini-golf course rigged for night-time glow golf, according to Visit Missouri, and a ground-level Little Ninja course with 16 obstacle elements for kids ages 4 to 7 who met a 30-inch height requirement, as noted by Play St. Louis.
The Costs of Running an Adventure Park
Commercial aerial parks typically require initial capital investments exceeding $500,000, according to Crestmont Capital.
Cost overruns and COVID-related supply-chain delays added to RYZE's financial pressures, while weather contributed to losses last summer.
RYZE's closure followed a combination of financial setbacks, including cost overruns, COVID-related supply-chain delays and weather-related losses last summer. For a single four-story tower in Maryland Heights, those pressures proved too much.
