Just about every theme park fan is aware of how Disneyland came to be. Man visits amusement park with his daughters, sees room for improvement and opens his own park in California in 1955 that 60 years later, has served more than 650 million guests since its opening day. And fans know how Walt Disney World in Florida followed, offering much more room for its creator to expand his visions and serve up thrills, chills and Dole Whips to more guests each year — over 52 million annually — than any other vacation resort around the globe.
But there’s another theme park, which sits near the center of the nation, in between those parks on the two coasts, that has had almost as many lives as the Cheshire Cat. This park doesn’t get nearly the attendance of the previous two mentioned, but the story of how it started, passed through several operators’ hands, added rides such as one “haunted” coaster and a few others that have set records, and closed and reopened more than once (including one time after a horrifying tragedy) has more twists and turns than Space Mountain. And the question of whether or not the park will stay open in its current incarnation remains to be seen.
This is the fascinating story of Kentucky Kingdom.
The early years
Kentucky Kingdom first opened in Louisville — the land of horses, bourbon and baseball bats — in 1987. A company from Dallas, Texas, leased 10 acres at the state’s fairgrounds as an extension of the Kentucky State Fair that’s held there each summer. Kentucky Kingdom mostly featured rides for young kids, including a log flume and bumper cars, though it did have an indoor ride called the Starchaser, a Schwarzkopf Jet Star II roller coaster, too. The Starchaser was completely dark inside, except for a disco ball on its floor that made the “stars.”
However, the summer of 1987 had such bad weather — excessive rain and blistering heat — that attendance at the park never really picked up. And the park’s owner made the mistake of “overselling” the park, comparing Kentucky Kingdom to Disneyland — and that claim obviously fell short. After one memorable event — when a bunch of Girl Scouts visited while most of the park’s rides were inoperable — Kentucky Kingdom closed. The park was open just one season before its owners filed for bankruptcy, sending most of the rides to other parks and leaving the majority of its contractors and vendors unpaid.
New life
The senior lender for the park, The Bank of Canada, contacted an investor named Ed Hart, who had moved to Louisville from New York City in 1979. Hart was known for rescuing properties that were in trouble, but he had no amusement-park experience and he didn’t want to touch the deal. But after the bank provided more information to him, he decided to take a chance and jump into the business. Hart put together an investor team, and after paying the hundreds of people who were unpaid when the park had previously closed, Kentucky Kingdom reopened in 1990.
Kentucky Kingdom’s name remained the same but its operators and management team changed. The park also got some new rides, such as Bluebeard’s Bounty, a Huss Pirate Boat; Whirling Dervish (which was later renamed Breakdance), a Scrambler-type ride; and Enterprise (shown above), a Huss circular ferris-wheel-like ride that spins on its side.
Another ride that was added was The Vampire, a Vekoma Boomerang steel shuttle coaster that was built at a park in China in 1985. Interestingly, that park wanted to get rid of the ride because guests thought the coaster was haunted and they wouldn’t ride it. The Vampire, with its history, could fit right in at the park because a real, 200-year-old cemetery is located on the fairgrounds’ land near Kentucky Kingdom’s season-pass processing center. That site is also rumored to be haunted.
Some of the rides that returned from the park’s original incarnation included Tin Lizzies, an antique car ride, and the Starchaser. Even though the indoor roller coaster had been sold, it hadn’t been moved, so Hart had been able to buy it back. (This ride will have an important part in the story later.)
An area called King Louie’s Playground, full of children’s rides, was also added.
With all of the new rides, attendance was booming at Kentucky Kingdom. In 1991, the number of guests more than doubled to 302,000, and Hart and his team decided to add a new concept.
Hello, Hurricane Bay
Just one year after Kentucky Kingdom reopened (for the first time), Hart decided to add a water park. He wondered why other theme parks that had water parks had separate gates — and separate admission prices — and thought that instead of adding another roller coaster that would cost $10 million, why not add a water park for the same amount that would also function as an attraction for the park? Kentucky Kingdom was the first park to introduce this concept, Hart says, and other parks have followed its lead.
Hurricane Bay, a huge pool that generated massive waves every few minutes, opened across a pedestrian bridge from the rest of Kentucky Kingdom. Other rides added that year included the Giant Wheel, a 150-foot-tall ferris wheel that offered sweeping views of both Hurricane Bay and the rest of the park, and a carousel.
The water park got a boost in 1993, when four waterslides were added, and a year after that saw the addition of Mile High Falls, which was the tallest shoot-the-chute water ride in the world at the time it opened. That year also brought a name change to the park. It was rebranded as Kentucky Kingdom: The Thrill Park.
More world-record-shattering rides opened in the park in the next few years, including T2: Terror to the Second Power. This suspended looping coaster, later renamed T3, was the first of its kind in North America and the second in the world, after Holland. And Chang, a stand-up coaster shown above, set records around the globe for its height, speed, drop, length and number of inversions.
But it wasn’t all good news for the park. On July 26, 1994, two Starchaser cars collided, causing a collapsed lung and a lacerated kidney in a 7-year-old girl and also injuring several other passengers. Five lawsuits were filed over the incident, and the ride was sold the following year to a park in New York called Darien Lake, which installed new brakes and a computerized safety system. (That park also renamed the ride Nightmare at Phantom Cove, but it was later resold to another New York park called The Great Escape and renamed again, this time Nightmare at Crack Axle Canyon.)
Kentucky Kingdom also opened the Hellevator, a 177-foot-tall Intamin drop tower, for its 1997 Halloween season.
That year, Hart sold the park’s operating rights for $64 million to Premier Parks, which would buy Six Flags a few months later. From 1990 to 1998, the park was considered one of the country’s fastest-growing, and more rides added during that era included Twisted Sisters, a dueling wooden roller coaster; Thunder Run (above and below), another wooden coaster; The Quake, a Vekoma Waikiki wave; and the Roller Skater, a kids’ coaster. Attendance also hit 1.12 million visitors per season in 1997.
Under new management
At the time that the park’s operating rights were sold, Kentucky Kingdom was drawing more visitors than the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. And in 1998, the park had another name change, to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom. Six Flags, which is now the world’s biggest amusement park corporation based on the number of properties in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, has 18 parks on the continent. The corporation is fifth, behind Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, United Kingdom-based Merlin Entertainments Group, Universal Studios Recreation Group and OCT Parks China in terms of annual attendance.
In 1984, just as the company acquired the Great America theme park in Illinois, Six Flags also received the rights to Time Warner/Warner Bros.’ “Looney Tunes” characters that the company could use in its parks. So Kentucky Kingdom, as the first park in nearly 30 years to be added to the Six Flags company, got a lot more character, too. The site that had been King Louie’s Playground became Looney Tunes Movie Town, a variety of character merchandise was added to the park’s shops.
As Six Flags also received the rights to use DC Comics characters such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, plans called for the park to have even more changes, such as one side being re-themed as Gotham City. Several rides were repainted, with Chang expected to be renamed Riddler’s Revenge, the same name as Six Flags Magic Mountain’s stand-up coaster, and T2 renamed Batman: The Ride, but the plans for the name changes were dropped. Only The Penguin’s Blizzard River ride, another water ride near T2 at the back of the park, received the Gotham treatment.
As Six Flags, rushed in, Hart wanted out, though he didn’t originally intend to leave. Hart had agreed to manage Kentucky Kingdom for five years, but he struck a severance deal after only three months because he didn’t like the new company’s management style — and he also didn’t like the fact that the new company disbanded the park’s safety committee. But as the amusement park business was now in his blood, Hart went on to transform a park in Arkansas called Magic Springs, and later referred to as “Tragic Springs,” with a new water park called Crystal Falls.
More trouble ahead
Meanwhile, back in Louisville, Six Flags was facing some big problems. The company was drowning in debt after buying too many parks, and it stopped investing in the one in Kentucky. Several rides were closed and/or moved. Malfunctions in The Vampire coaster caused it to be removed, and it later appeared as Flashback at Six Flags New England. The Quake also malfunctioned and was removed, and in 2002, the Twisted Sisters coaster had to be renamed Twisted Twins because the band Twisted Sister had threatened a lawsuit.
The park also faced complaints about people jumping lines, smoking and using profanity in the park. Kentucky Kingdom’s previously clean reputation was going downhill.
A horrifying accident
Kentucky Kingdom’s attendance was already decreasing in 2007, when the Hellevator ride just inside the park’s gates was re-themed and renamed Superman: Tower of Power. Then came the worst day in the park’s history.
On June 21 that year, a 13-year-old girl boarded Superman: Tower of Power with her friends for their second time that day. Right after the drop ride began to ascend, a cable snapped. The girl became tangled in the cable, and while she was able to remove it from her neck before the ride got to the top, it was still looped around her feet during the drop. As a result, her left femur was shattered and both of her feet were severed.
The ride’s operator heard the cable snap and said there was unusual screaming from the people on the ride. Witnesses said the cable snapped 35 or 45 feet above the ground, and passengers shouted to “stop the ride,” but the operator didn’t press the emergency stop button until it was too late.
The Kentucky Department of Agriculture said the cable failed because of fatigue, and the department, along with a scientist, said that the park could’ve prevented the accident if it had been following the correct safety protocol. They also said that if the ride operator had hit the emergency stop button immediately, the injuries could have been prevented.
Doctors were able to reattach one of the girl’s feet, and Kentucky Kingdom officials said they started double-checking the safety of each ride, but after the girl’s family sued the park, the ride was removed in 2008. The settlement amount wasn’t disclosed, but the money was said to be enough to provide lifetime care for the teenager and pay her medical bills, which reached half a million dollars.
Cash-flow problems continued for the park. Because of Six Flags’ debt, one entire section of Kentucky Kingdom closed. But an even larger closure was to follow.
Shutting the gates
A couple of years after the Superman: Tower of Power accident, Six Flags shut down the whole park. Six Flags was also facing a corporate bankruptcy at the time, as well as the rejection of an amended lease agreement for the land Kentucky Kingdom sat on. Attendance had dwindled to less than 500,000 visitors per season. The company stripped Kentucky Kingdom of all of the Looney Tunes and DC Comics branding and sent a couple of the rides — Chang and a wild mouse coaster called the Road Runner Express — to two of the chain’s other parks. The rides that were left in Louisville sat untouched and unmaintained, and the abandoned park became an eyesore.
Two years later, a ray of hope emerged for the park. The owners of Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari in Santa Claus, Indiana, about an hour away from Kentucky Kingdom, announced that they were exploring the possibility of reopening the park. They came up with a new name — Bluegrass Boardwalk — along with a logo, and even put out a call to hire hundreds of seasonal workers on the Bluegrass Boardwalk Facebook page. But ultimately, the deal didn’t go through. Holiday World’s owners said they wanted freedom to add or subtract rides like they do at their flagship park, instead of having to deal with the red tape involved with the leased land on the Kentucky fairgrounds’ site.
A familiar name
Kentucky Kingdom sat closed for two more years before a deal was finally struck. Nearly $50 million was used to reopen the park, and the site’s biggest expansion in history would be coming, thanks to Ed Hart.
Hart had tried to reopen the park even before Holiday World’s Bluegrass Boardwalk idea was considered, but his first deal was struck down. But after Bluegrass Boardwalk also fell through, Hart returned with another pitch — this time promising to return the park to its heyday in the 1990s.
More rides were added ahead of Kentucky Kingdom’s 2014 reopening, including three in the children’s area that was renamed back to King Louie’s Playground. A bright-blue coaster called Lightning Run, named to go along with Kentucky Kingdom’s Thunder Run, was also added. The ride was the park’s first new steel coaster to be added in nearly 15 years and stands 100 feet tall with a course 2,500 feet long. And even a new drop ride to replace Superman: Tower of Power, called FearFall, made its debut. Hurricane Bay also received an expansion that doubled its size, at a cost of $10.5 million, that saw the addition of the tallest body slide in the country along with the Deluge — a hydromagnetic water coaster.
Thousands of Kentucky Kingdom fans were anxious to explore the park once more, and over 100,000 season passes were quickly sold.
When the park reopened on May 24, 2014, more than 50 rides and attractions were available, and attendance hit 600,000 through the season. That year, one in ten residents in Louisville and nearby Southern Indiana held a season pass to the park. And as far as residents age 6 to 17 went, that number was one in four.
More security, such as staff officers and off-duty Louisville Metro police, were also added to the park to try to keep troublemakers away and make the park more family-friendly. And, since the park has reopened, it has provided jobs to thousands, including many teenagers who will count Kentucky Kingdom as their first careers.
For the park’s 2015 season, more new or refurbished rides opened, including the coaster now named T3 (formerly T2); Cyclos, a pendulum ride that loops in the air 360 degrees; Skycatcher, a 130-foot-tall swing ride; and Enterprise and the Raging Rapids River Ride. A new show also came to the park’s 5D Cinema — this one featuring Dorothy and her friends’ adventures in “The Wizard of Oz.” The new attractions and rides brought the park’s total number to more than 60. And Hart had yet another addition: the return of the park’s safety committee, which, he says, gets whatever it needs to make sure it operates.
This year and last, the park also earned special distinctions. It was named one of the 10 best in the country by MSN Travel and was noted as one of the 10 must-see amusement parks in the United States by the Los Angeles Times. Park attractions have also been featured on national TV shows such as the Travel Channel’s “Xtreme Water Parks.”
What’s next
Kentucky Kingdom has plans to keep going strong, adding more attractions each year (including a refurbished Twisted Twin coaster for 2016 with another new name that Hart won’t yet reveal). The park is also expanding its marketing efforts to try to draw thrill-seekers that might otherwise go to nearby parks, such as Mason, Ohio’s Kings Island — or Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari. In addition, the park has added some incentives for season pass holders, such as free soft drinks and sunscreen (which have been offered to all guests at Holiday World for years), free parking and 20 percent off food and merchandise.
However, unlike in years past when Kentucky Kingdom held events such as Fright Fest, the park doesn’t plan to offer any Halloween-themed October hours this year. The park’s season will end in late September because, Hart has explained, there’s already an abundance of spooky attractions in Louisville during the fall. But Hart said he hasn’t ruled out October hours in the future.
Only time will tell if there will be any more twists and turns in Kentucky Kingdom’s story, but for now, the future looks bright for this Louisville landmark.
