For many grown-up entertainment industry aficionados, there’s a lesson learned early on the discussion boards and forums that shape us into the fans we are: that there exists a great and fundamental schism between regional and destination parks; thrills and storytelling; amusement parks and theme parks.
Yep, for those of us who grew up closer to a Six Flags than a Magic Kingdom, some truths are self-evident: roller coasters are the only real anchor attractions, hot dogs and chicken fingers are premium eats, and dark rides are a luxury reserved for Orlando and Anaheim. Basically, if you visit a park outside the industry’s industry leaders, you know what you’re getting into.
But after years of increasingly dipping their toes into the well of stylization, storytelling, and “theming,” it appears that Cedar Fair’s Kings Dominion in Doswell, Virginia is staking a claim we’re thrilled to see. The park’s newly-rechristened Jungle X-pedition “land” isn’t just a freshening of the park’s legacy land of adventure… it’s a bold step into the unknown, offering a model for “mere” amusement parks across the country to build a world, and to mean it. Ready to blaze a trail into the jungle? Let’s start at the beginning…
Safari Village
When Kings Dominion opened in 1975, the Virginia park had a lot in common with its older sister – 1972’s Kings Island.
First (and most noticeably), both parks were among the first to open “A.D.” – that is, “After Disney World.” In fact, the collision of Magic Kingdom’s 1971 debut and the start of the “Second Golden Age of the Roller Coaster” (often credited to Kings Island’s own Racer) were all ingredients in the formation of a new generation of amusement parks. The original Six Flags (Over Texas, Over Georgia, and Over Mid-America), the soon-to-be Six Flags (Great Adventure and Magic Mountain), the Marriott parks (today, Six Flags and California’s Great Americas), and the Kings Entertainment Company parks (Kings Island, Kings Dominion, Carowinds, and Canada’s Wonderland) all cropped up between the late ‘60s and late ‘70s.
That means that – like most of its “A.D.” contemporaries – Kings Dominion included a “Main Street” (the fountain-lined International Street), a central park icon (a 300-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower), and a central Hub with paths branching into themed “lands”. There was the rustic village of Old Virginia; the midway-stylized Candy Apple Grove with its own classic racing coaster and fairground rides; The Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera; and – most interesting for today’s story – the Lion Country Safari.
The 100-acre exotic Lion Country zoological park had actually opened a year before the rest of Kings Dominion as a drive-through experience, but the opening of the park in 1975 saw the road replaced with a 2-mile, 20-minute monorail trip through African, Asian, and North American animal habitats. Its portal from the park – Safari Village – was likewise a vaguely-African themed outpost of thatch-roofed huts and “jungle” themed flat rides (like the Parrot Trooper swings and Mt. Kilimanjaro banyan kurve, circling through a scaled-down mountain and waterfall).
Growing as quickly as Virginia’s forests around it, Safari Village soon became home to some of Kings Dominion’s most landmark attractions. For example, in 1979, The Lost World opened.
One of the largest attractions ever conceived outside of a Disney or Universal park, the $17-million, 170-foot tall, craggily, stylized Lost World peak contained within it three separate attractions – The Haunted River boat ride, the Land of Dooz dark ride (on level two, with an outdoor section visible above), and the Time Shaft spinning rotor. Truly, the mountain was a sub-land within Safari Village, with the mountain serving as a landmark for the jungle land and indeed, the whole park.
In 1988, Avalanche arrived. Manufactured by Mack Rides, the unique Bobsled roller coaster means that trains aren’t affixed to rails, but instead slalom through open troughs, banking and slaloming according to the weight distribution of tandem-seated riders. (While “Avalanche” conjured images more akin to a snowy Swiss mountain than the jungle aesthetic of Safari Village and the Lost World, at least Avalanche maintained a sense of adventure!)
In 1991, Safari Village grew again with the addition of Anaconda – an Arrow multi-looper coaster that saw riders plunge 144-feet down in an underwater tunnel passing through the park’s Safari-Village-adjacent Lake Charles, slithering through four inversions.
In other words, even by the early ‘90s, Kings Dominion and its Safari Village offered a pretty solid collection of attractions (the Wild Animal Safari Monorail, Avalanche, Anaconda, and the Lost World’s Haunted River, Time Shaft, and Smurf Mountain rides), all wrapped in fairly coherent and consistent “theming.” Then came the movie makeover… Read on…
Paramount’s Parks
In the early 1990s, something unexpected happened to the theme park industry. After the Disney-MGM Studios (1989) and Universal Studios Florida (1990) paved the way, suddenly operating a theme park required neither the detail of Magic Kingdom nor the brains of EPCOT Center. Instead, studios could build rides in boxy, beige soundstages, “label slap” movie titles on roller coasters, and mash films together on a “backlot,” where inconsistency, exposing lighting rigs, and fourth-wall breaking celebrity appearances were half the fun. Just as Warner Bros. and MGM were building or buying their own parks, Paramount Pictures did, too.
In 1992, Paramount officially purchased the Kings Entertainment Company. By 1993, they’d rolled out their roster of newly-rechristened theme parks… including Paramount’s Kings Dominion.
It’s fair to say the stories of Paramount’s Kings Island, Kings Dominion, Carowinds, Canada’s Wonderland, and Great America during their 20-years under the Paramount name (which, legally, included years nesting the division under Paramount Pictures, Viacom, CBS Corporation, and – no, seriously – Blockbuster Entertainment) are a mix of drama, comedy, action, romance, and horror, all depending on whom you ask.
After all, for a generation of Millennials who grew up around one of the Paramount Parks, there was something sincerely magical about having such a cinematic presence so close to home; a “Universal Lite,” embodied in regional park form. Under Paramount’s brand, these otherwise “lowly,” seasonal parks saw incredible, blockbuster heights.
Who could’ve imagined a little summer park outside of Cincinnati being home to a ride like The Outer Limits: Flight of Fear (above)? Far more than a coaster plopped down on an expansion pad, Flight of Fear cast guests as members of the press, invited into a U.S. Bureau of Paranormal Affairs hangar see a captured alien craft up close, only to be strapped in and launched to The Outer Limits on the world’s first LIM-launched coaster.
It’s even true of the zippy Italian Job Stunt Track family coaster that launched guests in ¾ scale MINI Coopers, weaving between police cars, racing through helicopter fire, and blasting out of a billboard, to say nothing of the mysterious, immersive, and one-of-a-kind Lost Legend: TOMB RAIDER: The Ride that would still be a headliner if it opened at Universal Orlando today.
It’s really no surprise that the five Paramount Parks entered (and exited) the “Coaster Wars” of the ‘90s and 2000s in very different shape that the beefed-up and overexpanded thrills of Six Flags or Cedar Fair parks. These were – after all – not parks of coaster-packed midways like Cedar Point or the Lost Legend: Six Flags Worlds of Adventure… They were theme parks – imbued with that “After Disney” DNA. To this day, some of the most iconic rides ever were born of Paramount’s leadership… which isn’t to say they always got it right. You can probably see a bit of both in what happened to Paramount’s Kings Dominion’s Safari Village…
The Congo Rises
As you can imagine, one of Paramount’s first edicts upon taking over operation of the newly-rebranded Paramount Parks was to cease operation of the Safari rides at each. It made sense. While Paramount might genuinely envision their new theme parks as revenue generators and brand ambassadors worth investing in, running 100-acre exotic zoos from the ‘70s wouldn’t have been on their shortlist.
At Kings Island, for example, the remaining “Adventure Village” lasted only a few more years. In 1999, its thatch-roofed huts, wooden outposts, and rainforest foliage were reclad, rebuilt, and uprooted, respectively, becoming the Paramount Action Zone – a sun-drenched concrete studio backlot centered around a Paramount Pictures watertower and a plaza of action movie posters. (The “Stunt Crew Grill” – with the blue roofs on the left – is easily recognizable as the former, thatch-roofed Kafe Kilimanjaro.)
In this distinctly-Paramount “land,” guests became a stunt crew, braving supersaturated all-caps thrill rides (like TOP GUN: The Jet Coaster, a face-to-face inverted Boomerang called FACE/OFF, a record-breaking DROP ZONE Stunt Tower, and the sequel to end all sequels – the Lost Legend: SON OF BEAST.)
Kings Dominion’s “Safari Village” made a more subtle change. In 1996, it was renamed Congo (an allusion to Paramount’s 1995 film of the same name, which was itself an adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel in the post-Jurassic-Park gold rush to adapt his books). The Congo area still counted Avalanche, Anaconda, and The Lost World among its ride collection (plus a 1996 copy of the U.S. military-base set Flight of Fear… one of many sigh-inducing ride placements made by Paramount.) But that was soon to change…
In 1995, the rides inside of the Lost World (including the fan-favorite Smurf Mountain – a reimagining of the original Land of Dooz) were shuttered. A poster child for Paramount’s occasional game-changing (and largely doomed) bets on big, innovative, custom, blockbuster rides, the Lost World became a construction zone. The iconic mountain was hollowed out and its peak lopped clean off as magenta supports pierced its craggily sides. In 1998 – after much delay – the Lost Legend: VOLCANO – The Blast Coaster opened, launching guests vertically out of the fire-belching mouth of the 150-foot tall mountain and directly into an inversion.
Just like that, the park’s CONGO became its anchor once more. In 2005, the land received a wave of changes in the wake of the studio’s Angelina Jolie action adventure film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, including strengthening the land’s explorer aesthetic with scattered film props and using the film’s score as ambient music (an unlikely move in an era when most parks played Top 40 hits). But of course, the biggest addition was a new ride.
TOMB RAIDER: FireFall was a HUSS Suspended Top Spin – a standard-sized, thrill-focused. outdoor version of Kings Island’s much larger, indoor, E-Ticket dark ride. But what FireFall lacked in budget, it made up for in theatrics. Cast as an ancient stone altar in the shadow of the Volcano, the flipping thrill ride was embedded in volcanic rockwork and waterfalls, film props, flame effects, fountains, water cannons, and more, all synchronized to its own audio track. In other words, Firefall was an attraction even for those who merely gathered in the outdoor amphitheater to watch its cycle.
Sure, the very next year, a copy of the Italian Job Turbo Coaster was plopped in an expansion pad technically belonging to the Congo, and if you dared examine Kings Dominion (or any Paramount Park’s) theming with a fine-toothed comb, such one-step-forward, one-step-back additions as the government alien-abduction-themed Flight of Fear or the Los Angeles stunt heist Italian Job pretty quickly make it all fall apart…
But that may be about to change. Because even though Kings Dominion has lost two of its most iconic thrill rides, the land around them is undergoing its most impressive change yet…
Coaster Catch-Up
In 2006, Viacom (owners of Paramount Pictures) underwent a corporate split, dividing into a new Viacom and renaming itself the CBS Corporation. In the divorce, the Paramount Parks division went to the latter. But in the ramp up to the Great Recession, CBS probably had little interest in the very large capital expense projects that theme parks require. That year, they announced that they intended to sell all five Paramount Parks as a package deal.
Only one was found. Cedar Fair – owners of Cedar Point, Valleyfair, Dorney Park, Knott’s Berry Farm, and the then-recently purchased Lost Legend: Geauga Lake – stepped forward with a $1.24 billion bid. In 2007, Kings Dominion opened with the Paramount’s prefix, but closed without it. By 2008, any lingering references to Paramount films had been removed (in what’s now remembered as one of the most blundering “de-themings” in the industry). The Italian Job Stunt Track became the Backlot Stunt Coaster; Drop Zone Stunt Tower was renamed Drop Tower; and like its Ohio sister (which suffered far greater than just a re-naming), Tomb Raider: Firefall was renamed The Crypt.
But beyond merely removing references to Paramount’s films, Cedar Fair found itself with five parks quite unlike the midway-fueled amusement parks they were used to operating both in style and substance. It’s no surprise that Cedar Fair’s second initiative was to sweep through their newly-acquired parks and catch them up in their coaster counts.
Right off the bat, most received soaring, 200-foot steel hypercoasters by coaster manufacturer B&M. Instead, Kings Dominion got the B&M floorless coaster Dominator, relocated from Geauga Lake and – in classic Cedar Fair style – just kind of set down on some flat space. The theme-less bare steel coaster set down in a thematic no-man’s-land was at least an indication of Cedar Fair’s then-standard practice.
Perhaps because it hadn’t gotten a sky-high hypercoaster, Kings Dominion was the first former Paramount Park to get an 300-foot tall gigacoaster (the third of just eight on Earth, and the only Intamin-made one after Cedar Point’s iconic Millennium Force). Named for NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and stylized as a high-speed race, Intimidator 305 looms over Kings Dominion… nevermind that it, too, was technically located in the Congo section, right next to Flight of Fear.
Though Cedar Fair has driven the former Paramount Parks forward in thrills, it’s arguably been a little more nostalgic elsewhere. For example, in 2014, the Congo name was officially dropped. Just in time for the park’s 40th anniversary (when several other lands reverted to their “classic,” pre-Paramount names), the archway leading to Volcano gained a name more nostalgic than new: Safari Village. Even though the Safari was long gone, the park’s rainforest-themed land with its iconic Volcano and Tomb Rai– er, The Crypt – was restored to its retro-name.. And still retained a pretty enviable collection of thrills and theme. Until…
Dormant
After a summer celebrating its rickety wooden Hurler being “RMC’ed” into the spectacular Twisted Timbers, Kings Dominion closed for the 2018 as usual. But during the off-season, the park made an unexpected announcement. After years of being plagued by downtime (dating back to its much-delayed opening and including operating for only a few weeks in 2018), VOLCANO: The Blast Coaster would not re-open. (It’s a shame that Kings Dominion hadn’t announced the decision earlier, giving guests a chance for last rides, but given Volcano’s spotty operations, it’s possible that a sudden retirement was required.)
By May of 2019, not just the coaster, but the entire mountain had disappeared. That left The Crypt as a lone remnant of Paramount’s cinematic ambitions for the Congo. Somehow, the loss of the 170-foot tall Volcano that served as its backdrop made The Crypt look more like the aging midway ride it was. A year later and in similar circumstances, the park announced that The Crypt would also be removed.
(The removal makes sense. HUSS Top Spins like The Crypt spread through amusement parks like wildfire in the ‘90s and 2000s, but nearly all have been removed. The ride’s inherent extreme thrills make it a one-and-done for many visitors, and a difficult ride to maintain for parks. Most Top Spins have disappeared without much fanfare. It’s only because Kings Island and Kings Dominion’s were elevated to highly-themed E- and D-Tickets that their removal was noteworthy.)
Onward…
In some ways, it’s ironic that Kings Dominion returned the Safari Village name, because by 2020, the land looked almost exactly like it had in 1996. Both of Paramount’s blockbuster additions (Volcano and Tomb Raider: FireFall) were returned to expansion pads, leaving just the pre-Paramount anchors of Avalanche and Anaconda (plus, of course, non sequitors like Flight of Fear, the Backlot Stunt Coaster, and Intimidator 305, which kinda sorta fall into the Safari Village section). Wild, right? But not nearly as wild as what’s happened since…
For better or worse, Kings Dominion’s Congo / Safari Village was so close to a seasonal park’s ideal. Nearly everything had fallen into place. A vague Tomb Raider atmosphere overlying the whole land, with thatch-roofed jungle expedition facades and rockwork and waterfalls and dense foliage and flames… Avalanche and Anaconda and Volcano and The Crypt… Somehow, this seasonal, regional Cedar Fair park in Virginia was sitting on the ingredients of a perfectly thrill-theme balanced land… and they barely seemed to notice it, selling chicken fingers and ICEEs and generic Kings Dominion merch. What a shame.
And it seemed likely to remain a missed opportunity when the loss of Volcano and The Crypt signaled the end of the land’s iconic, cinematic duo. That, it seemed, would be that… And while it was assured that Volcano’s real estate would eventually be used as an expansion pad (and knowing Cedar Fair, probably for a bare, steel coaster), even the most lovely B&M or inventive Intamin or twisted Mack coaster wouldn’t fill the shoes of a 170-foot mountain.
But to our surprise, something spectacular has happened at Kings Dominion… and if we’re right, it just may signal a whole new path forward for “theming” at seasonal parks…
Throughout the summer of 2021, Kings Dominion took special care to tease something big coming to the park in the near future. Given the recent exit of Volcano and The Crypt, there was no doubt that whatever the park’s next landmark project was, it would be centered on Safari Village and Volcano’s vacated real estate. A tantalizing marketing campaign teased adventurous sights and globe-trotting landmarks; ancient temples, pyramids, and a sort of Society of Explorers and Adventurers-stylized organization.
While fans were eager for more, it’s easy to understand why there was an undercurrent of irreplacability to Volcano. After all, Cedar Fair has spent the last decade working almost exclusively with tried-and-true coaster manufacturer B&M, whose soaring hypercoasters and elegant dive coasters and oversized wing coasters and dizzying inverted coasters and even 300-foot gigacoasters are wonderful, reliable, marketable, high-quality, crowd-pleasing installations that can do no wrong. And they really are all of those things… but frankly, they’re also relatively safe. Standard. Even “cookie cutter.” Exact opposites of Volcano and The Crypt. So while a very, very nice B&M dive coaster would be a wonderful addition to any park, rising over Safari Village…? Where Volcano once sat…? In a flat, grassy expansion pad?
It was practically inevitable. But something else happened instead…
Jungle X-pedition
In August 2021, Kings Dominion announced one of its biggest projects yet… and contrary to Cedar Fair’s typical standards, that didn’t include the words “tallest,” “fastest,” or “steepest.” Instead of a mammoth roller coaster – maybe named after a snake and with a barn-shaped station – their investment at Kings Dominion for 2022 would be something much more dynamic…
Just six years after the Safari Village name had been stored, the space would re-open in 2022 as Jungle X-pedition, a thoughtful, intentional, and sweeping reimagining of the park’s most unique land… and for perhaps the first time in Cedar Fair’s otherwise coaster-focused ideology, the land is brought to life by a pervasive and delightful original story…
In this case, it’s the story of Professor Gerald Winston Whey – a globe-trotting World War I aviator and member of the Manhattan Explorers Society whose trusty Arvo 621 biplane “The Tin Goose” has fueled a love of discovery and adventure. Setting off into the unknown, Whey’s lifelong search for the legendary “Site X” has seen him land here, in the dense, misty jungles of the southern hemisphere…
Like all the best explorers, Whey’s wayward explorations saw him stumble across the ruins of an ancient world deep in the jungle, including ancient altars to animal spirits…
But the time is now, and under the guidance of Whey’s granddaught Alexandria, you and I have been recruited to join the Jungle X-pedition, overcome the trials of the temples, and follow the spirits we encounter there to uncover the mystery at the heart of “Site X.” Designers have invented an entire mythology underwriting the Whey Foundation and its modern members, and how each has contributed to discoveries in the uncovering of the jungle’s mysteries.
Rarely (if ever) has a seasonal, regional park invested so deeply not just in building a visually conhesive “land,” but in narratively connecting it – a retroactive wonder previously exhibited by only a few select Disney and Universal projects, like Magic Kingdom’s 1994 New Tomorrowland, or Disneyland’s 1995 Indiana Jones overlay of Adventureland.
The “lore” of the Whey Foundation has retroactively swept across everything within the land, finally doing what Paramount’s Congo teased. Even in this tiny corner of Kings Dominion, there’s a world to be explored… For example, KDFans.com took a look at “in-universe” ride posters for the land, which include nods to Volcano, the Lost World, and other forgotten Kings Dominion rides now “tied” to the overarching frame story of the expedition.
The park’s Outer Hank’s (a post-Paramount de-branding of Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Shack) was been reclad as an airplane hangar housing the Outpost Cafe; the Hungry Hippo restaurant (still standing from 1975) has become the Jungle Market Eatery; even Volcano’s queue house (below, still standing when the mountain behind it is not) has been recast as the Whey Foundation Research Base… potentially awaiting a new expedition. (More on that in a moment.)
And throughout the land, new “ruins,” ancient emblems, and even Whey’s trusty biplane were set down among the paths, creating a land as richly detailed and cohesively decorated as any seasonal U.S. park may have ever accomplished before. With a new, shared aesthetic and even an overarching frame story tying the land’s infrastructure together, of course its existing rides also got in on the act…
The land’s existing Avalanche coaster has been absorbed into the story. A new paint scheme and entirely new train designs have transformed it into Reptilian – the trial of the temple of the reptile. Though its course sadly snakes alongside the empty field where Volcano had once risen, the fresh overlay adds life and vitality back to this classic – the last Mack bobsled coaster in the country.
As guests return to the station, they pass through the ride’s storage shed, now decked out in ’30s explorer equipment and archaeology gear – all simple but wildly effective placemaking that makes the ride feel fresh, reinvigorated, and connected to something larger.
Even the land’s Scrambler has been absorbed into the Jungle X-pedition, becoming Arachnidia – a trial from the temple of the spider. The ride has been repainted, adorned with spider talismans, and even the last vestiges of Safari Village – the “Mt. Kilimanjaro” rising behind it – bears the spider’s insignia.
Of course, for now, the anchor of the entire Jungle X-pedition is Tumbili (named for the Swahili word for “monkey”). An S&S 4D Freespin coaster, guests positioned on either side of the track are lifted vertically to the height of a vertically-stacked ride, then swing through hills and inversions, freely spinning and somersaulting on their short-but-sweet descent.
Taking Cedar Fair’s standard “lite” queue theming to the next level, guests waiting for Tumbili pass through the ruins of an ancient temple of the monkey. Iconography of two tumbling primates can be found carved into stone walls as guests gaze up at the romping ride and laughing riders as they flip and hop through its bamboo-stylized supports.
Tumbili may not be a groundbreaking coaster or even a headlining one in the long term, but that’s another way that Jungle X-pedition was sorely needed for Cedar Fair. In a recent feature here on Theme Park Tourist, we explored what we’re calling the “New Coaster Wars” – an era where amusement parks compete not against each other and to break records, but against themselves, seeking coasters that are custom, uniquely suited for their parks, and filled with personality.
Though we love a nice, graceful B&M hypercoaster and its floater air time, the industry is shifting away from bulking up parks with “must-have” standards to reaching for more unique, colorful, fun, and vibrant coasters that bring a little story along for the ride. That’s Tumbili.
So if Tumbili (literally and figuratively) takes the place of The Crypt in the land’s lineup, that leaves a much, much larger expansion pad where Volcano once stood… Which brings us to the future…
Expedition: Unknown
Jungle X-pedition is everything we didn’t expect to see from a regional, seasonal park operator like Cedar Fair or Six Flags. It’s a coherent, cohesive land where designers have gone out of their way to build a narrative mythology, a shared iconography, and even a bit of embedded viral marketing that hints at the future… Coaster101 took a deep dive into the many nods to Kings Dominion’s past – and perhaps, future – that are hidden within the Jungle X-pedition area, but one of our personal favorites is a detail that’ll make armchair Imagineers start dreaming…
An “in-universe” map of the area (again drawned by Emory Alvarado) shows all of “Site X” we know… and some that we don’t. For example, the legend on the map refers to the three temples we know – the monkey, spider, and crocodile… and a further three believed to be found in the jungle… a serpant, hawk, and tiger…
Those six totems also align with six insignias found on Flat Rock, a cryptic stone plaza in the center of “Site X.” It hasn’t escaped fans’ notice that those three additional creatures – serpant, hawk, and tiger – might signal the next phase of the expedition’s push. Would it be so impossible that Anaconda, the Backlot Stunt Coaster, or even Flight of Fear could be reimagined to enter the Jungle X-pedition properly? And for that matter, how very interesting that the map labels Volcano’s expansion pad as “Grassy Plains,” and points to a “Far-Off Mountain Range” that looks a whole lot like Intimidator 305’s first hill and winding helix…
Here’s the point: in Jungle X-pedition, Kings Dominion has found a “Living Land” all its own; proof at last that even a seasonal, regional park can have the sort of cohesive, “in-universe” setting often reserved only for Disney and Universal. Yes, even a Cedar Fair or Six Flags parks can send its guests back in time, to a believable, “immersive” location where even bare, steel roller coasters take on a new meaning.
What Kings Dominion has created in the legends and lore of Jungle X-pedition hasn’t just added new life and vibrancy to one of the park’s opening day lands; it has signaled a new high bar for “local” parks across the country. Whether or not guests know the story of Gerald Whey or piece together the hidden emblems that hint at further adventures, Jungle X-pedition has the sort of heart you can feel.
Of course it’s a shame neither Volcano nor Tomb Raider: FireFall lived to be a part of it, but in Jungle X-pedition, Kings Dominion has created not just a ride, but a world guests want to inhabit, a mystery to be solved, and a growing adventure to undertake…
