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.