Prices, operating schedule and park policies are subject to change without notice. Processing fees apply to online orders. All rights reserved. See copyright and trademarks. Company History a. A very strange ride, the Sky Hook , opens this year. This large "Y" shaped ride had two "baskets" that would carry guests from the ground to a hundred feet in the air for a bird's-eye view of the park. A second train station is added to Boomtown.
Arrow Development Company which had done the Matterhorn for Disneyland, updated the old shoot-the-chutes amusement park ride of the early s. Arrow took the concept from the history of logging in the US where water troughs flumes were used to float felled trees from higher elevations to lower ones. At the end of the day, daring lumberjacks would sometimes ride the last log down the flume.
Arrow created a family ride that was essentially a water roller coaster. It had a conveyor belt lift that took riders in plastic "logs" to a flume section of the ride where they would wind through the surrounding trees. Then, the shoot-the-chutes portion of the ride kicked in, and guests were sent down a steep hill for a splash. It cooled people off in the Texas heat and was thrilling enough for the kids, but mild enough for mom and dad. It was a major hit, and the log flume would become a theme park staple.
This "dark ride" becomes another family favorite. La Cucaracha is removed. El Sombrero is added to Mexico. This is a Chance "trabant" ride common in many amusement parks and fairs that is themed to look like a sombrero. While most of Disneyland's attractions are originals, Six Flags will begin to use "off-the-shelf" rides from manufacturers. These rides, while lacking uniqueness, are much less expensive and help to further define the concept of the regional theme park - the rides are basically the same from one regional theme park to the next.
The Great Southwest Corporation purchases acres of land outside of Atlanta. Like the log flume, this family ride will become a theme park staple. Arrow worked with Six Flags to create an exciting coaster ride that wouldn't cost nearly as much as the Matterhorn, but would be interesting. The Runaway Mine Train consisted mostly of tight turns and small hills, ending in a slightly larger drop that went into a tunnel.
Spindletop a Chance "rotor" or "floor drop" ride is added. The park is the first time a company has built two parks, therefore making Six Flags the inventors of the chain park concept. Dahlonega gets its theme from a short-lived gold rush in the hills north of Atlanta in the town of Dahlonega.
This was the country's first gold rush. A small version of the mine train, the Yahoola Hooler later re-named the Mini-Mine Train opens as a children's coaster. Opening the flume and mine train in Georgia helps to establish those attractions as signature Six Flags rides.
The Sky Hook is removed from Boomtown. SFOG adds a new section called Lickskillet. A second log flume is added to Log Jamboree , easily the most popular ride at both parks. SFOT doesn't miss it however. This landmark is substantially higher than anything at Disneyland and truly sets Six Flags apart.
Angus Wynne sells Six Flags to a limited partnership. This is still a family type coaster. Worth, Atlanta and St. Two state flags, Missouri and Illinois are used as sections to round out the six and also making note of the closeness to Illinois, which will be part of this regional theme park's attendance.
The park features Six Flags standards like the River King Run Away Mine Train two "adult" tracks rather than one adult ride and one "kiddie" mine train , the Hoo Hoo Log Flume both sides open with the park rather than opening one later , Injun Joe's Cave dark ride , Mississippi Adventure the La Salle's Riverboat of this park , and other various rides like the drunken barrel and antique cars.
Kings Island not owned by Six Flags, but owned by Taft Broadcasting, which featured the Hanna-Barbera cartoons , outside of Cincinnati, opens the Racer , a large, classic wooden roller coaster designed by John Allen. The theme park industry holds its breath as no theme park has tried to build a large roller coaster for thrill-ride seekers.
This Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel is still considered the finest example of a classic carousel in the country. Inspired by the Racer , also designed by John Allen of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, Six Flags decides to break all records and build the world's highest, longest and fastest roller coaster. The ft high actually ft high Great American Scream Machine is a great big hit with fans and anchors the new Great Southern States Exposition themed area.
The beautiful ride, located over a lake in the back of the park, is one of the country's most photographed roller coasters. At this point in history, steel roller coasters were still considered mild, family attractions, so the Great American Scream Machine is a wooden ride. Steel coasters wouldn't shake that image until Arrow Development's Corkscrew at Knott's Berry Farm in , which managed to go upside-down. This is the first time Six Flags has bought a pre-existing park in hopes of making it profitable.
Six Flags will use this strategy again in the future rather than building new parks from scratch. SFOT attendance has totaled 27 million guests by this point. The two parachute towers immediately become Six Flags icons with their colorful parachutes luring guests in from the freeway.
This wooden coaster becomes the world's largest at ft high initially advertised as being ft high , and speeds riders through the Ozark foothills at the back of the park. Also designed by John Allen who had been in retirement until the Racer , the Screamin' Eagle would be Allen's final coaster.
Allen's design philosophy was that roller coasters were as theatrically contrived as any Broadway play, and he once said, "You don't need a degree in engineering to design roller coasters, you need a degree in psychology. While the Corkscrew was the first modern roller coaster to go upside-down, the Great American Revolution uses a vertical loop and not corkscrew loops. It's a much larger ride and much more dramatic. This is generically called the "enterprise," and it's really a revved up version of the Ferris wheel that starts rotating horizontally, and then pivots to a vertical position, spinning riders upside-down in a loop.
During this time period, Six Flags is decidedly leading the regional theme park concept and other regional theme parks are following away from only family rides to parks with what are essentially themed amusement park rides. Some sources begin to call these parks "themed amusement parks" instead of "regional theme parks. Schwarzkopf delivers to very different and original designs. SFOT gets the double-looped Shockwave , which features two back-to-back loops that were notorious for causing riders to black out with the back-to-back g's.
At the time, no coaster on earth had three loops, and both rides prove hugely successful, and SFOT hits a record attendance of 2. In actuality, the Mind Bender is a double-loop ride, but the loops are not back-to-back, and the ride is built in a gully that saves the last loop until the end over the ride - it's an outstanding effect. The so-called third loop is actually a very steeply over-banked, degree turn that is tilted at 45 degrees.
Magic Mountain not yet owned by Six Flags opens Colossus , the world's largest duel-track coaster. This wooden monster thrills guests at the park and also stars in two movies this year - Roller Coaster the Revolution also stars and Phantom of the Park , starring 70s rock band Kiss.
The park is still struggling to make a profit, and Six Flags calls in Randall Duell to work on redesigning parts of the park to make them more profitable. The park ends up with a circular-route all the way around, which helps dramatically to alleviate dead-ends and get people moving past shops and restaurants to spend money.
The dark ride becomes a family favorite. Jet Scream is substantially smaller than Mind Bender or Shockwave, and has only one loop. The Texas Cliffhanger is a first generation freefall ride and pulls riders up a tower, pushes them out a few feet, and then drops them down the "L" shaped tower.
It's an instant hit, although the ride capacity is very low, making lines extremely long. Six Flags also begins an agreement with Looney Tunes characters. Marriott has decided to leave the theme park industry and stick with food service and hotels theme parks, always difficult to keep profitable, prove too difficult for Marriott to manage.
As the decade drew to a close, Six Flags began developing another first in the industry: the whitewater rapids ride. Bill Crandall, manager of the AstroWorld park, discovered the idea for the ride that would later become commonplace in theme parks across the country while watching the kayak competition in the Munich Summer Olympic Games in Fascinated with the artificial river used for the kayak competition, he believed that a ride simulating the fast-paced action of the event would provide a unique experience for his park patrons.
Crandall enlisted the services of Intamin, a top Swiss ride manufacturer, to design and build the first ride of its type in the world. The product of their efforts, Thunder River, opened for business in Houston in and has since been emulated in amusement parks throughout the world. With the new decade came an era of revolving-door ownership for the company. At least four corporate entities held a significant stake in the company then known as Six Flags Corporation between and The first major change came in when Penn Central sold the company to Bally Manufacturing Corporation.
The unstable combination of junk bonds and bank loans used to finance the purchase gave what Larry Cochran, who took over as president and CEO, called a "lousy capital structure," according to an interview with Tim O'Brien of Amusement Business. As a result of such short capital reserves, the company accumulated a massive debt load and was forced to pay shareholders the 16 percent interest on their notes in additional bonds in lieu of cash payments, a move that would cut substantially into profits for the remainder of the decade.
Financing problems aside, Six Flags Corp. Six Flags attempted to carve out a profitable niche by offering an entertainment experience that was less expensive and closer to home than the Disney giants--a marketing strategy an increasing number of young families found appealing.
To increase its appeal with this segment of the market, the company in had acquired the theme park rights to Warner Bros. In June , Time Warner Inc. The partnership grew out of an extensive campaign to promote the 50th anniversary of the legendary Looney Tunes character Bugs Bunny at the Six Flags parks.
The entrance of the entertainment and communications conglomerate not only gave the company a much needed influx of new capital but also a chance for increased usage of the Warner cartoon characters as well.
Time Warner's family of magazines and cable television programs also represented avenues for new advertising. While Six Flags attempted to strengthen its appeal to younger patrons with the help of Bugs Bunny and friends, it also directed much of its energy toward cultivating its longtime relationship with the older, thrill-seeking crowd.
As the company ushered in the new decade, it opened new coasters at six of its seven theme parks in an attempt to keep up with the industrywide push toward taller, faster, and more thrilling rides. In December , Six Flags again changed owners. The deal brought what had long been the missing ingredient to the company's bottom line success: financial stability. With a steady flow of cash and most of its long-term debt retired, the company now known as Six Flags Theme Parks, Inc.
As guests approached the ride, which first opened at Six Flags Great America in May , they found themselves in the middle of "Gotham City Park," complete with flowers, beautiful landscape, and an audio track playing sounds of children playing and birds chirping.
As they continued their journey, though, patrons entered the dilapidated section of the simulated city, the air filled with unpleasant sounds, including distress signals from a police car that has smashed into a fire hydrant. Their only escape can be found in the batcave, where they are whisked away, with their feet dangling, on a car suspended below the tracks on a ride described as a high-speed chair lift that completes a series of loops.
According to some industry experts, the looping, suspended coaster represented the biggest technological breakthrough in more than 15 years. The media blitz centered around what Pittman, the then year-old founder of MTV, called a "classic second-place strategy.
With six of the seven parks larger than the acre home of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, 84 percent of the country within miles of a Six Flags park, and an average roller coaster speed of 65 miles per hour, Pittman's claim was not without strong evidence. As Six Flags Theme Parks entered the mids, it looked to boost its appeal as a regional destination resort by broadening its entertainment package.
Although it continued to develop innovative roller coasters and theme rides for the thrill seekers among its potential customers, it also tried to complement its traditional business with new attractions and services. There were now three company parks that had a separate-gate, company-owned waterpark attraction as a neighbor. Such deals gave the company added marketing power and strengthened the appeal of a multiple-day ticket. The deal, as Six Flags spokesperson Eileen Harrell told O'Brien, was heralded as a "best of both worlds" decision, enabling the company to "become a self-financing entity" while maintaining its "access to the large inventory of Time Warner properties.
Larry D. In early the company entered into an agreement to manage Fiesta Texas, a San Antonio amusement park majority owned by USAA, an insurance and financial services firm based in that city. One year later, the Wet 'n Wild waterpark in Arlington was rebranded Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, making it the second waterpark bearing that name. There were also important developments with the two company parks that were owned by limited partnerships and only managed by Six Flags Theme Parks.
Six Flags Theme Parks did, however, gain the right to offer to buy out additional partners on an annual basis and to buy out any remaining partners in In December the company reached a similar agreement with the partnership that owned Six Flags Over Texas.
The series of negotiations that led to the Texas agreement was a drawn-out affair and eventually involved Premier Parks, which made a bold bid to take over management of Six Flags Over Texas. Although the bid did not succeed, during the negotiations the management of Premier became enamored of the Six Flags chain, leading directly to Premier's acquisition of Six Flags Theme Parks.
Some observers worried that Premier had grown too large too fast and wondered whether the company could generate enough profits to cover its debt. With the Six Flags parks in its possession, Premier was the largest regional theme park chain in the world and the second largest amusement park operator in the United States.
The acquisition was considered second in industry importance only to the opening of Disneyland in , an event that redefined the future of the amusement park industry. The combined attendance base for Premier and Six Flags in was nearly 40 million--Disney's was 86 million.
In a key part of the Six Flags transaction, Premier inherited Six Flags' long-term licensing agreement conveying exclusive theme park rights in most of the United States and Canada for all Warner Bros. The company also gained the worldwide rights to the Six Flags moniker--the most recognized theme park brand name in the world next to Disney. Premier officials felt the Six Flags name was the common thread that would unite all of its parks.
Although Premier did not immediately change its corporate name, the company's domestic operations began operating as Six Flags Theme Parks late in Although Premier's value was rocketing skyward, its journey was not without a few twists and turns.
A few months after the purchase of Six Flags, rumors spread that the company's cash flow for the parks was below expectations, and Premier's stock tumbled 35 percent. Premier executives referred to the stock drop as a "huge overreaction" and pointed out that the original 13 Premier Parks were exceeding expectations. They claimed that the problems with the Six Flags parks were a result of missteps made by previous management. Prior to its acquisition by Premier, Six Flags had started to languish as part of the Time Warner conglomerate.
According to the year-end issue of Amusement Business, only two of the nine Six Flags amusement parks had an attendance increase from Premier believed that a lack of capital growth had stagnated Six Flags and the company had mistakenly targeted most of its advertising toward teens when it should have focused on families.
In response, Premier redesigned the Six Flags marketing strategy so that its ads also targeted women aged 18 to To remedy the troubles at Six Flags, Premier planned to cut costs and expand and improve its new parks. The company shut down Six Flags' Parsippany, New Jersey, headquarters, eliminating full-time positions.
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