Last night, Kentucky Kingdom revealed all of their plans to re-open the park next year. This includes the name and layout of their new coaster, the previously announced thrill rides and several kiddie rides, and the long list of slides being added to the water park expansion.
The big addition next year is the park’s first new roller coaster in several years, Lighting Run. This new coaster features a 100 foot lift hill, an 80 degree drop with a very compact and twisted layout. Taking over the former location of Greezed Lightning, Road Runner Express and the Skycoaster, this roller coaster fits perfectly into the size of the park and should offer quite the ride with it’s tight layout. From the video posted below, this looks to be the first Chance Hyper GT-X coaster since the company took over D.H. Morgan Manufacturing back in 2002.
Two more thrill rides are being introduced as well. FearFall, a 129 foot tall drop tower which looks to be a Larson drop tower. The other ride will be Professor John’s Flying Machines, a Larson Flying Scooters. These will be added near Lightning Run.
As announced earlier this year, Hurricane Bay will be receiving a large expansion in the area where Chang and the go-karts were, doubling the size of the current water park. This includes a new 12,000 square foot wave pool called Family Wave Lagoon, a lazy river known as Adventure River, a new water play structure called Kids Cove, 4 new tube slides, and 2 new body slides. The largest body slide, Deep Water Dive, is being touted as “America’s tallest water slide” at 121 feet tall with a 70 degree drop and 377 feet of slide.
In the children’s area, King Louie’s Playground, 4 new attractions are being introduced. Whirl-A-Round Swings, Imagination Playhouse, Jump Around, and Rock-A-Bye Swings. Imagination Playhouse will feature several activities for kids for kids to do while visiting the park and will also include appearances of King Louie himself, the park’s mascot. The rides include Whirl-A-Round Swings, a scaled down version of the classic swing ride, Jump Around, featuring individual frogs that hop as they move around the circle of the ride, and Rock-A-Bye Swings, which looks like a scaled down Screamin’ Swing for kids.
Also included in the improvements will include several live entertainment shows. The indoor theater will be upgraded to a 5D movie theater that will feature the thrills of a theme park ride set to a motion picture. The movie that will be shown in the theater will be announced at a later date. The outdoor theater near the 5D movie theater will be changed to AQUA Theater and will feature daily performances from rescued sea lions. More shows and events will be announced as we head into 2014.
You can view the map of the park below. Curiously, they have kept T2 and Twisted Twins on the map, but highlighted that these roller coasters will open in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
You can find more information about the park, including purchasing season passes, on their website: www.kentuckykingdom.com. Also follow their Facebook page and Twitter for more up-to-date information, including pictures of the park as it’s heading towards opening next year.
From the map it looks like Twisted Twins and T2 might be re-opened in 2015 and 2016, hopefully they let Rocky Mountain loose on Twisted Twins, I’m not so sure about T2 though, the 2015 coaster kind of looks like T2, yet it kind of doesn’t, even with the styling of the map (you can tell Twisted Twins because of the two tracks), and if they do keep it, they’d better get those new soft-vest restraint trains or else it’ll be pretty bad, considering that T2 wasn’t one of the better reviewed SLCs like Thunderhawk, or the one at Morney’s Pier. But I’m impressed that they’ll fit Lighting Run into the spot of Greazed Lighting, a full-circuit coaster in the spot of a shuttle loop, and it seems that it’s the closest that we’ll ever get to an Intamin Mega-Lite in the US, unless some park decides to invest in one.
But overall I’m glad that this park is getting a second life unlike some other closed parks that are destined for nothing but scrap (at least FMP is selling off their rides I hope that Soakd’ and Time Machine find new homes), and it seems that despite Six Flags yanking Chang out of the park before they left, they’re still adding a fairly large ride (and hopefully a RMC Iron Horse dueler).
I am going to Kentucky kingdom when I opens happy!!