SIX FLAGS
DISCOVERY KINGDOM
Vallejo, California
Six Flags Theme Parks
 Park News - (3/3/2025) Six Flags Discovery Kingdom sent out a press release showcasing the park’s major events that are planned for the 2025 season which features some interesting items of note. While this may be nothing, I noticed that while the top of the press release featured the main “Six Flags Discovery Kingdom” park logo, the rest of the press release only referred to the park simply as “Discovery Kingdom” which made me wonder if they might be considering some kind of brand identity change in the future. A few more changes mentioned (see below) also made me wonder more about the future direction of the park.
As for those special events… Oktoberfest and Fright Fest are returning, but new for 2025 will be the Star Spangled Nights event (July 4-6) that most of the parks (Six Flags and Cedar Fair) are promoting this summer.
Also new in the fall (Select dates. Sept. 20 to Nov 2) will be “Tricks and Treats”, a daytime family friendly Halloween festival perfect for the kiddies instead of the previous Six Flags Kids Boo Fest event. “Tricks and Treats” was the name used for this style event at the former Cedar Fair parks, like California’s Great America, and if you’ve followed our news for that park you also know that CGA isn’t holding any seasonal events in 2025, so it looks like the torch is being passed to Discovery Kingdom.
A similar change is also taking place in the winter… as Six Flags Holiday in the Park is no more, and will be replaced by the Cedar Fair style “WinterFest” event on select dates from Nov. 28 to Jan. 4, 2026.
(1/12/2025) An interesting new development is in the process of being approved on the east side of the I-80 freeway from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, on the hillside just to the North of the 37-interchange. The Department of the Interior has given approval of “federal trust status” on the 160 acre site that would allow the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians to build a casino.
There are still some hoops to jump through before the project is finalized, but it sounds like this may have been the biggest step needed to see the project move forward.
(1/1/2025) Six Flags Discovery Kingdom has introduced two baby reticulated giraffes to the park’s Giraffe Encounter for 2025, Chich and Oz.
Check out our FB post to get a peek at the two youngsters, how much they weight and more about the park’s Giraffe Encounter in our FB post below.
(11/29/2024) As previously mentioned elsewhere, the newly merged Six Flags chain of parks is said to be looking to remove any troublesome major rides, especially roller coasters that may be too troublesome or costly to operate combined with other issues, like age or rides with low guest satisfaction scores. I know in the past some park chains have done this as a sort of cuot-cutting culling, asking each park to run their numbers to see which rides fall below some kind of red-line that would mark them as future removal options, so with a mega-merger such as the Cedar Fair / Six Flags integration that we are seeing take place now, this kind of things should be expected.
So the question is… what rides might we see marked for removal from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom? This is a bit of a tough question for this park, as it already doesn’t have the largest ride selection mixed with the identify crisis of being both an animal park and a Six Flags thrill park.
While this goes back to the history of the park itself which actually started off as two entirely different parks in Redwood City, CA. There was the Marine World park that opened in 1968 focused on marine life, which later merged with Africa USA in 1972 to become Marine World/Africa USA, featuring both marine and land animals. Financial struggles over the property eventually saw the park move to an entirely new location in Vallejo, Ca in 1986. Financial issues were always an issue with the park and when it defaulted on debts, the city of Vallejo took ownership of the park in 1996 and hired Premier Parks to come in and manage the park for them.
This was the golden era for Premier Parks, who grew the park by adding numerous rides across the property and changed the name of the park to “The New Marine World” in early 1998 when they added two roller coasters: Kong and Boomerang: Coast to Coaster, along with a number of other thrilling flat rides. As I said, this was the golden era of Premier Parks, as they had just successfully purchased the entire Six Flags chain of parks in April 1998, and went on to rename the park again following the end of the 1998 season as Six Flags Marine World for the 1999 season.
The 7-year run of Six Flags with Premier Parks management at the helm came to an end in late 2005 when failing financial issues allowed for a proxy battle to take place that allowed for investor Red Zone to take control of the board, and put Red Zone’s CEO (Mark Shapiro) in charge of Six Flags. An assortment of changes were seen across the Six Flags chain under Shapiro, including yet another name change for the Vallejo park which became Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in early 2007.
The following years saw Red Zone rise and fall, allowing Six Flags to fall under control of other leadership, some for better, some for worse, leading up to the current status of the chain, newly merged and super-sized by the combination of Cedar Fair and Six Flags properties. With leadership being mostly controlled by former Cedar Fair management, one more interesting item may come into play that many may not be aware of. A long time ago select Cedar Fair parks did feature some marine life, including their crown jewel park, Cedar Point, which used to feature Dolphins performing in the Oceana stadium until the late 90’s. Cedar Point saw two of their dolphins perish in 1996, another in 1998 and they retired the Oceana show after that, sending their remaining dolphin to Dolphin Research Center in Florida. Around this same time frame Cedar Point also bought Knott’s Berry Farm in 1997, and Knott’s too had an animal show with Dolphins and Sea Lions in their Pacific Pavilion show venue.
It was said that with the closure of the Oceana stadium in Cedar Point, Cedar Fair was putting a policy across the chain to no longer feature marine animals in their parks, and the venue was removed from Knott’s to allow for the construction of the Perilous Plunge attraction. I don’t know that this position was ever written in stone, but you never did see marine animals on display at any of the Cedar Fair chain of parks from that moment forward. Given that Six Flags Discovery Kingdom was built from the ground-up for this exact purpose by the Marine World/Africa USA founders, it does make me wonder what the long term future may hold for the park going forward. Even more so as we have already seen the park retire a number of animal exhibits over the park decade, often relocating those species to other facilities thought to be better qualified to take care of them. In some cases this was also done to allow a solitary animal to be relocated to live with others of their kind elsewhere when Six Flags had no intention of bringing in new animals, as we saw when the Shouka the Killer Whale was sent from Vallejo to SeaWorld San Diego.
Oh... Sorry, I got a bit off track, as while the park can always eliminate some animal attractions to focus more on rides, there is rumored to be a major ride also possibly on the cutting block. Nothing decided yet from what I’ve heard thus far, but I'd get some rides in on The Flash: Vertical Velocity next time you visit, just in case.
2025 - Nothing new is known to be planned for the season.
|
