SIX FLAGS
DISCOVERY KINGDOM
Vallejo, California
Six Flags Theme Parks
 Park News - (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.
(11/22/2024) The 17th annual “Holiday in the Park” event will returns to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom on select dates between Nov. 29 and Jan. 5, 2025 featuring live holiday entertainment, wonderous displays and plenty of special holiday treats to eat. New this year will be Gingerbread Lane (full of sights and smells and things to eat), Tava’s Jingleland (holiday decorated animal areas and themed rides) and Whimsical Way (encounter winged creatures of the forest, both real and fantasy).
Returning favorites will include the Looney Tunes Sweetport, Jungle Junction, Christmas Tree Plaza, Winter Wonderlane, Santa’s Toy Land and the Christmas Tree Forever.
(9/23/2024) Fright Fest kicked off this weekend at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom featuring five haunted mazes, five scare zones, plus select live entertainment and thrill rides throughout the park. During the daytime hours, the park offers Kids Boo Fest as a family friendly Halloween option for the little ones, along with an Oktoberfest celebration of German food and fun for everyone else. But once night has fanne, things get far more creepy.
This year’s haunt offerings include the new Hotel Hellview 666, along with returning favorites, Club Fear 3D, Midnight Mansion, Lost Souls and CarnEvil: Fresh Meat.
This is in addition to the five scare zones that include Murder Mill, Weeping Wharf, Corpse Crossing and Dead Man’s Party and live shows like Creepshow Freak Show, Unleashed or the new Spencer Grey’s Magic After Dark.
(8/12/2024) It didn’t notice it before, but the new Chaperone Policy was also added to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in late July, along with the previously mentioned Six Flags America and Six Flags over Georgia parks.
(7/1/2024) Six Flags Discovery Kingdom “celebrates the red, white and blue with patriotic festivities on July 4-7. Six Flags 4TH of July Celebration Powered by Coca-Cola will feature new live entertainment, limited-time culinary delights, diverse animal experiences, an incredible collection of world-class rides and for the first time in the park’s history, an all-new nightly drone show.”
On each of the four nights, “the sky above Discovery Kingdom will come to life through the use of 200 drones illuminating the night with innovative, awe-inspiring animated figures. The new drone display will recreate patriotic and iconic Six Flags imagery up to 400 feet in the sky.”
Look for these nightly drone shows to take place at 9:15pm.
(5/28/2024) According to the official status on Six Flags Discovery Kingdom’s website, The Flash: Vertical Velocity is now listed as being “Closed for the season”.
(5/21/2024) A reader tells us that operations are looking terrible at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom at the moment. According to the report roughly 30% of the park’s rides are currently closed for various reasons. This includes four of the park’s ten roller coasters: Kong, Boomerang, Flash: Vertical Velocity and the newest coaster, Sidewinder Safari. In many cases, I’m told that the park just doesn’t have the parts to fix and reopen these rides, and it appears they may have given up on Vertical Velocity entirely, as I’m told the attraction area now looks like it is being used for storage.
(5/5/2023) We’ve been sent a few messages about the state of things at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom as it was revealed that the park has removed another ride from the line-up. This time the victim is “The Penguin”, a Mack Twist ‘n’ Splash, that has been retired. According to one reader, the list of rides retired from the park in the last several year (mostly since 2020) is pretty high, as it includes: Harley Quinn (Skyline SkyWarp), VooDoo (Huss Top Spin), Tasmanian Devil (Huss Frisbee), the Skycoaster, Dare Devil Chaos Coaster (Larson Giant Loop), and the Hammerhead Shark (Zamperla Hawk 48).
All said and done, that is a heck of a lot of large scale flat rides removed from the guest experience without any kind of replacement in sight. Add in some closed/removed rides from the Seaside Junction and Tava’s Jungleland, and it does seem like the park is seriously downsizing their ride collection in a big way.
With last year’s announcement from the competition that Cedar Fair has sold the land under California’s Great America and struck a deal to close that park in the next decade, it’s no wonder that Central California’s thrill seekers are watching wide-eyed in horror as the Six Flags continues to dismantle the collection of rides at their Discovery Kingdom park at this time, instead of rising to the occasion to become the thrill ride leader in the region.
2024 - Nothing new is known to be planned for the season.
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