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| Status: |
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Operating since 5/23/1987 |
| Also Known As: |
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Kentucky Kingdom (1987-6/1998) |
| Phone: |
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502-366-2231 |
| Fax: |
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502-366-8746 |
| Toll Free: |
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1-800-SCREAMS |
| Web: |
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Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom's site |
| Address: |
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937 Phillips Lane
Louisville, KY 40209
USA
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| Visits: |
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265 |
| Rating: |
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| More About This Park |
Notes:
9th park to use the Six Flags name. Was originally created to be a seasonal extention of the Kentucky State Fair. |
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| Reviews |
Sir Willow
Joined: May 2001
Posts: 3552
View Park/Ride Count
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SFKK- Friday, May 31st, 2002
The people- Me, Jon Z, Brian (AFLAC!), and Josh
Weather- partially cloudy and very humid.
Crowds- very light. Almost everything was a walk on.
Scoring- I'm still using the now familiar 1-10 scale with 0's being
really bad and
negatives meaning "taer is down now!"
Jon and I arrived before Josh and Brian. We took time to get his season
pass processed, then hopped in line so I could get a quick ride on
Hellavator, the Intiman second generation giant drop right near the
entrance to the park. I dunno why, but I prefer the S&S drop rides
(like Supreme Scream at Knotts and Power Tower at CP) to these. Maybe
it's the more dropping for you buck bit. I know some really like this
because of how close it is to the ground when it stops, but I like the
generally higher towers of the S&S ones. Interesting note- they were
only running 3 of the 6 cars when we were on, and one of those 3 shut
down later.
After this the others still hadn't arrived, so we headed over to the
other side of the park, having to cross a long bridge that is the sole
access to where most of the rides are since a road cuts accross the
park. Since I've started already, let me describe the park a little
bit. SFKK is part of the Louisville, KY fairgrounds, and as such has
cheap parking ($2!) but a very strange layout. I'm guessing that it's
free to fairgoers when the fair is in session, but when it's not, it's a
small park, and the division of the two sides makes for a walk to get
from one part to the other. Kind of a pain.
However, the park did look very neat and clean overall. The people were
a different story- both guests and employees. Apathy was very common,
as was lots of slow, strung out drawled speech and comments that would
be considered strange, or even dumb, in other parts of the country (more
on that througout). If this is some people's idea of what Six Flags is
I can understand why they aren't to keen on the chain.
Anyways, back to the rides. Jon and I headed over to Chang, and since
he's riden before and had a sore leg he decided to take a seat while I
rode. I headed up and got a nice front seat ride, hopped off and
realized that Josh and Brian had arrived. So I grabbed Brian and headed
up for a second ride on Chang. Chang became my second favorite standup
coaster- not up to the level of Riddlers, but far better than the heap
called Mantis. There was one small spot with a moment of banging, but
overall I found Chang to be a lot of fun, even when the guy next to me
on ride one was shouting, "I didn't know dat dese here roller coaster
thingies made you stand up when yer goin upside down". Chang gets a
very respectable 7 from me.
From here all 4 of us got together and followed our tour guides long,
circuitous, winding route to get over to ThunderRun. Why hide
the entrance for this inside of the coaster and close off one of the
access routes to it? Plus the sign for the entrance is actually inside
the exit. Makes it nearly impossible to figure out how to get on it.
But once we did, we were able to ride what was easily the best coaster
in the park several times. Thunder Run is a Dinn/ Summers featuring one
train, a 78 foot drop into a turn and several airtime pops throughout.
TR is a blast of ride and we hit it a few times, inspite of the slow
ops that looked more interested in naps than running their coaster.
Scored an easy 8.
Side note on crowd: while in line at Thunder Run I overheard one of the
guys behind me commenting to whoever he was with, "Well, lezz see now,
we're here in line for this here coaster number 73 on de map." and I
couldn't help but think "where are the other 72 coasters in the park?
And he can't figure out the name?". Ahh, sorry, just me popping off a bit. ;)
We then took a walk over to the Rollerskater, a typical model built over
a small creekbed/ ditch. A pretty view but it's to bad they didn't make
some use of the terrain instead of having so many high concrete pillars
to attach the supports to. But the drop looks really high for a kids
coaster. Still, it gets a typical roller skater 4- great for kids, but
not so much for adults. :-)
We also walked around a wonderful carousel- absolutely gorgeous in its pavilion and featuring lots of unique
animals (only a few horses), 2 "teacups" that spin througout, and 2
bobsleds that rock. It was a work of art. We also walked by
their Shoot the Chutes ride (Mile High Falls) that made one of the
hugest splashes I have ever seen on these things. Their plexiglass
booth on the bridge was a rather interesting site to see also.
Then it was time to start the torture runs. We made our way to the
Twisted Sisters/ Twins/ Clones/ or whatever we're going to call it this
time. I'm not sure if it was a good thing or not, but both Lola and
Stella were running and scratching their way through the "dueling"
courses (3 passes doesn't equal dueling in my book) in their Gerstlauer
trains. This would be my first experience with these kinds of trains,
and after riding in them I can see why people don't like them. I'm just
going to group both sides together as they seemed to give pretty
equivalent rides, even though there is some differences. The courses
were slow, bumpy, rough, and the trains uncomfortable, as if they were
ill suited for actually coasting. I really wonder how much improved
these would be with PTC's, but I'm sure they would be improved. And
while PTC's might not look as "stylish", they also wouldn't look as
cheap and would be a lot more comfortable. As it is, both sides score a
3- not something that I'd go back and ride again, but happy that I rode
them. But definately not what I would expect from CCI.
Jon and I then agreed to ride together on T2, since it would be my first
experience with an SLC in this part of the country. T2 was also the
first Vekoma SLC built in the US, and as such features a slightly
different layout than the other models. For some reason, it also only
has 7 cars seating a grand total of 14 people when most others seat 20.
Anyone know why this one only has 7 cars? There's easily room in the
station where they could add more.
After riding this one, I can easily understand why some call these "hang
and bang"s. Thankfully there is some very soft padding for the ears
now, so it doesn't hurt, but it definately bangs it way through the
course. It's a pity to, because I really like the unique inversion that
are on the SLC's and the interesting layouts. If only there was a way
to make them smoother. At least I've gotten good rides on the one at
SFMW. But T2 scores a 2.
From here we took a round on their Giant wheel where I was taking
pictures and the other guys were admiring the "scenery" on the nearby
wave pool/ beach area, then we walked back across the
lllooooonnnnnngggggg bridge and around over to the last coaster of the
day- Road Runner Express. This is a Maurer-Sohne Wild mouse with a
pretty typical layout minus the drop after the top level switchbacks
(instead its got a little bunny hop) and a couple of very hard brake
grabs on the lower dips and drops. I have yet to find a place that is
willing to run their mouse flat out like DCA does with their
Mulholland's Madness, and this, like the others, is a pale shadow of
what MM is. Sadly without that drop and with the brakes it wasn't even
all that fun, and rated only about a 4 or 5 on my little scale.
Josh and I then closed out our run at SFKK with a ride on the
Breakdance. Let me just say that SFKK runs this wide open and this ride
is completely nuts. I've been on a couple of other versions of it, and
they don't hold a candle to the way they run this here. If all parks
ran theirs this way, this would easily be one of my favorite flat rides.
So SFKK gets a few points here.
CLOSING COMMENTS
SFKK was an interesting experience for me. It's got a lot of coasters
for a small park, but only a couple that I really enjoyed and would like
to ride again. But I'm not sure that I would want to go back just for
those coasters. The staffing was generally slow, disinterested, and
showed little effort to do their jobs efficiently (though there were a
couple of exceptions to that). The people just really got to me though.
When I lived in TX for 2 years it was in a small town where people
tried to ignore the fact that there was a world outside of their town
and, forgive me for sounding crass, were seemingly proud of being
stupid. Throughout the day here I kept having flashbacks to that time
in TX, with the drawls and overhearing stupid questions.
Things like asking the ops on the Roller Skater, "Is this here a big
roller coaster?" when the whole ride is in front of them and comments
like that just got to me after a while. I had no doubting that I was in
Hillbilly country by the time we left. Again, it's not meant as a put
down on people in Kentucky, Louisville, and the like, but it was
glaringly obvious.
And the layout of the park was a real pain, but I won't go into that any
more since I already did. The biggest thing that would help this park
would be to get better staff, but based on what I saw coming through the
park I'm not sure how possible that is and am afraid that SF is doing
the best they can under the circumstances. It's going to be very
intersting to see what happens with this park in the future, and if SF
ever has to ditch parks for solvency reasons I can easily see this one
being one of the first to go.
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| 1-21-04 13:14:27 |
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gennifire
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 5
View Park/Ride Count
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Worst park I have ever been to. Filty dirty, gum stuck everywhere, grafitti, just awful. The staff was very uncaring and would not even look at you to help you if you asked them a question. They would complain to us about their jobs, responsibilities. We were so glad we had not purchased our tickets ahead of time because when we got there the night before going to the park we saw that a local grocery chain was selling tickets for less than half the price at the park. We bought them. We as a family just did not enjoy this park at all, will not recommend the rides or that anyone should attend it.
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| 7-17-04 8:26:07 |
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Phil
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9164
View Park/Ride Count
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Not a very nice park overall, but it is worth a trip just to ride Chang and Thunder Run.
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| 8-22-04 23:09:01 |
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James
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 10559
View Park/Ride Count
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I went to SFKK back in 1999 and now in 2005.. The park has changed a lot and it is for the better. I really dont see whats SO bad about it. I had way more fun at SFKK then I did at Holiday World... later that day.
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| 6-19-05 13:38:48 |
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Freddie
Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 170
View Park/Ride Count
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I like SFKK a lot. I don't know what it gets so much crap. The coasters are decent for the most part, the park is clean, and the staff are friendly.
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| 9-21-07 20:25:13 |
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SFKKrideop
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 5
View Park/Ride Count
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2007 was the best year for the park except for the accident.
I'm a guest and an employee, the best of two worlds. I didn't work on the sad day. I was hired a week after but I heard that people were crying and sadden for the girl.
I hear that people say the the employees do not care for the people and their job and that is not true. I love my job so much that my freinds say "shut up about it". I have dreams of working at the park a lot. So to say know onw cares about thier job is false.
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| 1-10-08 18:23:50 |
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