SFKK moving ?

Sounds like a great idea to me. That park seemed so cramped and out of place when I visited. If they were able to move and expand the park into something bigger it may actually be worth visting again. But I won't be making a trip anytime soon unless they add some new coaster of significance. Although I would like to take a spin on Tidal Wave again. I am all for the move & expansion.
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BMCOASTER

bmcoaster@wi.rr.com

It sounds like a good idea in terms of space availability. But they couldn't justify the cost.

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YOUNGSTOWN 2010

And you say this why? Sounds to me like a great idea. The gerneal consensus that I've seen on this park is that its a mess - it has its glory days, but on most, its kind of dumpy. By investing the money for a move (perhaps as much as they'd spend on a new coaster, plus sell off a few less-popular rides to help make the move self-sufficient), they could probably really help their overall appearance.

They could start from scratch with everything from midways, to bathrooms, to garbage cans, to ride themeing. I think its an excellent opportunity, and one that Six Flags should jump at. The way I see it, they have a good chance here (obviously with some major capital investment but heck, just hold off one more year on SFWoA's hyper) to give southern ohio a reason to start pulling away from PKI and CP. I hope they do it, because it would also be very interesting to see if they do make significant improvments and try to learn from their mistakes.

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"As soon as you design something that's idiot-proof, the world will go and design a better idiot." ... Thank you EchoVictor!
--Brett

SF needs to focus on the problems they already have. Why go ahead and build a new park and possible run into more trouble? You need to think it through. Just because somone found an article with a rumore stating that the park may relocate doesn't mean it's a good idea. If you say the park is a dump now, why build a new park? They can't even spend the money to properly maintain the current park. They have spent millions into the facility as it is, and why would you spend millions taking it out? Believe me, there is a current issue where I live relating to this. The inner city is removing an eyesore that hardly ever got used to begin with.

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YOUNGSTOWN 2010

It's called cutting your losses. If the grounds already belong the Kentucky Fairgrounds, leaving a few rides and opening that area back up to local fairs would probably net them a pretty penny, plus a good word with the local community.

I say build a new park because based on what I have read (I have never been there) a lot of the problems are due to the location of the park, the highway splitting it, etc. With a new location that is wooded, not completely landlocked, and not bisected by a highway, they could rectify their problems easier. When you have a continuity problem, its kinda hard to tell the local transportation board "hey move that road, we have a park we have to clean up!", don't ya think?

And I don't know if you've read the previous posts or not, but they're not talking about closing SFKK, they're talking about relocating it, to a new piece of land. Keeping the main part of the park intact. I don't see how that relates to the removal of an eyesore.
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"As soon as you design something that's idiot-proof, the world will go and design a better idiot."
--Brett

Like most of the parks that Six Flags purchased and "flagged" in the nineties, SFKK was not meant to grow into the park that it is today. Hence the highway that divides the park, the lack of trees on the "other" side of the park and the lack of really tall rides. If I were to take a guess, I would think that Six Flags has intended on moving this park for quite some time, thus preventing them from adding major new attractions as well as performing maintenance and upgrades that are considered to be normal investments. After all, why throw a ton of money into a place that you may close down in a few years, right?

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-Rob

Why not just put it further south of Louisville, even further from PKI and closer to Tennessee? :) Tennesseans make up a lot of their customers. They're wearing out the Greezed Lightnin TV commercial here.

BTW, is GL still having problems? It was down when I went by there 6/8/03. The commercial needs a disclaimer at the end. ;)

Exactly - cutting costs and not throwing good money after the bad! I really hope that this does go down, I'd love to see the process of transplanting a mid-sized, established park as opposed to the ground-up creation of a smaller one.

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"As soon as you design something that's idiot-proof, the world will go and design a better idiot."
--Brett

And from what I've seen and heard on the net, When Six Flags does build a new park, they do a pretty good job. In reality, it would be fairly close to doing that with moving it. All you do is design a nice new park and decide where to plop your rides. Get em moved, paint em, and make the layout more customer friendly, and you have basically a new park, but one with all of an old parks rides, and its name. So, in essence, its like a total renovation, and they can do it right this time:)

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President, C.R.A.P. (Coaster Rescurers And Preservationists).

Thing is... Six Flags hasn't built a new park in decades.

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-Rob

Trekker Park said: I have a better idea. We'll keep Thunder Run and Twisted Sisters and trade everything else in the park for LoCoSuMo. Then we'll assemble a whole new ride collection from scratch.

What would that be called, "The Rough Piece of Junk Wooden Coaster Park and Thunder Run?" Seriously, don't count on this happening. Those at the park may push for it all they want, but it's up to corporate to fund and greenlight it, and there's about a 1% chance of that. There's a reason SF doesn't build new parks.

-Nate
*** This post was edited by coasterdude318 6/16/2003 3:02:54 PM ***

But if they take the majority of what they have invested in the current SFKK park, then they're really not building a new park from scratch. While I will agree that SF very rarely does things to make guests happy over their shareholders, moving the park does make economic sense in the long run, meaning that a relocation is indeed a possibility.

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-Rob

What parks have Six Flags built from scratch:

SF over Texas and SF over Georgia (perhaps Sf St Louis, formerly known as SF over Mid America)... but what other parks have they built from the ground up?

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Kind of hard to take a post as objective if a park or coaster name is part of the "user name"

That's it - SFoT, SFoG, and SFStL. The rest of the parks (not counting water parks) were all purchased.

Moving an entire park is an extremely costly venture. Not only do you have the cost of dismantling, transporting, and reassembling all the rides at the new location, but you have the cost of all new paths, buildings, bathrooms, plumbing, electricity. and landscaping, not to mention the cost of the land in the first place! For a small park like SFKK that continues to draw in crowds anyway, it's just not worth it.

-Nate

In my opinion, SF would have a lot to gain in a move of KK. I also understand the prohibitive costs associated with a move of this magnitude. I guess we'll have to wait and see if SF ever exercises the option they have on that land..

KK is almost completely out of room (they have some open space behind the up-charge Dragster ride, and that's about it). SF will either have to seriously consider a move, or start planning on which attractions they will remove in order to build anything new.

-Jerry

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Pinball and Coasters...Any Questions?

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coasterdude318 said:
That's it - SFoT, SFoG, and SFStL. The rest of the parks (not counting water parks) were all purchased.

Moving an entire park is an extremely costly venture. Not only do you have the cost of dismantling, transporting, and reassembling all the rides at the new location, but you have the cost of all new paths, buildings, bathrooms, plumbing, electricity. and landscaping, not to mention the cost of the land in the first place! For a small park like SFKK that continues to draw in crowds anyway, it's just not worth it.

-Nate

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Very well put, coasterdude318!:) In addition, it takes years to build a park. Many of you are thinking it would happen over night, but it's a lot of work. There would also be a few more years added on to the construction period to even plan the new park.

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YOUNGSTOWN 2010

Blah, blah, blah, I can't believe it, speculate, speculate, where's our link to this article?

Six Flags also oversaw the construction of the new WB Movie World in Europe.

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http://www.gadv.com

This conversation is completely irrelevant without proof. Where's the link?

I have been to SFKK many times and I'm always more than slightly amused (as in "amusement park") by the fact that you do have to go through some amazing overtures to get from the front of the park to the back!! It is not exactly a park that the employees seem to take a lot of pride in, either. ("It's a job. . .not an adventure.")

The Kingdom could do with some Royal Re-Tooling. . .

I think that if the place was jazzed up and relocated, it would be a HUGE DRAW. But, yes, the previous poster is correct about locale issues: too far West and you're sitting within 40 minutes of Holiday World. Too far north and you're dealing with the PKI behemoth.

I think that SFKK has great potential elsewhere, though. Louisville has wonderful sloping hills and graceful landscaping to find a home for it somewhere outside the city gates. Maybe then, there will be attractions for rider enthusiasts to pursue other than other parks' retreads/discarded rides.