Six Flags America
Upper Marlboro, Maryland
July 19, 2025
One Final Visit
Page Two




Six Flags America has lived an interesting life.  Back in the early 1970's a pair of animal trainers walked into the office of billionaire and later presidential candidate Ross Perot and presented their idea for a drive through wildlife attraction.  The Wildlife Preserve opened in 1974 with Perot's backing.  The park struggled with low attendance and despite an an announced amusement park expansion which later failed to materialize the park closed in 1976.



In 1982 the park came back to life, this time as Wild World.  The drive through safari remained for a few years and a handful of rides and waterslides were added to expand its offering.



Rides were the trick and with each year Wild World added a little more to the park.  In 1985 they went big and made a name for themselves when they purchased the old John Miller designed Giant Coaster from the recently closed Paragon Park in Massachusetts.  Rebranded The Wild One, Wild World finally had a star attraction.  In 1992 Wild World was purchased by the company that would later become Premier Parks and at that point the name was changed to Adventure World.



In 1998 Premier Parks stunned the world when they purchased Six Flags from Time Warner.  This was quite the pivotal time for Adventure World as it was announced shortly after that the park would get the Six Flags treatment and it was to be rebranded Six Flags America.  In just four years Six Flags threw four new coasters and dumped some generic DC comics theming on the park without any sort of a vision or plan.  They kind of just plopped things down and figured just because they were duping cash into the park it'd transform it to the level of the competition like Kings Dominion, Busch Gardens Williamsburg or Hersheypark.



Joker's Jinx was the second of the four coasters that Six Flags added to the park after it was "flagged".



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Copyright 1999 - 2025

Paul B. Drabek