Saturday, May 23, 2009

The Cheese Stands Alone

Today I'm going to bring up something odd about Six Flags America's iconic wooden coaster. I speak, of course, of the Wild One. Remember how the park was once called Wild World? Well, the Wild One is the only thing in the park that hasn't been hastily renamed to dissasociate it with the park's old name (to be fair, most of this happened during the Adventure World rebranding in 1994, bit after the Six Flags takeover they started renaming things for NO DAMN REASON.) Why is this? Well, first a bit of context...

In 1981, Largo Wildlife Preserve changed its name and identity from a safari to an amusement park called Wild World. The Wild One was the very first ride installed, and it became the iconic symbol of the park, even becoming incorporated into the logo (I used to have reams of merchandise with the logo on it, but I gave 'em away...sigh) The other big attraction, the Wild Wave, was built a few years later. I'll blog about that one later.

Anyway, the line I keep getting is that "Wild World" and "Adventure World" are registered trademarks of Disney, which is why Six Flags made the ingenious descision to rename Adventure World to "Six Flags America" when they clearly already have a Six Flags Great America. The existence of the Wild One proves that they could have pulled off "Six Flags Wild World" with no problem, as if it really WERE "Wild World" that were an issue, they would have renamed the coaster a long time ago. Or maybe just "Six Flags Wild", to be on the safe side.

Or maybe this is a sign that they WILL rename the Wild One (probably to something really stupid)-with the overly litigious folks at Warner Bros. you never know. *shudders*

Friday, May 8, 2009

It'll always be Wild World to me.

Today's my first full day of work at Six Flags America, formerly Adventure World, formerly Wild World, formerly Largo Wildlife Preserve. I remember a rail ride from when I was a little kid that appeared to be constructed from the remnants of the safari (when it was an animal park), only there were cut-out plywood cartoon animals in place of the real ones. In the mid-80s, the plywood animals were used as ride signs and removed when it became Adventure World in 1994. I'm not sure where they are now...

Monday, May 4, 2009

Another link, yay.

Lots of Backbeard pictures (some NSFW.) Unfortunately to see them at full-size, you have to be a member...which means you have to be Japanese and living in Japan. Sigh...
http://tinyurl.com/co6f2k