Former Cedar Fair Exec To Lead Kentucky Kingdom

While there are still plenty of hurdles to cross before the gates to Kentucky Kingdom are once again open, the developers hoping to make that happen have already started to assemble a management team.

Kentucky Kingdom when it was still operating

This article is actually from last week, but it mentions that Ed Hart has tapped eight executives to start to work at determining what will be needed to get the park open again.

Proposed new slides for Kentucky Kingdom

Perhaps most importantly, a General Manager has been selected for the park and he's one that has thirty years experience within the Cedar Fair organization.

John Shanrock will be in the leadership position if things go as planned.  A little research shows that he spent over ten years at Cedar Point and almost double that at Valleyfair! as the Director of Food Operations.

He then was placed at Carowinds as the park's Vice President and General Manager for about two years.  It appears after that his ties with Cedar Fair were severed.

It is naturally of interest to me to see someone with so much experience with Cedar Fair serving as the General Manager of Kentucky Kingdom.  There's a lot of knowledge and experience that could potentially be utilized in getting the park back on its feet and successful.

The article also lists two other individuals who will be on board with the park including William Hargrave - who worked at the park under Ed Hart previously - and Lesly Birkner.  They will be park's Director of Technical Services, and Director of Operations, respectively.

Now there's just that matter of getting the private loans necessary to make the lease official and then things can really get started!