Sunday, March 10, 2019

As Parks Grow, Alabama Adventure + Splash Adventure Gain Separate Identities



The past 5 years have seen great development at Alabama Adventure Amusement Park & Splash Adventure Water Park.  So much that the two parks will now have their own names, logos and identities (seen above) - which differs from the previous combined name of Alabama's Splash Adventure.  However, the parks will remain a two parks for the price of one combination, with one ticket giving admission to both parks.

The park will open in May for its 6th season under the Koch family's leadership, and they have quickly built back up the offerings on the amusement park side since taking over.  With 5 new rides added last year, and another one this year, the park now needs its own identity due to all of its offerings.

And they're not stopping in 2019, as they've already decided to add 10 days to the park's operating season and have announced something new for both Splash Adventure and Alabama Adventure.

© Alabama Adventure
Crews are hard at work digging footers for Splash Adventure's all-new Twister water slide.  The slide will twist around last year's addition, the FreeFall water slide, which can be seen in the photo above.  Containing several tight curves and bright colors, the Twister slide will be another thrilling addition to the water park.

© Alabama Adventure
The big new ride at Alabama Adventure this year is seen here, named The Galleon.  The swinging ship ride is a classic at many amusement parks, and will give a family-thrill that is a big of a step up for the flat rides currently at the park.  Alabama Adventure is now up to about 15 flat rides for families and children, and of course the star of the park remains the Rampage wooden roller coaster.

In 2019 the park is also expanding and beautifying and repaving several of their walkways, performing track improvements on Rampage to keep it running smooth and fast, bringing back the high-dive show from last year, and adding 120 new large size lockers.

© Google Earth
Also interesting to look at, this image from last April (via Google Earth) shows how much of the park has been brought back to life so far.  There's still plenty of room for more additions as time passes, but you can see they've removed most of the log flume's foundations, though the shoot-the-chutes and river rapids rides are still sitting untouched - for now.


1 comments:

Unknown said...

This is probably my favorite comeback story of any amusement park out there. It isn't like Kentucky Kingdom where they had lots of funding to back the project. The Koch's didn't have much coming into this and it's inspiring to see what all they've been able to do for the park. At the last enthusiast conference, Dan mentioned that they were looking to get two new coasters soon: a water coaster for the water park and either a small wooden coaster from the Gravity Group or a Eurofighter (specifically mentioning Iron Shark or Hydrus). I think the site of the old Shoot the Chutes will become the site of the next coaster.