Monday, August 24, 2009

Aerial Antics: Wild Waves Theme Park


This week I decided to take a trip up North and look at Wild Waves Theme Park, located in the beautiful state of Washington.

The park has changed hands a couple of times during the last decade, notably it was owned by Six Flags for a period during their mega expansion years. The park actually opened in 1977 and started off very small. The addition of the water park seen above helped start the gradual growth of the property.

After Six Flags had to sell off some of their parks, Wild Waves and Enchanted Village as it was then known, was sold to CNL Properties and leased to PARC Management which renamed it just Wild Waves Theme Park.

Here is Wild Thing, the larger coaster the park had before it was owned by any major operator. It was purchased when Rocky Point Amusement Park in Rhode Island closed. It's an Arrow standard Loop & Corkscrew model.

Six Flags purchased the park late in 2000, so additions to the park for the 2001 season were tough. 2002 saw Six Flags expand the park in 'their way' - which means a ton of stuff was added.

Above we see the park's Northwest Territory which was created for the 2002 season. The splash ride is named Lumberjack Falls, and the area also boasts the Klondike Gold Rusher mouse coaster, and the Zamperla created Timber Axe flat ride.

The center of the park, which is also the oldest section, is home to many of Wild Waves' flat rides. Here we see several of those, minus a Mega Disk-O which was more recently added. It also looks like a popular place for water park guests to lay out their towels and relax!

Finally we have the park's large addition for the 2003 season, a unique S&S Power designed wooden roller coaster named Timberhawk: Ride of Prey. The coaster stands 75 ft. tall and has 2,600 ft. of track. The unique aspect to the ride is that S&S Power made very few wooden coasters, which makes finding one quite tough!

Here's a link to the Bing aerials.


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