Six Flags Great Adventure
Six Flags Great Adventure is an amusement park located approximately 20 miles southeast of Trenton in Jackson, New Jersey. Owned and operated by Six Flags, the park complex is situated between New York City and Philadelphia and includes a water park named Hurricane Harbor. It first opened to the public as simply Great Adventure in 1974 under the direction of restaurateur Warner LeRoy. Six Flags acquired the park in 1977. The park is located right off of Interstate 195 and is along Monmouth Road (County Route 537).
"Great Adventure" redirects here. For other uses, see The Great Adventure.Location
Jackson, New Jersey, United States
Operating
July 1, 1974
The World's Ultimate Thrill Park
Late March – Early January
2.913 million in 2021[1]
58
14
2
In 2012, Six Flags combined its 160-acre (65 ha)[2] Great Adventure with its 350-acre (140 ha) Wild Safari animal park to form Six Flags Great Adventure & Safari. At 510 acres (210 ha), it is the second-largest theme park in the world following Disney's Animal Kingdom.[3]
Concerts[edit]
Numerous artists have performed concerts at the park, including Bon Jovi, The Ramones, The Beach Boys, Heart, Kansas, Cheap Trick, Joan Jett, and Alice Cooper.[35]
On September 29, 2012, Great Adventure hosted the FestEvil, a festival hosting contemporary metal and hardcore acts; Falling In Reverse and We Came As Romans coheadlined. It was Great Adventure's first and last metal show. At the end of the show, Falling In Reverse frontman Ronnie Radke threw three microphone stands into the crowd, injuring two attendees. Radke was arrested after the show, and a spokesperson for Great Adventure announced that the park would no longer host shows with metal bands.[36]
Parking/entrance/exit[edit]
The entrance to the park comes from Monmouth Blvd., and the park is nearby I-195. It makes this similar to the Lake Buena Vista Disney complex in Bay Lake, Florida, which has more in the way of connector highways. The park is also rural, in rural Jackson, NJ. It's a short connector freeway/highway, that connects to the park itself. Drivers cross into it to go into the park, and after paying for the parking at the toll booth, the highway carries on for about a mile through the Safari section of the park, until it reaches into the parking lot. It's sodium vapor light-lit, although at some time, the entrance/exit ramp and the connector itself may have had the same version of the lights as those that are on the New Jersey Turnpike (with the cut-off luminaires).
Attractions[edit]
Main Street[edit]
Main Street serves as the entry gate for Six Flags Great Adventure. It was originally entitled Liberty Court and was built when the entrance to the park was moved from near what is now the Boardwalk area to a more central location. Main Street is themed as an Early-American town, somewhere around the 18th century. Later additions to Main Street have formed it into more of a turn-of-the-century town. In the front is Main Street Fountain,[37] which serves as a central hub for the park.
Advertising[edit]
The park has always been a staple for advertising on the local stations, especially WABC, WNBC, WNYW, WWOR, the last having been known for Warner Bros. programming, such as Bugs & Daffy (which started on WNEW, before it became WNYW and later switched to WWOR) far more than WCBS and Tribune stations, such as WPIX (UPN had more Warner Bros. programming than The WB), as well as WNJU (in Nuyorican Spanish) and WXTV (in Mexican Spanish), the last three (WWOR, WNJU and WXTV) being New Jersey-based stations (for the New York City media market). Despite it sometimes being listed as part of Philadelphia Metro Area, and being somewhat far enough from New York City to be closer to Philadelphia, Ocean County, where this park is in, is indeed the New York metropolitan area, and hence gets the New York area TV stations.