The Park that Closed Before it was Officially Opened!

The early and mid 70s were an exciting time in the theme park industry. It was a time when large companies and entrepreneurs who had explored the theme park industry in the 60s had figured out where and how to enter this exciting, fledgling industry.

Kings Dominion, the second park to be built by Taft Broadcasting Company and the sister park to Kings Island, was situated 26 miles north of Richmond, Virginia in the county of Hanover, Doswell, Virginia. Basically just cornfields, Taft Broadcasting felt that it was geographically well-situated 90 miles south of Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, Maryland, and had excellent daily traffic flow being located adjacent to Interstate 95.

Several years earlier, Taft successfully opened Kings Island in Cincinnati, where it cracked two million visitors during its first season in 1972. In Virginia, where theme parks were new entities, it was thought that by becoming involved with the Lion Country Safari organization, it could be a way to promote Kings Dominion by developing a preview center in conjunction with a Lion Country Safari park, which would become one of the themed areas of Kings Dominion upon its total opening in 1975.

We opened Lion Country Safari with great success, previewing Kings Dominion with many of its special upcoming features, via specially produced movies, showing the park themes, and entertainment shows. During that opening in 1974, we entertained and exposed over 670,000 paid visitors to the anticipated new theme park, Kings Dominion. It was an enormous success!

Based on the success of the preview year for Kings Dominion, 1974, unparalleled excitement and anticipation was created in the middle Virginia, Washington D.C, and Maryland markets. This preview exposure paid off handsomely. There was feverish excitement in these markets, anticipating the park’s opening in May of 1975. Kings Dominion was planned for its full park grand opening on Saturday, May 10, 1975. All of the advance preview marketing landed that day when guests began showing up at 4:30 a.m. in the morning, backing up traffic 10 miles north and south on U.S. Route 1, Interstate 95, and Virginia State Route 301. The counties and areas surrounding the park saw traffic backed up for hours upon hours. The local and Virginia state police said they had never seen this kind of traffic jam ever in the state of Virginia.

The park was scheduled to open at 10:00 a.m., with a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Virginia State officials, as well as Taft Broadcasting executives. It was to be held under the Kings Dominion Eiffel Tower. At 9:00 a.m., we had already allowed over 42,000 people to enter the park, with an estimated 30,000-plus backed up on the highways and in lines throughout the parking lot and roads surrounding the park. To say that we were at a congested and encumbered point one hour prior to our grand opening would be a gross understatement. Virginia state police helicopters circled the park, with local and other state police detouring as best they could all regular north/south traffic arteries miles ahead around Kings Dominion…….to no avail.

Back at the park admission entrance, we opened the park freely to the people in line at no charge, suggesting and begging that they come back another day. It was estimated that we reluctantly allowed another 10,000 people to enter free of charge, avoiding a front gate riot. It was the right decision that avoided a catastrophic overrun of the front gate. Suffice to say, our idea of a preview center to present Kings Dominion to the Washington, D.C. and central Virginia area paid off….but we lived with the residual overcrowded and negative image impact that opening day had for five years.

So, Kings Dominion holds the distinction of being the first Theme Park that closed before it was officially opened to the public.

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