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Posted (edited)

Aha! I finished it early! Without further ado,

 

EVERGREEN PARK

 

THE STORY OF WASHINGTON STATE’S LARGEST THEME PARK

 

AN RCT3 PROJECT

 

BY 40 MINUTE WASHBOARD SOLO

 

 

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Evergreen Gardens

 

Evergreen Gardens, formerly known as “Paramount’s Evergreen Gardens” from 1992 to 2006, is an amusement park in Olympia, Washington. Owned and operated by Cedar Fair, opened on May 11th, 1979 and located adjacent to the intersection between US Highway 101 and the Evergreen Parkway, the park features over (TBD) rides and attractions, of which (TBD, but at least 7) are roller coasters. The park’s name is derived from the state of Washington’s nickname, “The Evergreen State”.

 

 

Pacificoaster Northwest > Evergreen Gardens > Lost on your park history? Here’s a little lesson…

 

Posted by MsLafayette on May 11th, 2023

 

Evergreen Gardens. You’ve heard of it, have you not? (Of course you have, you’re reading this post!) It’s the single largest theme park in Washington state, and one of the largest in the region!

 

But recently I’ve been noticing that some of you newcomers might not know the park’s storied history all that much. Some of you may be wondering “What on earth was “The Bat”?” when looking at the memorial plaque in TBR’s queue line. Others may be asking themselves why The Crypt was unboxed. (I’m not sure either, pals.) For those newcomers, and for that matter anyone who wants to reminisce with me about the history of our dear park, this is the thread to visit. I’ll ask Raelynn to get it pinned to the top.

 

Anyways, let’s begin.

 

THE 70’s, PARK OPENING AND THE 80’s

 

It all began in 1977, when the CEO of Taft Broadcasting went to Olympia on a business trip. While there, he came to the realization that this particular area was practically begging for a major theme park. And as he drove on that now iconic interchange between US-101 and the Parkway, he saw a plot of land just south that would be the perfect location.

 

And so, with that, in June 1977 Taft Broadcasting bought a nearly 810 acre area of land just south of the interchange with intent to build a theme park on the site. Construction on the park began in November and continued through 1978, except for some reason I’ve been having no luck finding construction photos from then so that part of the park’s history is being mostly skipped.

 

1978 turns to 79, and opening day comes. May 11th, 1979. Taft had basically bet the farm on the park - and were basically hoping “Would it be successful?”

 

And, perhaps because of someone wishing upon a shooting star but more likely the fact that it was basically the only game in town (“town” here being western Washington state and a good chunk of Oregon), it was. To this day, only a select few dates have even gotten close to the opening day crowd rush. It was so big that they actually had to cordon off the park from extra visitors about 4 hours in.

 

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The park the day before the massive opening crowd rush. Noted is the massive Eiffel Tower replica that dominates International Street.

 

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The first trickles of the mob rush into the new park

 

The park, on opening, had several distinct areas in what was essentially a T layout. We will now go over all of them, starting with International Street.

 

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Overview of International Street circa 1979. Locations of note highlighted by arrows.

 

The first thing you see as you go into the front gate is a very long strip of water in the middle and a bunch of buildings on both sides of the path. Those buildings contain restaurants, gift shops and even toilet blocks. Of all the restaurants and shops operating on International Street in 1979, only a select few still operate today.

 

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The second thing you may see is the massive Eiffel Tower recreation. Like the others in the chain it’s 314 feet tall with a 270 foot observation deck. And also like the others in the chain, it’s still operating despite the fact that WindSeeker has basically made it redundant. Some things never change (and in this instance, it’s a good thing).

 

Ahead, the path split into two. Back in 1979 you couldn’t go straight into Action Zone and The Bat Returns - you had to go either left or right. The path didn’t go straight forward until 1985 brought The Bat. We’ll start by going right.

 

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Entrance of Evergreen Peak in 1979. Picture provided by Morrissey_Sucks, used with permission.

 

Evergreen Peak

 

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Evergreen Peak. It’s at least tangentially themed to a small little funfair in the forest, and as a result in 1979 most of the stuff there was stuff you’d find on the fair circuit. 

 

Most of.

 

In order of appearance, you have the Evergreen Wheel, Zephyr, Bayern Kurve (Rest in peace) and Rock, Spin and Turn (please CF just change that name already! And get rid of the Crashdown Splashdown name at Vertigo Views too), which are respectively a ferris wheel, a chairswing ride, a Schwarzkopf Bayernkurve and a Sellner Tilt-a-Whirl. But the real star of the show is the Evergreen Racer.

 

Picture taken from tMGgV06G_MHqBlgiay1y_PSe2AjACdL1QyBE8y6N_1-baI25cBH4TNcldZ-8ANH0iXPDwqQPk38Q4agF8146j36OfCOSux9fN9Bg09W8QGk0tYCqdBsUCvb2V-RZGMW-5F0FkFpwJoMSN1J8zKvYuYEOn ride photo cam during a 1997 test run

 

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Picture used for promos in 1980

 

The Evergreen Racer is a PTC racing woodie (it’s actually a clone of KD’s Racer 75) and true to its name it…..races. Back in the 80s the consensus was Blue was the one you should bet on to win. Having hilariously lost on it a few days ago in the Blue train I’ll have to disagree. It was also the park’s headliner attraction from 1979 to 1985.

 

Anyways, onto the Lakeshore and The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera.

 

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Once you walk into Lakeshore you can immediately turn left and enter the Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera, which to this day is still somewhat lacking. But first, you run right into Fly Like an Eagle and the lake itself. FLaE is a Flying Scooters ride, proving that they existed pre-2015, and it’s somehow not been retired yet. (Even Kings Island eventually got tired of theirs! Or……well, their old ones anyway) It is just called “Flying Falcons” nowadays, though, circa 1992.

 

Anyways, the Funtastic World. You have a few flat rides not worth mentioned, a big ole car ride and the main headliner of the area: Ghoster Coaster.

 

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More promo material. You can tell because the coaster’s still brown here, which dates it to before 1993.

 

It’s a small little PTC thing that I’m not too big on but is a big draw for the kiddies. After all, you can only go so long before Cosmic Coaster gets tiring!

 

Alright, that’s done, onto Lakeshore.

 

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Back in 1979 this area was rather barren. You didn’t have Flight Deck, you didn’t have Vortex, you didn’t have squat. You had Octopus, a now gone Schwarzkopf Polyp, a SDC Galaxi that is now long gone, and a big ol’ log flume that failed to open in 1979 due to mechanical issues.

 

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This is the Galaxi, named……well, Galaxi. It’s on the fair circuit now.

 

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And here’s the log flume, at the time called Smurf Mountain Falls. Even today it’s still the only non-Boomerang Bay water ride in the park.

 

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Evergreen Gardens as a whole. Don’t worry, the current park looks NOTHING like this!

 

So, 1979. Massively successful opening year out of the way, first order of business in 1980 is to actually get the log flume open. It finally opened in June 1980.

 

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Weeeeeeeeeeee! Taken by my good friend’s dad Miguel Rodriguez.

 

1981 wasn’t much to write home about, but 1982 brought a new flat ride. The Himalaya is a Mack Himalaya, of course, and it’s located right next to the Tilt-a-Whirl with the stupid name that needs to be changed.

 

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1983 flew by. 1984 was similarly uneventful, except for the part where Kings Entertainment came in and just bought Taft out. Nobody knows exactly why, but for some reason the brand new park president decided that for 1985 Evergreen Gardens should be home to the world’s longest roller coaster. Which is no small feat - at the time the longest was either Daidarasaurus at Expoland (7,677.2 ft) or The Beast at Kings Island (7,361.0 ft). But as they say, “when there’s a will, there’s a way” and the park president contacted Arrow Dynamics and asked them to build the world’s longest roller coaster for the 1985 season. And he specifically requested a Suspended Coaster.

 

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So Arrow did it. They built the world’s longest roller coaster.

 

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New for 1985 was THE BAT, a quite frankly comically oversized Arrow Dynamics Suspended Coaster. Arrow Dynamics decided to reuse elements from a number of coasters in their catalog (especially the massive drop into the lake just SCREAMS Big Bad Wolf), and also decided to make a good chunk of the layout a “Twister” section consisting of what was basically a ball of steel, meaning A, it swang out the wazoo, and B, it was 7,798 feet long! For context on how insane that is, even today The Bat is the second longest roller coaster ever built. It had a ride duration of over 3 minutes and was absolutely insane. It’s considered the best Arrow swinger of all time. With the possible exception of Eagle Fortress.

 

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The path was at last extended so that you could now go straight ahead after you hit the Eiffel Tower. In 1985 it led basically exclusively to the entrance of The Bat, but even then it was obvious there were going to be more rides in the area in the future.

 

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Shine on, you crazy diamond.

 

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After the Bat there was a major addition drought that lasted from 1986 to 1989. In 1989, however, Galaxi was announced to be closing for good due to low ridership (Seriously, this was a normal summer day in 1988. LOOK at that line). It was dismantled at the end of the season and sent onto the fair circuit. (I may have caught this one in a fair in Tacoma last year.)

 

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Land clearing for Project 1990, aka Vortex

 

In the late 1980s it became apparent that although the park now had a huge racing woodie and the world’s longest roller coaster, it still did not have an inverting coaster. Project 1990 was cooked up to fix that. Initially an Intamin project, Kings Entertainment soon was introduced to a brand new sweetheart Swiss manufacturer which was just waiting for some new customers…

 

 

Sadly that’s where I have to end the post for now (my darn show’s about to come on!). Coming soon - Vortex premieres, and the 90s strike in full, flannel wearing force!

 

With regards,

 

MsLafayette

 

 

-----------

 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: So, yeah! This is my brand new RCT3 project! Side note, that entrance plaza is taken from nathan8848's Kings Dominion (over on RCTGo), so credit to him for it. The Eiffel Tower is his, too.

 

I ended up combining my Whispering Cliffs style decade by decade idea with something like Gateway Park's format + something akin to the "20 years of defunct coasters" thread on CF, except here it's "44 years of Evergreen Gardens recapped". "MsLafayette" is here the online identity of an OC of mine.

 

Enjoy! And remember - still learning the ropes, so might be a bit rusty!

Edited by 40 Minute Washboard Solo
Fixed text color
  • Like 1

"Bender, that was the best forty-minute washboard solo I've ever heard. The parts where I was awake blew my mind."

Beck, Futurama, "Bendin' in the Wind"

 

Posted

Love how detailed you went with the history of the park, also that dueling woodie is very cool.

But dear God that arrow coaster!? Thing is as big as a city ? Very nice park so far, excited to see more!

there's this illusion of the reality, but it's not really really real, like it's beside and inside and inside and beside, but never on top.. nevermind, just kidding but not really

Posted
7 minutes ago, wolfpaw said:

Love how detailed you went with the history of the park, also that dueling woodie is very cool.

But dear God that arrow coaster!? Thing is as big as a city ? Very nice park so far, excited to see more!

Yeah, The Bat is huge. If you pay close attention you see it's described in past tense only, unlike stuff like the Racer, which gives away its fate. All I'm gonna say is The Bat Returns is not nearly as large as the old Bat.

"Bender, that was the best forty-minute washboard solo I've ever heard. The parts where I was awake blew my mind."

Beck, Futurama, "Bendin' in the Wind"

 

Posted (edited)

I might do a brief "detour" thing in another thread to show off another park I built (another RCT3-ication of a Theme Park Fanon park) soon. Just so you're aware.

 

Also the quote won't disappear EDIT: It disappeared :)

Edited by 40 Minute Washboard Solo

"Bender, that was the best forty-minute washboard solo I've ever heard. The parts where I was awake blew my mind."

Beck, Futurama, "Bendin' in the Wind"

 

Posted
16 hours ago, 40 Minute Washboard Solo said:

Also the quote won't disappear

When this happens to me, I just refresh the page and start the post over ?

Something, sometime, eventually...

Posted

If you put your cursor on the next line, in your case right before the "I might do a brief "detour" thing in another thread.." and hit backspace it should delete!

there's this illusion of the reality, but it's not really really real, like it's beside and inside and inside and beside, but never on top.. nevermind, just kidding but not really

Posted (edited)

Pacifcoaster Northwest > Evergreen Gardens > Lost on your park history? Here’s a little lesson…

 

Posted by MsLafayette on May 18th, 2023

 

This took far longer than it needed to.

 

THE 90’S

 

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The land clearing on the former Galaxi site ended up being for Vortex, a B&M sitdown looper. Layout-wise, it is an exact clone of Apocalypse/Firebird at SFA…….but it’s a sitdown. Quite why the park didn’t want stand up trains on it is a mystery, but judging by the reviews I’ve seen of the one at Carowinds I’d say a bullet was dodged. (They also rerouted Smurf Mountain Falls’ queue and exit to make space for it.)

 

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Vortex also marked the final addition of the Taft/KECO era. In 1992, Paramount completely bought KECO out, and thus Evergreen Gardens, once more, had new owners - and a new name.

 

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1993 arrived at Paramount’s Evergreen Gardens, and it brought a brand new roller coaster - Top Cat’s Taxi Jam. It is a Zierer Small Tivoli coaster (like Coccinelle at Walibi Belgium) and was a fairly decent hit with the kiddies. It’s alright.

 

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I wish they didn’t have to get rid of the lake to put it in, though.

 

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1993 also brought a ride rename - starting this year, Fly Like an Eagle was now known as Flying Falcons……Aww. Not as special.

 

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1994 brought some exciting news - Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Shack came to town! It was located at the very end of International Street, right next to the Eiffel Tower.

 

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Oh. Yeah. That too, I guess.

 

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Let’s bring you up to speed.

 

In mid 1993 the new park president took a visit to Six Flags Great America and had his ever loving socks rocked off by Batman: The Ride, a B&M Invert. Making a decision almost immediately, very similar to The Bat before, he contacted B&M and asked them to make something like Batman, but bigger.

 

So B&M did.

 

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New for 1994 was Top Gun: The Jet Coaster, a 135 foot tall B&M invert with five inversions! It was the massive smash to ring in the new decade the park sorely needed and brought much needed life to a previously undeveloped portion of the park.

 

1995 was largely forgettable, but near the end of the season a large plot of land was cleared on one side of Evergreen Racer. Just off the heels of a large investment, Evergreen Gardens was gearing up for yet another one.

 

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And so Hurler came to the park in 1996! A clone of the rides at Carowinds, Kings Dominion, Pacific Adventure and Kings Peninsula, it was an International Coasters, Inc. creation that stood 83 feet tall and reached speeds of up to 50 miles an hour on what was in hindsight a fairly lacking double out and back layout. It was another big hit back then, of course, but as for how well it aged…….well, let’s compare my thoughts on my first ride on Opening Day 1998  and my last at Evergreen Coasterfest in 2014 (the year before the coaster was removed):

 

1998: “Wow! I mean, it was slightly bumpy in a few places but overall it’s not that bad!”

 

2014: “Oh God! We’re going to die in a pile of rotten lumber!”

 

Granted, the other Hurlers weren’t all that smooth either. But the other Hurlers didn’t make a lady who rode both this and Psyclone in its last year of operation think Psyclone was an improvement. They didn’t regularly close in the afternoon because the control box was a temperamental piece of shit. They didn’t make RMC take one look at them and say “No bueno”.

 

This Hurler was flawed. I don’t know if corners were cut in construction, or maybe the wood was cheap, or maybe something happened that screwed it up like Psyclone…..but it was bad. Mercifully, it isn’t around anymore, and that’s a good thing. Evergreen 360 is a wonderful replacement.

 

Also, I don’t have photos, but also in 1996 the park renamed Smurf Mountain Falls to Congo Falls to tie into the “Congo” movie that had come out the previous year. This name lasted the rest of Paramount’s tenure.

 

Near the end of 1996 even more land was cleared near Hurler and the Racer. Some of us thought it was ANOTHER new coaster. Others thought........differently.

 

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New for 1997 was Crocodile Dundee’s Boomerang Bay, a brand new waterpark! Containing 11 water slides and several other water attractions, Boomerang Bay brought a refreshing experience to the park that was sorely needed in the days when the Washington sun could work ya over…..and was more of a liability in the many more days when it was overcast, raining, or both.

 

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Foreground: The Great Barrier Reef wave pool. Background: the waterpark’s main slide complex, which includes Tasmanian Typhoon, Down Under Thunder and Didgeridoo Falls. DUT is interesting as it is a WhiteWater West Boomerango, I believe the first of its kind. Unlike some other Paramount prototypes, which I am not deliberately aiming at HyperSonic XLC, this one was a decent success and is still operating today.

 

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Jackaroo Landing is the waterpark’s kids splash area. As you can see it includes four different mini slides and the required tipping bucket. There’s a lot of water in that bucket you know, apparently more so than usual versions of these.

 

1998 was an off year, but it sadly saw the end of the Bayern Kurve. It may have made a good home at a small mom and pop park had Paramount not cut it up and scrapped everything but the cars. Oh well.

 

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With a large crater now in the middle of Evergreen Peak, the race was on to find out what exactly the replacement of such a beloved ride would be. Theories ranged from a drop tower (not quite yet) to a prototype S&S coaster (No, HyperSonic was never intended for Evergreen Gardens, no it would not have fit) and even to a go-kart track.

 

Yeah. That last one was the right one.

 

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And so 1999 brought Days of Thunder to the park. It was a go-kart track. It was good fun, yes, but I wish it hadn’t come at the cost of the Bayern Kurve. At least the spare parts from that helped the Kennywood and CGA versions along….for a while.

 

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Up next - the Noughties! More rides! More coasters! More ownership changes! All at Evergreen Gardens!

 

With regards,

 

MsLafayette

 

---

 

Yay! It's finally out! The 2000's are going to be a fun one. BTW, see if you can guess what type of ride "Evergreen 360" is!

Edited by 40 Minute Washboard Solo
Fixed text color
  • Like 1

"Bender, that was the best forty-minute washboard solo I've ever heard. The parts where I was awake blew my mind."

Beck, Futurama, "Bendin' in the Wind"

 

Posted

I really LOVE the way you've written this up! This is a journey... showing the evolution of the park as an organic thing rather than a flat, "Here it is. What do you think?" It makes it feel more real... more a natureal place that grew with outside forces defining its ultimate fate.

I can't wait to read more! <3

The idea is to keep an open mind... just not so open that your brains fall out. - Harry Anderson

Posted
6 hours ago, RobertaME said:

a flat, "Here it is. What do you think?"

Yeah....Sometimes I'm worried that I'll end up falling into that trap (again, still learning the ropes - hence why the Invert isn't fully CS'd), in fact that was a reason why Forest Frontiers got pushed back (it would have started in 2007 and been akin to Fraroc's Gateway Park updates on TPR). Attempting to avoid that as much as possible is why I chose this format to tell EG's story, but I'm still worried it'll look poor in comparison to other parks.

Thanks for liking it! The 2000s will be fun, but I can't wait to get to modern day. So far I'm up to 1999 in park files.

  • Thanks 1

"Bender, that was the best forty-minute washboard solo I've ever heard. The parts where I was awake blew my mind."

Beck, Futurama, "Bendin' in the Wind"

 

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