Facing possible closure after the 2027 season due to an expiring lease, the Santa Clara theme park still has plenty of potential for a second life.
Growing up as a Chicago-area native who went to Six Flags Great America in Gurnee as a kid, my immediate interest and fascination in roller coasters led me to look at what kind of rides lived at other parks across the country.
That interest was particularly piqued when I discovered the existence of California’s Great America, which opened alongside its Six Flags counterpart as a Marriott-owned in 1976 with the two same roller coasters – Whizzer and Turn of the Century, the latter of which would be revamped at both parks in 1980 as Demon.
From there, the two parks began to diverge on their paths, only sharing similarities of Demon and a large carousel sitting at the park’s main entrance. While the Gurnee park would eventually fall under Six Flags ownership by 1984, the Santa Clara park went through multiple different eras of ownership.
Under Marriott’s ownership until 1985, California’s Great America passed through the hands of the city of Santa Clara and Kings Entertainment before being sold to Paramount in 1992, who owned the park alongside other properties such as Kings Island, Carowinds and Canada’s Wonderland until 2006, when the now-defunct Cedar Fair took over ownership.
Today, California’s Great America is under the ownership of the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, falling under the same corporate umbrella as both Six Flags Great America in Gurnee and its rival park, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo. Following the merger of Six Flags and Cedar Fair in July 2024, the future of California’s Great America has only grown more uncertain.
Currently, California’s Great America is slated to close after the 2027 season, due to an expiring lease on the park’s land – which Cedar Fair had sold to San Francisco-based real estate investment firm Prologis in 2022.
Prologis has since leased the land of California’s Great America on a deal that is set to expire in June 2028, with an option to potentially extend the lease until 2033 – though all current indications suggest the park will shutter after next season.
California’s Great America is far from a superstar park within the now-massive chain of Six Flags properties. While parks like Cedar Point, Kings Island, Six Flags Magic Mountain and Six Flags Great Adventure routinely get large investments and new rides, California’s Great America was already an afterthought to Cedar Fair at the time of the merger.
The park’s lineup of nine roller coasters is certainly not the most impressive in the chain – but it’s also far from the worst, headlined by the Rocky Mountain Construction single-rail RailBlazer and the GCI woodie Gold Striker, the latter of which is easily among the best wooden coasters in the U.S.
Since adding RailBlazer in 2018, the park’s attractions have remained stagnant, and fans certainly aren’t expecting any additions with the park, which is next-door neighbors to the home of the San Francisco 49ers in Levi’s Stadium, facing down an imminent closure.
But what if Six Flags Entertainment Corporation adopted a different path to preserve the historic park that has long been a fixture of the South Bay?
Since the 2024 merger, Six Flags has not been shy about trimming what was an absolutely gargantuan portfolio of properties, opting to part ways with several of the chain’s smaller parks.
Six Flags America, located in the Washington, D.C. metro area in Maryland, permanently closed after the 2025 season, while the chain moved to sell Michigan’s Adventure, Six Flags St. Louis, Worlds of Fun, La Ronde, Valleyfair, Six Flags Great Escape and Schlitterbahn Galveston to Enchanted Parks, who has maintained operation of the seven parks.
Since trimming the fat (adopting the corporate lingo to fit the topic), Six Flags has also identified which parks are going to get the brunt of investments and attention, reinstating park presidents to 10 properties that the company deems to be the most critical to its overall success:
- Canada’s Wonderland: Vaughan, Ontario
- Carowinds: Charlotte, North Carolina/Fort Mill, South Carolina
- Cedar Point: Sandusky, Ohio
- Kings Island: Mason, Ohio
- Knott’s Berry Farm: Buena Park, California
- Six Flags Great Adventure: Jackson, New Jersey
- Six Flags Great America: Gurnee, Illinois
- Six Flags Magic Mountain: Valencia, California
- Six Flags Over Georgia: Austell, Georgia
- Six Flags Over Texas: Arlington, Texas
While Six Flags seems eager to continue adding to and building upon both of their Southern California parks, the two Northern California parks remain an afterthought – with Discovery Kingdom not anticipated to receive an influx of new attractions anytime soon.
Also absent on that list are a small handful of properties that do have top-dollar attractions and attract solid crowds, but are still viewed as less worthy of the chain’s flagship additions – such as Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio, Six Flags New England in Agawam, Mass. and Kings Dominion in Doswell. Va.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that the closure of California’s Great America would open the door to the company fully focusing on Discovery Kingdom as its NorCal park, with Discovery Kingdom perhaps inheriting some of CGA’s defunct rides if/when the park closes – but that solution isn’t quite as simple as it sounds.
Even taking space constraints out of the picture (with the wildlife areas in Discovery Kingdom taking up a large portion of the park), local building restrictions prevent any roller coaster from exceeding 150 feet in height.
While this alone wouldn’t prevent any ride from California’s Great America taking the trip north to Vallejo, it would almost certainly prevent further major investment when it comes to getting one of the chain’s flagship rides that often end up at one of the aforementioned focus parks.
With no such height restrictions at California’s Great America, it would almost make more sense for the Santa Clara park to serve as the company’s Bay Area hub, as opposed to Discovery Kingdom – which, as things stand now with the park’s current attractions, is arguably still a weaker park than CGA.
Although this feels like fighting for the A’s to stay in Oakland after ground was already broken on the new stadium in Las Vegas, it’s worth acknowledging that closing a historic park in a major metro area that also happens to be among the wealthiest in the country may turn out to be a bad business move!
Taking the park’s impending closure out of the question, there is plenty of space and opportunity to revamp CGA from within if Six Flags chose to either extend the lease or simply buy the park’s land back – the latter of which is of course a mere pipe dream.
If CGA wasn’t staring at an imminent closure, the park’s rides would be looked at much differently. While RailBlazer, Gold Striker and the B&M invert Flight Deck are all excellent attractions that can find a place in any theme park, there are plenty of good opportunities to improve elsehwere in the park.
Whether it would be inheriting relocated rides or taking in new coasters altogether, coasters such as The Grizzly, an absolute snoozer of a woodie, and Patriot, a former B&M stand-up that was converted into a floorless coaster, serve as great candidates to be removed in favor of rides that are perhaps a bit more thrilling and contemporary.
It’s not as if CGA would need to greatly expand beyond what it currently has, as there’s absolutely both space and a need for smaller theme parks – both within the Six Flags chain and the country in general.
When it comes to those smaller parks, there are still a few within the chain that would perhaps make sense for Six Flags to sell off – at least making more sense than abandoning an old park in a major market.
Chief among these is Dorney Park in Allentown, Pa., a smaller park of just eight roller coasters that recently received a new dive coaster in 2024. Despite being a small park, Six Flags is almost certainly hanging on to Dorney Park due to being overwhelmed in Pennsylvania by both Hersheypark and Kennywood – although with the chain’s dominance in most other metro areas, it feels like there wouldn’t be too much to lose.
Outside of Dorney Park, the chain is likely sitting where it wants to be in terms of its properties. Six Flags Darien Lake and Frontier City are already both owned by Enchanted Parks, and are merely operated by Six Flags under lease. While Six Flags could eventually decide to end their leasing agreements with these parks, it doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of money to be saved there – at least relatively speaking.
While part of me hopes that Discovery Kingdom would inherit CGA’s rides upon the latter’s closure, I honestly would prefer it if Discovery Kingdom was the park that was being shuttered – especially considering the latter’s height restrictions and the fact that loud roller coasters really don’t belong in the same space as wild animals.
In all likelihood, California’s Great America will serve up its final rides in 2027, leaving enthusiasts hoping that the park’s signature rides will be preserved somewhere. Even if they are, a generation of families throughout Northern California will be left without a place that offered 50 years of countless memories and fun.
If Saturday ends up being my only visit ever to the park, I’m glad I got to experience even just a single day of those 50+ years.
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