Kentucky Kingdom
— — a small park that kept finding its way back.
Not only on a wall.
“An amusement park on the south side of Louisville, on the same grounds as the Kentucky State Fair, opened in 1987 and rebuilt more than once. It went dark in 2009 when the previous operator walked away, then reopened in 2014 under a local group led by Ed Hart. Lightning Run, the orange steel coaster that the park staked its return on, still draws lines on summer afternoons. Hurricane Bay, the water-park side, keeps families coming back. It is a working Kentucky park — Derby flags out by the gate, the Expo Center cattle barns next door, the smell of fairground food carrying across the asphalt.
Kentucky Kingdom, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Kentucky Kingdom is an amusement park on the Kentucky Exposition Center grounds in south Louisville, beside Interstate 264 and the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. The park first opened on 23 May 1987, closed within two years, was reopened by local operator Ed Hart in 1990, and then bought by Premier Parks and absorbed into Six Flags as Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom in 1998. Six Flags closed the park after the 2009 season; a partnership led again by Hart reopened it on 24 May 2014. The complex covers roughly fifty-eight acres and pairs the dry park with the Hurricane Bay water park under one ticket.
The park operates a seasonal calendar tied to the Louisville school year. The main gates open in early May, run daily through the summer break, and shift to weekends-only from late August into a Halloween-themed October. Hurricane Bay opens with the dry side and typically closes a few weeks earlier in September. The park sits at roughly the latitude of Saint Louis, so July afternoons regularly run above thirty-two degrees Celsius and the water park carries most of the crowd. Spring weekends and the first weeks of September are the quietest. The Kentucky State Fair takes over the surrounding Expo grounds for ten days in mid-August.
Single-day admission is in line with regional parks, and a season pass shared between Kentucky Kingdom and Hurricane Bay has been the local family default since the 2014 reopening. The park's signature ride is Lightning Run, a Chance Rides hyper-GTX steel coaster that opened with the relaunch in 2014; Storm Chaser, a Rocky Mountain Construction hybrid that replaced the older wooden Twisted Twins, opened in 2016 and tops the published thrill list. Parking is on the Expo Center lots and an Expo parking fee applies on most days; the TARC city bus serves the gate from downtown Louisville.