Phineas T. Flagg's Power Plant
Also Known As......
Six Flags Greatest Adventure (and Biggest Failure)
If you go to the harbor in Baltimore, and go over to the aquarium,
and you happen to look across the street, you'll see a big building
sitting waterfront, bearing the name The Power Plant (well, it did for
at least 10 years after the place closed, I don't know if it still does).
Contained within was perhaps the greatest gamble, the dumbest failure,
and the worst attraction ever devised by any company, Six Flags Phinneas
T. Flagg's Power Plant (aka Six Flags Power Plant).
Ok, perhaps I'm not giving this enough of a chance, but for a company like
Six Flags, that produces massive roller coasters, and some of the best rides
that this country has ever seen, its hard to believe that they would have
ever produced an attraction like this. The surprising part was it wasn't
half bad. It wasn't bad at all. It just needed a little work.
The Idea was simple enough. Earlier this century, a wacky scientist set
up shop along the waterfront here in little old Baltimore. His goal.....
well.....it wasn't exactly well defined. He wanted to devise a power source
to serve the entire nation, and that failed. At the same time, he created
a bunch of wacky inventions, which either served as attractions themselves,
or were contained within the tour of his lab. The best of these was the
time machine, which was nothing but a painted box hung from the ceiling,
that they claimed Professor Flagg never got to test out before he died, and
nobody had the courage to test since. But, it was only a display, and
was not a ride. It would have made an excellent simulator ride, but of course
this was only 1983 or so, and that type of technology simply wasn't availible.
It also had a few theaters, and circus performers throughout, as seen in
the above photo. I guess the best way to describe the inside of the place
would be Ringling Brothers Meets Three Mile Island.
As with all Six Falgs parks at the time, and still continuing to today,
one factor of this attraction was the Looney Toons.
If I remember correctly, they even had a show running at their park
Great Adventure at the time involving the Looney Toons, and that same show
was presented at the Power Plant also, with the Looney Toons dressed in
more scientific garb, as Bugs Bunny is in this photo below.
To summarize the inside of the attraction, there wasn't much except for
the tour, and two movies. One movie was in 3-d, while the other was
in smell-o-vision. While it wasn't the most exciting of attractions, it
was an attempt to make the Harbor a much more exciting place. Ultimately,
though, it can be seen that the Harbor does not need any help, as it is
a beautiful place in and of itself.
Six Flags Power Plant Forever