One should never forget
Baltimore's
Six Flags Power Plant.
Or maybe one should. It was an attempt by Six Flags to capitalize
on the early 1980's tourist boom in Baltimore's
Inner Harbor; it came
too late to meet the boom, and it completely misjudged the nature of Baltimore
tourism.
The Power Plant was an urban museum theme park, centered around a fictitious
crackpot inventor, Phineas T. Flagg. It opened in 1985, inside a
former power plant on Pier 4, and closed
less than two years later.
Hardly a surprise, given that most of the attractions were hokey turn-of-the-century
style carnival exhibits, with a bit of Jules Verne thrown in for good
measure.
Landmark USA still admits to having designed the Power Plant; the timeline
at their website
http://www.landmarkusa.com/company/default.asp?fl=0&pg=timeline
lists some of the attractions:
-
The Magic Lantern Theatre
-
The Sensorium 4-D Experience
-
The Laboratory of Wonders
-
The Circus of the Mysterious
I went there once, right after it opened. The Sensorium was rather
interesting, a 3-D movie theater (it worked with polarized sunglasses)
whose seats moved and shook to simulate motion, and sprayed
scents at
the viewers in the row behind. I don't recall a thing about the other
attractions, except that they were things you might want to experience
once. I could see
Phineas T. Barnum calling out "
This Way
to the Egress!"
The Power Plant also featured a nightclub, P. T. Flagg's, which
lasted for about five years after the original museum closed. As
I recall, it gradually took over some of the space of the original Power
Plant. I recall secondhand; I never went there.
The Power Plant building was redeveloped in the later 1990's. It now
houses an ESPNZone (the first one), a Hard Rock Cafe, and an immense
Barnes and Noble bookstore. I've never been to any of those, either.