Six Flag's Power Plant

Poor Baltimore...we've wanted a theme park to call our own for so many years. From time to time rumors have popped up that somebody, somewhere was building a huge new theme park near the Inner Harbor...but that's never happened. There were actual plans in the late 70's for a world class theme park to be build in nearby Jessup, but the people of Howard County fought hard to see that it never happened. Baltimore was even at one time a major consideration for Walt Disney's "Disneyland East" project...but we all know how that turned out!

At some point in the mid-80's the Six Flags company announced that they were constructing a major indoor theme park in Baltimore's Inner Harbor in an old abandoned power plant building that sat right on the water. The name of the new park...SIX FLAG'S POWER PLANT. Boy, oh boy were we excited...and boy, oh boy were we disappointed right from the get-go! Instead of anything resembling an attraction at a "real" amusement park, The Power Plant was filled with shows only slightly more compelling than a Showbiz Pizza Place.

There was THE DUNGEON OF THE MYSTERIOUS, where you took an elevator to the basement and a leprechaun took you on a tour of some silly haunted house scenes. Or you could visit THE LABORATORY OF SCIENTIFIC WONDERS where you took an elevator to the top floor and some robot voice took you on a tour of some silly inventions that made no sense what-so-ever! There was also a theatre with mysterious magical live action shows like THE FABULOUS 50'S REVUE and THE BUGS BUNNY STORY.

The prized attraction of The Power Plant was THE SENSORIUM, a 3-D movie that had no point to it...like all good theme park 3-D movies. What set this 3-D movie apart was the addition of "smell". Several times throughout the movie, the chair in front of you would loudly blast some sort of scent up your nose making you cough and gasp for air and drowning out the soundtrack to the movie. After a few months of blasting smelly air, the overpowering smell of pine and skunk hit you the moment you walked into the theatre, before the movie even started.

THE POWER PLANT didn't last very long. Six Flags continued to own the building and turned it into a night club called P.T. Flagg's. That didn't last very long either. The building is now the proud home of the first ESPN Zone, a Barnes & Knoble, and a Hard Rock Cafe. Now you can relive all the excitement or see what you missed courtesy of YouTube.com...