The Power Plant Is Coming

A while back I was digging through stuff in my mom's basement, looking for material for the ol' blog. Right here we've got a little piece of Baltimore history that I found from the Wednesday, December 14, 1983 edition of The Evening Sun. This article announces that plans are underway for the "conversion of the old Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. power plant into an indoor, turn-of-the-century entertainment complex." Boy, was Baltimore excited when Six Flags announced they were coming to town. (This was long before there were 13 Six Flags parks in every state of the union.) Six Flags was bringing to town people that helped to build Magic Mountain, The National Air and Space Museum and even Epcot Center!

I guess the project was off to a rocky start from the get-go seeing as how the whole place was themed around a fictional character named Prof. Phineas Flagg and in the article introducing the park to the public the Six Flags director of communications refers to Prof. Flagg as "just a made up character!" Way to stand behind your product there old Six Flags! That's like standing infront of a ride at Disney World and telling people, "These pirates are just pretend! They're made up! They're not real! Neither are those dolls over there singing It's a Small World...they're not real either. It's all just made up!"

Anyhow, as you may know the ill-conceived Power Plant theme park in Baltimore's Inner Harbor didn't last very long. It's kind of ironic that Disney moved into the very same building years later to open it's first ESPN Zone.

You can click the article to enlarge it.