King Louie’s Playland at Kentucky Kingdom serves as the park’s kiddie section. It has a total of 14 attractions with only 3 not being built by Zamperla. Kids can take a relaxing ride on Big Foot Trucks or have an exciting ride on Zeppelin. Whatever the taste they will find something here to enjoy. However, the height restrictions and lack of a kid coaster do take their toll.
King Louie’s Playland at Kentucky Kingdom Experience and History
King Louie’s Playland can be found approaching midway into the park. Pass up Lightning Run and then look to your right. It’s a pretty impressive looking kids’ park. Most have a musical theme, and have been well kept by the park maintenance crew.
King Louie’s Playland was first opened in 1990 when Ed Hart successfully reopened the park. It did have a name change until1998 when the Six Flags corporation took it over. During this time it got converted to the Looney Tunes Movie Town. You can still see that some of the rides were originally designed with WB characters in mind. The park fell on hard times when its parent company hit bankruptcy. This also coincided with a tragedy at the park on their Superman Tower of Power ride. Ed Hart then again came in and saved the day! Kentucky Kingdom reopened to the public in 2002 and King Louie’s Playland reopened with its proper name.
King Louie’s Playland at Kentucky Kingdom: The Best rides
We have a tie for our favorite ride at King Louie’s Playland. Both offer a very different experience. First up is Big Foot Trucks which lets kids take the steering wheel of their own monster truck and take a drive. These kinds of rides are usually a drive around a small compact badly themed piece of land. Instead, you will find a beautiful piece of land that offers a solid ride time. Next up is Rock-A-Bye Swing that is like a swing from a playground but lets everyone sit together and no pushing! The experience is very fun and a little more intense than you would think.
Just slightly less impressive is our next two. First up is the extremely inventive-looking Flutterfly. Kids and adults get in these fantasy-inspired contraptions and peddle their way to fun. One of the most unique kiddie rides we have ever seen. Lastly, we have Up Up and Away. Kids are able to climb into a balloon and go up up and away all the while spinning. They can also make their own balloon spin more by turning a wheel. It is a great time that lets them choose how intense of an experience they want to have.
The Middle Pack
For the middle pack, we have five diverse rides. Whirl-A-Round Swings almost made the Best list but just barely missed the mark. Still, this is one of the best rides of this type we have ever seen. Kids will love the speed and the adults will love to take pictures! Next up is Jump Around which lets kids pretend to be frogs leaping. Just about every kid park around has one of these but for good reason. The bounce of each rotation makes this a good ride.
The one with the most potential that just didn’t get followed through on is Musical Carousel. Easily our favorite-looking ride listed here but in ride experience and missed potential it misses the mark. Next up we have Pounce & Bounce which is a kiddie drop tower. Fun for what it is, but was stripped of theming. Great fun for a younger kids.
Last is a ride that is good fun but is the cheap version of the teacups rides. We really liked Mad Hatter but since we have ridden the bigger models of this we walked away less impressed. If you aren’t a nitpicky theme park nerd, then you will probably like this more than we did.
Problematic Rides
We have had significant issues with the last three rides. In the should be good rides category we have Zeppelin and Rock n Roller. Zepplin is hard to consider a kid ride but they placed it in the kid park so we will judge it on that scale. It is a classic spinning ride. Rock n Roller is a spinning ride also that is just the kid version of the park’s Himalaya ride. Go around in a circle with bunny hills. We would like to give both of these good scores but they are kid rides with a minimum height restriction of 48 inches! To be fair that is to ride alone, and if they are under that they can ride with an adult companion. There should never be a situation where a kid ride has a height limit like Storm Chaser!
The only really problematic ride that isn’t because of height is Sun & Moon. A kids-size Ferris Wheel. It has two things against it. First is the fact that the park already has a great one that kids can also ride called Giant Wheel. The second is the loading and unloading process. It is one at a time. You spend more time getting on and off than actually having fun.
Final Verdict
King Louie’s Playland at Kentucky Kingdom is a great kid park. It has a pretty good selection of rides. What stands out is the number of unique ones they have. The ones that rock greatly outweigh the ones with issues. Our biggest complaint and the reason the score isn’t higher is what they don’t have. No kid’s park can be truly great without a coaster. The park does have Roller Skater which does serve as a kid coaster. But even that has a minimum height limit of 56 inches to ride alone! Still the collection for what is here, is solid. If this same collection of rides wasn’t hampered with constant height restrictions it would be a higher score. Because of these reasons, King Louie’s Playland gets a six and a half.
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