Memphisworld

Memphisworld is an amusement park located in Germantown, Tennessee. It is owned by Carwardine Parks.

Development
In 1984, the Memphis Entertainment Company began construction of their first ever park. Two years later, the park finished construction and it opened on July 4th, 1986.

Operation under MEC (1986-1995)
When it opened in 1986, Memphisworld featured six roller coasters.


 * The Memphis Screamer,
 * The Memphis Bobsled,
 * American Wildcat, which was later renamed to simply the Wildcat,
 * Jetliner, which is now the only Intamin Space Diver left in operation,
 * Whirlwind, which operated until 1999, and
 * The Flitzer, which operated until 1994.

The park's other attractions on opening day were:


 * The Vote Theater, an interactive movie theater which operated until 1993,
 * The Memphis Freefall, an Intamin 1st Gen FreeFall ride,
 * Earthquake, a HUSS Breakdance ride, and
 * The Floating Balloons, a Zamperla Balloon Race.

Premier Parks era (1996-1999)
In early 1996, Premier Parks assumed ownership of the park. MEC had gone belly up, having been the unfortunate victim of a massive money scandal.

In 1997, Mind Eraser opened, on a plot of land that was meant to be for a future hotel prior to MEC's bankruptcy.

Six Flags era (1999-2006)
In 1999, Premier Parks was purchased by Six Flags and the park was renamed to Six Flags Over Memphis in 2000.

Carwardine Parks era (2006-present)
In 2006, Carwardine Parks purchased the park. The name was changed back to Memphisworld for the 2007 season.

Trivia

 * Both of the movies were filmed in 1984 for a Laserdisc movie theater called Cine-Vote at Expo '85. After the fair ended, the films were moved to Memphisworld for 1986 season.
 * The park initially wanted to contact CCI to build Hurricane. For reasons still unknown years later, they ended up contacting RCCA (Roller Coaster Corporation of America) instead.
 * Memphis Comet took one year to relocate. In fact the ride was still under reconstruction when the park opened in 1986, so it opened halfway through 1986's season; to compensate and to attempt to hide the coaster, a temporary stage was set up.
 * When Adventure City’s Tree Top Racers arrived at the park in late 2013, the cars had literally been lost (That said, there is a possibility some of them ended up at Lakeside). So they decided to build new cars from scratch, modeled like Schiff mouse cars. Sadly, the new cars have T-Bars (ala Space Mountain at Walt Disney World) added to them, so there's less airtime.
 * Wildcat (formerly known as American Wildcat) was the first coaster to be constructed at the park.
 * When Playland's Corkscrew was sent to the park in 2020, the park initially wanted to rename it "Devil's Flight", as a reference/shout-out to Final Destination 3. However, a similar situation to Cedar Point's Banshee/Mantis controversy broke out and the ride was renamed to Vortex before opening.
 * This park is one of the few parks in the Carwardine Parks chain not to use a "Serpentine" family font, due to them reusing the retro logo from 1986, similar to Pizza Hut bringing back the 1974 logo in 2019. Up until early 2022, when they changed from 1986 logo to new 2022 logo.
 * While rebuilding Memphis Comet, one of the NAD trains was seen in storage and later displayed in the ride's queue line. They bought black and red striped D.H. Morgan trains to replace them.
 * Headrests were added in 1995, but were removed in 2007 due to roughness complaints.
 * In 1991, the park bought Wild Mouse cars from Conneaut Lake Park to replace the old Wild Mouse cars. However, these cars had their wheels slightly damaged in transit, so slight no one noticed it. This lead to the incident you see below, under Incidents.
 * After Memphis Thunderbolt's original PTC trains were replaced with Hurricane's Premier trains, the PTC trains were spotted sitting in the ride's spare track section, unused, for all of 2007 before being placed in storage during the offseason. Later, one of the trains was put on display in the ride's queue line and the other was dismantled, the separate cars being placed throughout the park and used as photo op spots.
 * For the 2021 season, the park brought some spare pieces of track from Racing at Bakken after that ride closed down to replace some old track pieces on Flitzer.

Gallery
see Memphisworld/Gallery

Incidents

 * On September 8, 1995, at 4:18 pm, a wheel on one of the Wild Mouse cars came loose after a huge drop. Luckily, no one was injured, but the ride itself was closed forever due to the fact that it was not only a maintenance nightmare but also because it was already on the chopping block. Things got worse, however, as during the off-season demolition of Wild Mouse, a member of the demolition crew (Caleb Walker, 39) fell from the 30 foot wooden support structure after a rainstorm made the wood wet, and "had his back broken into a million pieces". He later sued Memphis Entertainment Company for $1 million. The lawsuit was settled out of court as MEC was in the process of merging with Premier after a massive money scandal all but wiped out MEC's money reserves.