When Joe Leonard Crashed a Flying Saucer into Kings Island

Leonard’s journey to the project began when he was the set designer for the park’s live shows in the days when Kings Productions was still the owner. After the Paramount takeover, Leonard was moved to Charlotte and put on the company’s Design and Entertainment team. When the opportunity came around to design a ride for his home park in 1994, Leonard jumped at the opportunity to make a pitch—although the initial ride had a much different theme.

“Originally the design was slated to be a Star Trek experience,” says Leonard. “I had a whole presentation of that attraction being a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine experience. The idea was Quark [the character who owns the bar] is running something called ‘Quark Adventures,’ so people go out and can see the ship and then take a ride through the wormhole when it was stable. But when the wormhole wasn’t stable, there was no telling what would happen. So right as you were getting launched, alarms start going off and the gates would open, and they’d launch out into space.”

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Knott's News: Gotta be honest, Deep Space Nine is my favorite Star Trek series, so this concept sounds amazing to me. What eventually made it is pretty darn cool too. I really just miss the ambition of Paramount Parks.