JACKSON — Before it became a destination for families and thrill-seekers, Six Flags Great Adventure was just a vision.

When Great Adventure opened on July 1, 1974, businessman Warner LeRoy — who later bought and renovated the Tavern on the Green and Russian Tea Room restaurants in New York — saw it as just one phase of a multi-park resort, something that would rival Walt Disney World.

Forty years later, the park is preparing to open its newest major attraction, a 415-foot-tall behemoth known as Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom, which will become the tallest and fastest drop ride in the world.

“The park has changed a great deal over the past 40 years, but one thing has remained the same,” Six Flags spokeswoman Kristin Siebeneicher said in an e-mail. “Six Flags Great Adventure is a place to create happy, lasting memories. We are proud to celebrate 40 years of thrills here in New Jersey.”

But while the park today is much grander than the “Great Adventure” that opened in 1974, in many ways it never became the resort that LeRoy had envisioned, unofficial park historian Harry Applegate said in an e-mail yesterday.

“(LeRoy) acquired around 1,500 acres of land in Jackson because he wanted it to be a remote wonderland built amongst a mature forest with buffers from the outside world,” said Applegate, curator of GreatAdventureHistory.com.

The initial plans called for a theme park and resort that LeRoy hoped would one day rival Walt Disney World. The entire acreage would be developed into different attractions with separate admissions, including a safari, an aquatic-themed park, sports and recreation park and an “Enchanted Forest,” a fantasy park where everything was created larger-than-life to resemble a child’s perspective.

But after escalating costs building the safari and Enchanted Forest — the only parts of the park open in 1974 — other attractions were simply built as subsections of the Enchanted Forest, gradually turning into the park that employs more than 4,000 people each summer and drew 2.8 million visitors in 2013.

Some aspects of the original Great Adventure still remain dotted throughout the park today, including the log flume and Runaway Mine Train rides and the Sky Ride, a holdover from the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Throughout the park, the small attractions have been replaced with roller coasters and thrill rides, including Nitro, El Toro and Batman: The Ride.

Although they are often overshadowed by those major attractions, much of LeRoy’s vision still remains: Visitors can still walk from the Big Wheel to the Skyway, and travel 104 feet in the air across the park to the Runaway Mine Train roller coaster, all major selling points when Great Adventure opened in 1974.

And while LeRoy sold his last stake in Great Adventure in 1993, Six Flags Entertainment Corp. has had a decades-long branding agreement with Time Warner and Warner Bros., the movie studio his grandfather, Harry, founded.

“Six Flags has always been about innovation,” Siebeneicher said. “It began in the 1960s in Texas with the concept of pay one price for admission and evolved through rides like the log flume (a Six Flags original) and our famous roller coasters, shows and animal attractions. We know that providing a clean, safe, fast and friendly environment with innovative attractions will keep our guests coming back year after year.”

Contact Mike Davis at (609) 989-5708 or mdavis@njtimes.com.

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