Rocky Point Rides

The Corkscrew’s Wild Ride

The iconic roller coaster has a new name, and a new home across the country, but it’s still the same ride that thrilled a generation of Rhode Islanders. 

The Corkscrew was a sensation when it first came to Rocky Point for the 1984 season. It was big news: Little Rocky Point was getting a serious roller coaster, a state-of-the-art engineering marvel that flipped you upside down through a loop and hurtled you through two corkscrews before coming to a screeching, breathless halt.

If you’ve missed it, well, you’re in luck. You can still ride it at the Wild Waves Theme and Water Park in Federal Way, Washington, just a half-hour south of Seattle. 

The Wild Thing at the Wild Waves Theme and Water Park in Washington state. Courtesy of Wild Waves Theme and Water Park

It has a brand-new paint scheme (blue, red and yellow instead of the OG red and white) and a new name (the Wild Thing), but it’s the same stomach-churning, exhilarating ride we all remember fondly.

Just ask David Bettencourt. He rode the Wild Thing while making his 2007 documentary, You Must Be This Tall: The Story of Rocky Point Park. Well, once it stopped raining, anyway. 

“It was given a new paint job and a new name, but it was still the same old whiplash-inducing ride,” he says. “At the very end of the ride, there was a jolt — you’re excited you’re still alive. I remembered it instantly.”

The Corkscrew in its Rocky Point days. Photo by John Caruthers

Like many other Rhode Islanders, Bettencourt was impressed when the park splurged on such a sophisticated attraction.

“I loved the Corkscrew,” he says. “When they installed it, I was blown away. I rode it as soon as I was old enough.”

After Rocky Point closed in 1995, most of the rides were auctioned off. After an initial offer from a Louisiana water park fell through, the Corkscrew was sold to Enchanted Parks (now Wild Waves Theme and Water Park) for $805,000, according to an August 1997 Providence Journal article.

It’s been there since June 1997, thrilling generations of Washington residents much the same way it delighted hundreds of thousands of brave Rhode Islanders for over a decade. 

The House of Horrors

Courtesy of Warwick Historical Society/Don D’Amato collection.

This ride first opened in 1963 as the Castle of Terror in the park’s old Fun House. Long lines were common at the attraction, where riders smashed through a set of swinging doors into a black-lit dungeon with two levels of cartoonish torture scenes and jump-scares. It was renamed the House of Horrors in 1970 and the giant Viking that menaced riders inside was moved to the ride’s exterior, slaying a green dragon with his enormous sword. (Can anyone else still smell this ride, or is it just me?).

The Flume

Courtesy of Warwick Historical Society/Don D’Amato collection

With its sixty-foot drop and constant long lines, the Flume was one of the park’s most popular rides. Who can forget settling into a log and taking off for that first gentle hill — just a precursor to the thrill to come at the end — before floating off into the trees followed by that thrilling descent? It’s hard to decide what was better: being on the Flume and getting soaked or standing near the bottom of the drop and getting drenched by the falling logs. You can still take a spin on the Flume today: It’s at the Enchanted Kingdom in the Philippines, where riders know it as the Jungle Log Jam. 

The Skyliner 

Photo by Mark Thompson

The Skyliner was an easygoing alternative to the park’s other wild offerings, with ski-lift-type chairs that glided over the park, giving riders a scenic — if a little terrifying — view of the rides and people below. It was installed in 1966 and you can still find its towers at the park. If you stand at the raised concrete platform, squint a little and swap out the lush grass underneath for asphalt, you can recall it in its heyday: people hopping on and off of the swinging chairs, sailing over the mini-golf course — or, in later years, the Freefall — before starting the ascent to the turnaround spot high in the dense trees overhead. 

The Freefall

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Photograph Collection/Providence Public Library.

The Freefall may have had one of the shortest runs in the park: It only ran from 1988 until the park closed in 1995. But for those who were brave enough to take the eighty-seven-foot plunge, it was unforgettable. You could see the structure — and hear the post-drop screams — from almost anywhere in the park.

The Musik Express

Courtesy of the You Must Be This Tall collection

This groovy ride was a spectacle of lights, speed and screaming tunes — it had its own deejay spinning rock favorites behind a wall of glass. Riders would go forward at crazy-fast speeds before the ride slowed and went in reverse. Whichever way you went, whoever sat closest to the edge was squished every time. Still miss it? Put on your best bell bottoms and grab a can of Narragansett’s Musik Express IPA, a pale ale devoted to the best ride (in my humble opinion) to ever grace Rocky Point. 

BONUS: The Saltwater Pool 

Courtesy of the You Must Be This Tall collection.

It was a spectacular site: an Olympic-sized swimming pool that came into your vision on the right side of the park as you drove in, with diving boards galore and hundreds of patrons splashing about in the summer heat.

Built in the 1930s, the saltwater pool hosted tryouts for the 1936 Summer Olympics. It was damaged in the Hurricane of 1938 and rebuilt afterward but closed for good in the 1980s. You can still see its remnants today: Faded blue concrete slabs mark the outline of where it once stood. 

The park’s shore has long attracted visitors. Before the pool came along in the ’30s, a bath house abutted the beach where sunseekers could rent swimsuits and stow their gear and beach supplies.