California’s Great America Closing for Good in 2027
Untold numbers of Bay Area residents who grew up visiting California’s Great America amusement park in Santa Clara will have only one more season to soak in the memories.
Capping years of uncertainty about when the park might close after the ground it sits on was sold several years ago, the park’s ownership group, Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, announced Friday that Great America’s last day will be Sept. 6, 2027 — Labor Day.
The park, which houses well-loved coasters and rides like Flight Deck (formerly Top Gun), Gold Striker and Drop Tower (aka Drop Zone), will mark its final year of operation with a “Farewell Season honoring more than 50 years of memories, traditions and iconic attractions,” according to a company statement.
“For more than five decades, this Santa Clara theme park has brought people together, created family traditions and served as the backdrop for unforgettable memories,” park manager Dave Vosejpka said in the statement.
“I am beyond frustrated,” Santa Clara Councilmember and Mayor-elect Karen Hardy said Friday afternoon in an interview. In the 1980s, Hardy said she lived close enough to the park to hear “the train whistle and bells” emanating from the park while she was at home.
“I’m a grandmother. I love to take my grandkids there and took my own kids there. And it is the only big park in the South Bay and Peninsula area, that’s it. This is the big amusement park. So of course we’re all frustrated,” Hardy said.
The park was built and first opened by Marriott in 1976 as part of the nation’s Bicentennial celebration, and Six Flags estimates it has hosted “tens of millions of guests” since.
The final season will open in March, according to the company.
“As guests come together for one final season, the park will honor its legacy and celebrate the place it has held in the lives of so many guests through experiences in the park and stories shared across its digital and social channels,” the statement said.
The park has been on borrowed time since 2022, when then-owner Cedar Fair sold the property to industrial real estate giant Prologis for $310 million, in large part to pay down $2 billion in debt across the parent company’s portfolio.
The deal included an annual lease agreement that would run through 2028 and allowed for an optional five-year extension, which the amusement park company said it opted not to pursue, though it didn’t offer details about the decision. In a third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, the corporation said it had a net loss of $366 million on net revenues of $1.17 billion.
Prologis hasn’t said publicly what its plans for the site are yet, but it could potentially include logistics and warehousing space, data centers or advanced manufacturing sites as the artificial intelligence industry booms in the area.
“And that is obviously a big concern to a lot of residents,” Hardy said about the potential for data centers or more industrial development at the site. “That’s the last thing they want to see there.”
The 112-acre plot of land, which sits between Levi’s Stadium and Mission College, was for decades owned by Santa Clara and leased to the park, but following the dissolution of former redevelopment agencies across the state, the city was forced to sell the property.
Cedar Fair bought the land from the city in 2019, and company leadership touted the purchase at the time as proof of the company’s “long-term commitment to enhancing and expanding California’s Great America.”
The two amusement park giants Cedar Fair and Six Flags merged in 2024 to create the current corporation.
Last year, activist investor group JANA Partners announced that it partnered with NFL star Travis Kelce as well as two business executives to buy 9% of the company, and a plan to focus on “opportunities to enhance shareholder value.”
“Because we don’t own the land anymore, we don’t have as much say, but we do have some say,” Hardy said.
Hardy said she has asked Prologis executives in the past about preserving the much newer and recently remodeled water park portion of Great America, and potentially saving the historic carousel from the park entrance. But it’s unclear if any of that will come to pass.
When the park closes its gates for the last time, Hardy said, “I’ll need a Kleenex box.”