People who lived near the Memphis fairgrounds in the 1970s got used to a very strange sound. The park would close for the night, the last visitors would go home, the gates would be locked — and then, hours later in the dark, they’d hear the rumble of the roller coaster starting up again.
The lights would come back on. The rides would run. And there would be almost nobody inside. The park had been rented, from midnight until dawn, by one customer: Elvis Presley.
He couldn’t do what everyone else did. If Elvis Presley turned up at an amusement park at two in the afternoon, there would be no amusement park left within ten minutes — just a crowd. So he found a solution that only he could afford. He paid for the whole thing. He’d bring his family, his friends, and his girlfriend, and they’d have the run of the place: the Ferris wheel, the carousel, the games, the lot, with nobody watching and no queue for anything.
He did it for years. One record has him renting the Memphis Fairgrounds amusement park for his entire group as far back as July 19, 1962.
The Abandoned History of Libertyland: Elvis Favorite Theme Park: | Expedition Extinct
And he had a favorite. It was a wooden roller coaster built in the 1920s called the Pippin — later renamed the Zippin Pippin — and Elvis loved it so much he publicly called it his favorite ride.
He didn’t ride it once and move on either. Accounts from Memphis describe him going round and round that wooden track, over and over, in the middle of the night, for as long as he wanted. Imagine being the ride operator on that shift.
Then there’s the last time, and it’s the one that stays with you. In August 1977, Elvis rented the park — by then renamed Libertyland — one final time, for his nine-year-old daughter Lisa Marie, who was visiting. They stayed on the rides until dawn. It was one of the last times father and daughter were together. He died that same month.
Elvis’s Roller Coaster – the Zippin Pippin
The park itself didn’t survive. Libertyland struggled financially for years and closed for good on October 29, 2005. The site is now a youth sports complex. But the Zippin Pippin was too famous to scrap, and when the park’s contents went to auction, a couple of Memphis fans bid on it — they weren’t allowed to buy just one car, so they bid on the entire roller coaster and won it for $2,500.
And here is the lovely ending. Elvis’s favorite roller coaster still runs. It was rebuilt at Bay Beach Amusement Park in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where it reopened in 2010 — and it’s still carrying passengers today. A ride costs about a dollar. So the wooden coaster that the King of Rock and Roll rode alone in the dark, hour after hour, with the whole park to himself, is now something any family can queue up for on a summer afternoon for pocket change.