Six Flags Great Adventure and Wild Safari will combine into huge theme park

The same ticket will get visitors access to roller coasters and rhinos - and a closer look at exotic wildlife - in a 2013 revamping of Six Flags Great Adventure that its owners claim will create the world's largest theme park.

By combining the park's 350-acre Wild Safari and 160-acre traditional amusement area, Great Adventure will be about 10 acres larger than Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando, officials said Thursday at the Jackson Township, N.J., destination.

In the new Safari Off Road Adventure section, guests will interact with some of the 1,200 animals that had been seen in Wild Safari. Rather than traveling in their own vehicles, however, they will ride in staff-driven open-air trucks capable of carrying about 30 passengers. The trucks can go off the beaten path to find animals in their habitats, officials said.

Safari Off Road Adventure's theme will focus on the Wilds family, a fictitious group of world explorers, Six Flags officials said. Guests will enter the safari area through a rustic loading station filled with artifacts from the Wilds' jaunts, then board park vehicles.

In Camp Aventura, the main stop on their ride, they will get a close look at some of the animals and have the chance to feed tamer species. A zip-line attraction will allow them to fly above the animals for an additional fee, park officials said.

Admission to only the safari area is $23 until it closes for renovation on Sept. 30. Tickets to the amusement section - which boasts three of the world's tallest roller coasters - are $63 for adults and $40 for children. The amusements area will close at the end of October.

Entry to the combined park, scheduled to open on Memorial Day weekend, will be $63 for adults and $40 for children, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The Hurricane Harbor water park will remain a stand-alone park with a separate admission price.

About 10 million people have visited Wild Safari since it opened in 1974, according to Great Adventure officials. They would not say how many had gone through the amusement park gates.

"Never before have guests been able to experience a journey so close to that of a true African safari here in the United States," John Fitzgerald, president of Six Flags Great Adventure, said Thursday of the new off-road adventure.

Six Flags Entertainment Corp., headquartered in Texas and New York, emerged from bankruptcy protection two years ago. In July 2012, it reported that attendance was up at its 19 theme parks worldwide and that the company's net income had more than doubled in the second quarter of the year compared with the same period in 2011.