• Six Flags designer — the ‘Walt Disney of Dallas’ — is a Baylor alum

    Michael Jenkins

    If you’re a fan of roller coasters, water parks, musicals or aquariums, you should be a fan of Michael Jenkins. Many of the DFW area’s family entertainment options — and even some around the world — can be traced back to this Baylor alum, dubbed the “Walt Disney of Dallas.”

    A 17-year-old Jenkins first stepped into this world of entertainment while working in the Dallas Summer Musicals office. He came across an ad seeking investors for a Broadway show, with a minimum investment of $5,000 — far more money than any teen could dream of possessing. But Jenkins scraped the money together, working three summer jobs and borrowing the rest from his dubious, but supportive, mother.

    That investment was for the original national tour of My Fair Lady — and as you probably guessed, it did pretty well. With the return on his investment, Jenkins paid back his mother, bought her a car, and paid his way through Baylor, studying theater design. “Had that show not been successful, I may not have taken the route in life that I did,” he says.

    [Read D Magazine’s full feature on Jenkins here.]

    That route includes helping design Six Flags over Texas very early in his career, becoming more involved in musicals, and eventually becoming president and managing director of Dallas Summer Musicals (DSM) and president and founder of Leisure and Recreation Concepts Inc. (LARC). He has also co-produced four Tony Award-winners on Broadway, grown DSM annual attendance to more than 500,000 fans a summer, and designed more than 1,000 projects across 48 countries, including Alton Towers, Great Britain’s No. 1 amusement park.

    “It’s just like a Walt Disney,” says lawyer R.J. Nutter, who has worked on many projects with Jenkins. “You give him something and he turns it into something magical. It’s a talent that just oozes out of him. He has this unbounded, youthful way of looking at things.”

    Sic ’em, Michael Jenkins!