Top Gun Exposed: Onset Secrets They Didn’t Want Out

The “Real” Top Gun School

Top Gun the movie was based on an actual flight school named U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School or TOPGUN, which used to be based at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego. The school was founded in the later part of the 1960s as a way to combat losing the air war in Vietnam. Because of base realignments and closures, TOPGUN was relocated to Fallon, Nevada in 1996, and subsequently renamed the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor.

The hilarious note: if ever a staffer quotes or references the movie Top Gun, the school fines them five dollars! So students there have to refrain from smarmy Iceman jokes or screaming the lyrics,”You never close your eyes anymore / when I kiss your lips” or else they owe the dough.

Top Gun: The Rides

Yup, Top Gun did indeed become a crazy, thrilling roller coaster ride. In 1993, Mason, Ohio’s Kings Island Amusement Park was owned by the film company Paramount, so they built the Top Gun roller coaster. This was a suspended coaster that emulated an F-14 Tomcat. While people waited in line, “Danger Zone” played through the PA system.

In 2008 the ride park came under new ownership so the ride’s name was changed to “Flight Deck,” and in 2014 the ride underwent a huge makeover and became “The Bat.” Besides Kings Island, another ride called “Top Gun” was released in Santa Clara, California’s Great America from 1993 through 2007. Strangely this ride was also changed to the name “Flight Deck.”