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Geauga Lake in the 80's-90's


montezooma

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Geauga Lake

 

Back before Six Flags or Cedar Fair got their hands on this park it was owned by a company named Funtime. Along with Geauga Lake they also owned Wyandot Lake and Darien Lake.

 

Take a look back at how this park was when it was the way it was meant to be. Here are photos, facts and printed material from the park in the 80's and 90's.

 

Enjoy

Shane

 

PS. check back shortly to see all the printed material that I have scanned in.

 

If you love looking at old nostalgic amusement park stuff check out my thread that is dedicated to all the old parks, rides and fun stuff of the past. I will be updating it with old stuff every now and again so check back often.

 

Shane's Amusement Attic

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a sticker from the opening year of the Raging Wolf Bobs.

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and a map from 1993.

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a map from the parks centennial year 1988

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an early map from the park

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When the ride originally opened it was left the natural wood color. It was later painted white.

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The Raging Wolf Bobs (another creative masterpiece) was introduced in 1988.

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a merchandise shopping bag features the star attraction "Corkscrew"

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a postcard pack from Geauga Lake circa early 1980's

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an overview of the park showing the Big Dipper in the front and Double Loop in the background.

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The Big Dipper opened in 1925 and was completely rebuilt in 1980. Who knows what will become of this classic coaster?

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The Double Loop was an Arrow coaster that opened in 1977. I imagine they didn't have a very creative marketing department at the time.

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The Double Loop was the first coaster to feature back to back vertical loops.

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In the early years the ride was painted white. Later on the ride was painted black.

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The Arrow Corkscrew operated from 1978-1995

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The press release from the park in 1980. Notice how they advertise as "America's third largest collection of Amusement Rides"

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Here are some of the brochures and park information guides from the 80's & 90's.

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1988

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1988

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Centennial Year 1988

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1997

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1997

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1997

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1997

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1996

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1996

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1996

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1996 This seems to be the year that Premier Parks (later to become Six Flags) took over the park.

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1995

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1995

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1995

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1995

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1994

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1993

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1993

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1993

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1992

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1992

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1992

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1991

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1989

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1989

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1989

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1989

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1988

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1988

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1988

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1988

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The Fun Bunch

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Very interesting to learn how the park looked and grew in the 70's and 80's. Any update on the sale of the 3 woodies..?

 

Some up-to-date pictures of the woodies and BD with NAD trains on it would be nice to see.

 

Cedar Fair should be able to run the 3 coasters as well as the Water Park, They are just being lazy.

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Wow, this is the Geauga Lake I remember, and I actually have a couple of those brochures!

 

What scares me is I can remember the jingles they used on their commercials as far back at...

 

"Douuuuuble looooop, and Corkscrew toooooo, only at Geauga Laaaaaaaake."

 

Like you mentioned, they're marketing was very lacking back then.

 

Thanks for sharing!!!!

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Here are some pictures I took at the park of the 3 major coasters at the time. Summer 1979

 

Big Dipper

Double Loop

Corkscrew

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and here is the way the Corkscrew looks today relocated to India. photo from rcdb.com

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Double Loop

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Double Loop

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Shockwave was the first to have double loops right?

 

No the arrow Double Loop at Geauga Lake was the first coaster to have back to back vertical loops. It opened in 1977. The Shockwave at Six Flags over Texas, although a much better ride IMHO, opened in 1978.

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Were parks really better quality back in the 80s? I wonder what happened to make today's parks less charming then. Where the people back then really smiling all the time and didn't have to worry about people swearing in front of their kids or lazy park employees, or are these brochures really just "glamorizing" their park? Anyways, judging from all these pictures, the parks seemed more colorful back then.

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The parks back then really put an emphasis on themes. For instance when Worlds of Fun opened their steel coaster back in 1980, it was located in the Orient section of the park and was cleverly and appropriately named "Orient Express".

 

That seems to be some of the magic that is lost, today it is just a free-for-all. Ninja in the cotton states section of Six Flags Atlanta, Flight of Fear and Italian Job in the Congo Section of Kings Dominion, Top Gun in New Orleans at Great America and worse of all Superman and Batman rides anywhere they can fit them into the park, no regard for the theme sections.

 

Also back then there was more of an emphasis on overal experience. Unique dinning, shopping and entertainment. Now you can eat at Subway, pizza hut and buy the same kind of merchandise inside the park that you can outside. How is that supposed to take you away from everyday life?

 

My 2cents worth...

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I personally put most of the responsibility for the demise in parks on us. As customers we stopped wanting to go to little parks because the big ones had more rides. The employees are rude, because we don't want to pay more for tickets unless the park has just put something new in. We can't understand when parks charge more when they haven't added anything in awhile. Every year we want every park to put in a new coaster. Well we got this ride, but I was hoping for a B&M hyper this year, well maybe next year. Our attitudes toward parks have not changed since the 80's and in fact have gotten worse. We continue to let small parks dissapear and some, not all, heap praise on to the CF chain when all they do is give us several cookie cutter ideas of the same park. If you want the old fashioned quality then start visiting your old fashionshed parks, instead of visiting SF 16 times a season then complaining about it 15 times. Load up in your car and visit some new places, and if not be prepeared for more of the same in the future as you read Shane's great post and say "I wish it was like that now" or "If we had parks like that today I would definately go". We do have parks like that today, but lots of people don't go.

 

 

Indiana Beach

Knoebels

Adventureland (IA)

Waldameer

Martin's

Seabreeze

Idlewild

Compounce

Canobie

Kennywood

 

These are all traditional parks that have a feeling similar to GL before SF "ruined it". I am sure all these parks would be very happy if you spent some of your money there as opposed to trying to ride (place coaster name here) 300 times a year at your local chain park.

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Great pics! Having worked at GL in high school in the late 80's early 90's they brought back a lot of memories.

 

Something I have always wondered though..

 

In a few of the pics of the Corkscrew (and in images in my memory) you can see a second train on the transfer track.

 

Did the Corkscrew at GL..or ANY Arrow Corkscrew for that matter..ever actually run two trains at the same time?

 

I know CP's Corkscrew frequently to this day runs 3 but I'm wondering about any of the copy cat two inversion standard model.

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Looks like the bottom pic was taken on a buisy day at Geauga. Look at the line for Music Express and Spider.

 

My little 13 year old self is probably somewhere in that pic as I went to the park something crazy like 72 times that summer. They used to punch holes in the season pass on the day you visited. Mine was nothing but my picture, park logo, and a couple of missed weekend days.

 

There wasn't much to do in Solon so we'd ride bikes to Aurora.

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  • 1 month later...

Awesome pics! I actually have the 1988 brochure from the year that I went. I loved the two girls faces shown on the cover page riding the corkscrew...they look absolutely terrified!

 

I remember thinking that it was a cool family fun park, but being that CP was so close, we usually always wanted to go there instead of GL.

 

I won't soon forgot the water speed slide (the humped one) right on the lakefront and the embarrassment of having to pick my bathing suit out of my a$$ after riding it! That thing was awful!!!

 

Sure glad that I got out there last summer before it closed. While the park looked like it needed some TLC, I could not really see signs that they were going to just close it completely down.

 

I hope that the Big Dipper ends up somewhere...hopefully here in the US. That was the hands down the best coaster in the park (in the front seat). Yes, even better than Dominator!

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