Geauga Lake is one of those nice family parks SF bought and expanded right away. Six Flags bought Geauga Lake and Sea World Ohio (which was on the other side of the lake) and made them one park called Six Flags Ohio (Later Six Flags Worlds of Adventure). They added four coasters: Superman Ultimate Escape (impulse coaster), Batman Knight Flight (B&M floorless), XFlight (Vekoma flyer), and Villain (CCI woodie) and had animal exhibits etc on the other side of the park.
Long story short SFWOA never had a chance, even with the huge expansion the place was way too close to CP to be a major theme park and rarely had anyone there. The park was sold to Cedar Fair in 2006, CF got rid of the animals and the next year removed XFlight (which we went on the day before at Kings Island), removed Superman/Steel Venom which a year later was built at Dorney Park. It was pretty obvious from the moment CF bought it there was no intention of trying to make the park any better or keeping it around. Here is me modeling the nice sign they had outside the parks entrance that shows off their new for 2007 additions: the removal of XFlight and Steel Venom
. The 2 other people that were there were flipping out to the employees at guest relations that they had bought a season pass and their 2 "best coasters" were removed as I assume hapenned a lot that year.You can tell by this picture how popular of a park this was, it was around noon in the summer and look how many people are there and look at how many ticket windows were open.
After 2007 Geauga Lake's amusement park closed for good and the floorless coaster was moved to Kings Dominion, the SLC was moved to Michigans Adventure, and the Boomerang was moved to Carowinds.
While Geauga Lake would get a small crowd on weekends, it never saw anyone on weekdays.
This is their SLC coaster, which sucked of course. You can now visit it at Michigans Adventure.
This looked nice, I couldnt tell if this water was solid or flowing, or if it was even water?
Thunderhawks station.
The topspin which was later moved to Californias Great America.
Far and away the best coaster in the park. Dominator is probably the only floorless coaster ive ridden that I actually like a lot. Kept its speed up really well and has a good mix of forces. Kings Dominion is a LOT more fortunate than Carowinds
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The interlocking corkscrews are taken pretty fast. The white coaster in the background is Raging Wolf Bobs which was SBNO at the time due to accident.
GL was really a nice looking park, which goes to show you no matter how good a corporate park is its all about the market.
Dominator had the longest line in the park. Wasnt able to have a sit on marathon because of 1 train op most of the time when the train came back every row had someone in it.
The Batman logo's were scratched out of Dominators seats (sort of). Pretty much the theming transition for this ride is anywhere a sign said "Gotham City" it was replaced with "Power City" and the rest of the ride was as is.
To get the former Sea World side of the park you can either
A: Walk around the lake, pictured here
B: Take a golf cart that runs back and forth (yes, its 1 golf cart op which is how crowded this place typically was)
.C: Take the bridge across the lake that was just built in 2007.
We walked all the way to the other side of the park just to ride Dino Island, even though the ride was a total walkon and we were the only ones on it the trip took over an hour.
There are some rides on the Sea World side of the park. I think these were open but had 1 ride op for a bunch of rides, so when you enter the queue the ride op switches rides and operates that ride.
This side of the park had a huge play area also, being enjoyed by lots of kids as pictured here.
The waterpark is still operating. CF had just re-done the entire waterpark however a lot of the expansion was cut for budget and the place is pretty small.
Cedar Fair operated Six Flags old waterpark Hurricane Harbor for a year (as "Hurricane Hannah") then the next year opened Wildwater Kingdom.
Everyone was in the waterpark as expected (even though very few people were there also).
We took the bridge back to the main part of the amusement park.
View of the main part of the amusement park from the waterpark.
You can buy fish food for 25 cents and drop it off the bridge then all the fish fight to the death for it, its the best entertainment in the park.
Big Dipper was a total surprise, expected it to be old rough and boring, turned out to be smooth and an airtime machine in the front row.
Big Dipper was the 2nd best coaster in the park behind Dominator.
Superman light pole behind the wall that blocked off the old SUE/Steel Venom area.
Carolina Cobra was having problems. It re-opened as we were leaving the park so we went back to ride it, and naturally later that night Dragster closed right before we got on it. So pretty much if we didnt ride this crappy boomerang we couldve gotten another ride on Dragster and several other rides at CP.
Double Loop had a lot of cooked on grease. Its lift, drop, 2 loops, helix. Not much else to say about that.
Also the Geauga Lake ride operators had to say "check" every time they checked a restraint. So you hear over their wireless microphones "check check check check check" over and over again. Whats up with that
.I just noticed for some reason I dont have any pictures of Villain other than it being in the background of that picture (probably because I got all the credits, got some more rides on Dominator and had no interest in staying). The Gerstlauer trains were way rougher on Villain than they are on the Boss and as a result the ride sucked.
These coasters are awesome in the back row as when you are at the top of the lift the front of the train already is at the bottom of the drop. And some awesome Cedar Fair naming skills here, this coaster was called "Beaver Land Mine Ride"
Closer view of Great Americas new topspin.
This was Geauga Lakes biggest production/theater.
A few more rides on Batman before leaving.
There was nothing blocking off the old waterpark, a lot of the signs etc for it were still up.
...and yes this is great placement for a First Aid sign
And after a couple hours at GL we were done, it probably wouldve taken like 30 minutes to do all the rides if we didnt go to the other side of the park to ride Dino Island and walk through the waterpark. Wish I wouldve taken the time to get some better pics/taken more but this was nothing more than a quick stop at the time.
