Trip Report: Geauga Lake
Aurora, Ohio - 07/05/2004

"I like what they've done with the place."

This morning, I knew I wanted to go somewhere. I had the day off because of the holiday. I've done Cedar Point and Kings Island almost too much for this early in the season, I know where I am going next weekend, I think, so where should I go today?

How about Geauga Lake?

I don't make it to Geauga Lake very often. I didn't opt for a season pass there this year because of all the somewhat major parks in Ohio (Cedar Point, Geauga Lake, Wyandot Lake, Kings Island, Americana, Stricker's Grove, and Coney Island) it is the longest, most difficult drive for me. In fact as I sit and type this right now, I'm still a hundred miles from home, and I left the park an hour ago. [Footnote 1]

Parking the car was the first order of business. Given that Geauga Lake is in an almost-urban environment, and given that they had to completely overhaul their admission structure anyway this season, I am surprised that they didn't take a cue from Holiday World and roll the parking fee into the park admission. Notice that I am not advocating free parking, I am advocating "free" parking. I think it is time that parks stopped looking at parking as free money and started realizing that they are aggravating their customers not just before they get in the front gate, but before they get to the front gate. At Geauga Lake, that aggravation isn't just because of the $8 parking fee, but also because of the way it is collected, a hold-over from Six Flags cost cutting: there were three (of eight, IIRC) lanes open through the parking toll booths, and three attendants collecting parking fees. Because of the way the booths are arranged, two of the three attendants were attempting to collect parking fees from the right-hand side of the entrance lane. Perhaps I am missing something here. While as a practical matter they are stuck with Six Flags' booth arrangement, if they are going to collect a parking fee, wouldn't it make more sense to open lanes 4, 6, and 8 (all with the tollbooth on the left) instead of lanes 5, 6 and 7?

For the first time in about a decade, I had to pay extra to get in at Geauga Lake. I considered the options. I usually make it to the park two or three times a season, so instead of the single-day admission, I bought the two-day pass for $44 (with a coupon from a local Burger King). Unlike the two-day passes at some other parks where the second day has to be used on the next operating day, Geauga Lake's two day pass allows the second day to be used on any operating day of the season. I should put the ticket in a safe place, though, as it is a cash-register receipt printed on thermal paper. Entering the park is quick and painless with the removal of the magnetometers, although a guard was posted at the entrance who was pawing through some of the larger bags. The collection of groceries under his table suggested that he was also confiscating lunches. So while Geauga now operates without magnetometers, they are apparently still using a meal detector.

Once inside, my first stop was the Big Dipper (formerly known as the Big Dipper) for a front-seat ride. First of all, I know from experience that the NAD-style train can give a pretty brutal ride, second, I wanted to see what if anything had been done to the ride since my last visit. As it turns out, they've done quite a bit. Roughly the back half of the ride, from about the second or third hill on the outbound side, through the turnaround, and about two hills on the return side, have been completely re-tracked. The most obvious result of this is that the far turnaround is actually a curve now (it most decidedly wasn't last year!) and the train hauls through it faster than ever. Couple that with significant front-seat airtime, and Big Dipper was a good way to start the day. I was also impressed with the way the train parks in the station, and I noticed the clever way the control designer integrated the prox switches into the skid brakes in the station. Oh, for the record, the park has added seat belts to the Big Dipper. The belts are non-retracting, have push-button buckles, are one belt per seat, and have absolutely no effect whatsoever on either load time or ride quality. They are also NOT orange. Oh, and I noticed the odd ride spiel: as the train stopped at the unload platform, the operator told riders to "Exit to your left; your left is your one and only exit." Interesting, considering that this is a NAD-style train which lacks any kind of opening on the right-hand side of the car.

Things don't look a lot different at Geauga Lake until you start to look close. They still have that beautiful bit of irony where the sign pointing you to the First Aid office sends you right past the exit of a Boomerang coaster. The Boomerang in this case is Head Spin (formerly known as Mind Eraser), and nobody seemed to be riding. It wasn't clear to me whether this was an attendance problem or a mechanical problem. Later when I met up with 'Avalanche Sam' I would learn that it was, in fact, a mechanical problem.

Mechanical problems were also plaguing Steel Venom (formerly known as Superman: Ultimate Escape), so this end of the park was starting to look not so interesting anymore. Just then I heard a soft whirring sound overhead. I looked up and saw that the monorail was operating. The Monorail has not operated on two of my last three visits, so I figured I ought to jump at the chance to ride it. Six Flags revealed that it is very possible to build track for this monorail, although some unspecified problem (I am guessing that the final S-turn is too tight) means that the last couple hundred feet of the ride are taken so slowly that the last part of the ride accounts for about half the total ride time. I wonder if the park has considered extending the route back to the other end of the park and adding a second station, making the ride a unique in-park transportation system, something Geauga Lake presently lacks.

I took a stroll through the larger of the kiddie areas, Kidworks (formerly known as Looney Tunes Boomtown). It's surprising how much has NOT changed in this area, considering how totally integrated the Looney Tunes characters were with the rides, and how totally absent those characters are now. I think all the rides got new names, but I never knew what the old names were. I did notice that the giant power switch has been removed from the rocket ship ride.

Up the hill, I walked on around the lake. The games area seems a bit quieter than I remember it, perhaps the game operators are just slightly less aggressive, or perhaps their microphones have just been turned down a little. Along the lake, the Ferris wheel was operating. I didn't count the occupied cars, but more than four of them were in use. T1m3 W4rp (Chance Double Inverter) was operating as well, but only the near side. Rumor has it that they were running both sides earlier this season, but I have still never witnessed that sort of operation on this thing.

Just past the games area and the log flume, I went down the hill to Thunderhawk (formerly known as Serial Thriller). It's a Vekoma Suspended Looping Coaster, and with two trains running and nobody waiting in line, I went for the back seat, which is traditionally the best place to sit on these things. This ride has always been one of the better-running SLCs, and it looks like the pads on the shoulder bars have been rehabbed for this season. I remember last time I rode it, the tall pads on the shoulder bars looked like someone had been snacking on them. As expected, Thunderhawk supplied an uncommonly smooth ride, indicating that it has not aged poorly. It will be interesting to see what becomes of this one; it is the only Vekoma SLC in the Cedar Fair arsenal. At the moment, it is still one of the better ones out there, so it isn't necessarily going to be a matter of 'turd polishing' to keep this one in decent shape.

Across the midway, I snuck into Coyote Creek through the 'back entrance' between the arcade barn and the Silver Bulle--hey, wait a minute! The Huss Enterprise is still gone. You may recall that last season the Enterprise was "missing in action" and the large concrete pad was decorated with a sign that said, "Sorry, Closed." Well, the sign is gone, but the concrete pad is now covered with picnic tables. It has a very ad-hoc look to it, though, as the food is being served from pushcarts. On around the corner, the Beaver Land Mine Train (formerly known as Road Runner Express) awaited a load of riders, so I climbed aboard. It's a Zierer junior coaster that is just weird, mostly because its train is 20 cars long or something like that. The front of the train starts up the second hill before the back of the train crests the lift hill. I noticed here that the ride spiel was in the Cedar Point style, with the operator giving the ride's vital statistics. I also noticed a significant change on the ride. The exit ramp passes under the track, which is only about 7' high at the exit point. There was a very short tunnel there, but it was so short that the running rails have always been within easy reach of people exiting the train. I've often thought it might be worthy of a Hall of Shame entry if I could get someone to stand there and touch the track long enough for me to get the photo. Of course, it wasn't a big deal, as the offending spot is on the exit ramp, and whenever there are people walking down the exit the train is probably in the station. Well, Cedar Fair has corrected this, reconfiguring the exit ramp slightly, and installing a much longer awning under the track, giving it the ASTM-mandated guarding it requires.

The climbing wall is gone, and the Haybaler (Mack Matterhorn) is unchanged. I'm almost surprised that the unnecessary, potentially hazardous, goofy little half seat-belts that Six Flags added to tie down the non-locking lap bars have not been removed. Speaking of belts that have not been removed, the scissor crew has not visited the Carousel either, although the "safety" belts there have advanced from an idiotic mandate to merely a dangerous suggestion. [Footnote 2]. The carousel still runs at Mach 3...well, no, not really, but it does run at 6 RPM, which is pretty darned fast for a carousel, and most important, its band organ still sounds FANTASTIC. Perhaps somebody important at Cedar Fair will hear this thing and allow DeBence Music World to work their magic on the Cedar Point organs, which don't seem to operate at all anymore.

Around the back of the carousel, I bumped into 'RG Rob' and said 'hi' as he raced over to work some black magic on Double Loop. Meanwhile, I took the roller coaster ride I had been avoiding all day. I had been putting this other ride off, and to ride it now would probably be a mistake, but it is here, and so am I, so...what the hell...

Gasper Lococo's name is still above the entrance door, and I kind of hope it stays there under the current management. Though the park was busy, there was very little line and almost no wait for the ride because it was running two trains. When I got to the platform, the gates were open and the front seat of the last car of the silver train was empty. It didn't stay empty for long. I jumped in and pulled down the lap bar. The gates closed. The attendants checked the lap bars. Somebody said, "All clear." Then we sat there.

And we sat there.

And we sat there.

I heard a roar somewhere overhead.

We sat some more.

Somebody else said, "All clear!" and the train started moving. As we shuffled around the keyhole turn to the lift, I assumed a defensive riding posture, with my left hand on the rail in front of me, my right hand on the outside grab bar on the opposite side of the train. As we went up the lift hill, I looked to the right. I was gratified to see that when Six Flags pulled out, they left the Rocket Ships behind. Perhaps there is still hope for that classic ride. I only saw three rockets, though; I could swear there were six.

At the top of the lift, my seat was unceremoniously ripped out from under me. The train bounced hard into the track twice on the first drop, then for the pull-out I got slammed down hard. At the top, the train was ripped away again, but at the bottom of the second drop the train lurched sideways. The trick-track wasn't the brutal mess it was before, but it still rides like a tracking mistake. The train hurtled skyward again, around a brutally underbanked turn, and dropped into a maze of wood and galvanized steel. Again and again, the coaster dropped and rose, zigged and zagged, then popped up onto a high turnaround over the station, anti-rollbacks knocking furiously. This was followed by what was clearly intended to be a mid-course block brake, followed by another insane "where did my seat go?" drop. The ride roared onward, faster and faster, defying gravity and Physics, until it slammed to a stop on the final block brake, with the guide and upstop wheels still spinning noisily. In fact they kept spinning until long after I exited the train in the station.

Yes, there is a reason why I was avoiding my first ride on the Villain (formerly known as the Villain), and it's simply because I knew that once I started riding the Villain, I would be tempted to stay there instead of riding everything else in the park. For that is exactly what I started to do. I got off, I went down the stairs, I walked past the queue maze, I walked up the stairs, I got on again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Before long, my arms, stomach, ribs, and ass were sore. I love this ride...it may well be the best wood coaster in Ohio right now (and the only one by CCI. Coincidence?). But the Gerstlauer trains are just awful. They are bad copies of PTC articulated trains, and they have NO cushioning, and they just ride really, really hard. I wonder if Cedar Fair could rehab the Hercules trains and put them on this ride. I wouldn't want Hercules' headrests, but put standard seat cushions on one of those trains and it would improve Villain a lot.

A few rides later, I was starting to feel sore (not nearly as sore as I would be a few days later!) so I decided to take a break from the Villain. Double Loop (formerly known as Double Loop) was running, so I took a ride. Once again, it's an early Arrow looper that has actually aged quite well. Like the SLC, it won't be hard for Cedar Fair to keep this one in good shape. There is a lot of hate out there for older Arrow loopers, but with Cedar Point and Geauga Lake I can ride Corkscrew and Double Loop, two of the oldEST Arrow loopers, and both run well enough (well, aside from some man-machine interface issues on Corkscrew) that I find myself wondering what the complaints are about.

For no reason in particular, I skipped Dominator (formerly known as Batman Knight Flight) for the moment, and took a ride on Raging Wolf Bobs (formerly known as Raging Wolf Bobs. I was hoping, since the ride was closed for the first month of the season, that the first half of the ride would be re-tracked. You may recall that nearly 20 years of abuse from the trailered PTC train had beaten the track horribly, and last year Six Flags started a multi-year rehab, replacing the trailered PTC train with an articulated Gerstlauer train (stolen from Villain) and re-tracking the second half of the ride. This year they were supposed to do the first half of the ride, and next year they would finish with the station curve and the lift hill. I figured that while Cedar Fair had the Canadian wood coaster track experts [Footnote 3] in the park working on Big Dipper and Villain, they might have gone ahead and finished the job. Unfortunately, this was not the case. It appears that the base of the first drop, the first crossover at the back center of the ride, and one other short section got some attention, but for the most part it's just like it was last year: it rides terribly until the second time through the helix, then it's pretty good back to the station. In all, the ride still needs serious help, and I hope Cedar Fair finishes the job for next year.

The path around Raging Wolf Bobs was closed, so I took a walk on the floating bridge, which has been re-re-located back to its original position along the edge of the lake. At the end of the bridge is (Striker's) Happy Harbor [Footnote 4]. Here, the Spider gave me a ride that rivals the one at Holiday World; the operator seemed surprised that my tub was spinning more or less continuously throughout the ride. The Scrambler is running very nicely, much like the one at Cedar Point but with a much more reasonable cycle time. I took a ride on the Yo-Yo, and noted the large quantity of absorbent material piled under the ride center, suggesting that there may be unresolved issues with the ride's hydraulic system. Other than those rides, this part of the park is pretty desolate, with very few people doing very little. A water skiing show was scheduled for the large stadium, but I didn't get to see it. I did think it odd that a path that leads from the Yo-Yo over to the water ski stadium is blocked with a wooden fence that is accessible from both sides. They could take that down and eliminate quite a lot of walking...at the moment, there isn't a lot in the former Sea World, but there are a lot of paths that end in unceremonious dead-ends.

Further back in the park, both Pirates 4D and Mission: Bermuda Triangle are still operating. I didn't watch the Pirates film, but I did go back to the simulator. In the preshow room, the video projector is gone (the mounting bracket was left behind) and on the ride...now presented with no preshow at all...the projector kept jumping as though one of the loops wasn't properly formed. Rumor has it that Six Flags was updating the simulator for 2004, but of course abandoned the project when Cedar Fair came calling. I wonder if they were planning to put the Spongebob Squarepants film in there... 8-)

This end of the park is depressingly quiet except for the five rides near the bridge. The ferries weren't running, so I hiked back across the bridge to go see the rest of the park. My first stop was Dominator (formerly known as Batman: Knight Flight). This B&M floorless coaster has not aged well at all. The floorless gimmick is just as useless as ever, and I still hate the B&M seat and shoulder bar design. Dominator is vibrating like crazy, giving a most unpleasant ride throughout, with some nasty jerking and headbanging on the first drop. As well as the SLC has aged, this thing has not. It's a shame, too, because it's a neat layout over the swamp, it has a nice selection of elements, it's a fairly long ride, and it is an interesting ride. It's just an unpleasant ride. I still think a better gimmick would be to put Speed Coaster trains on this thing.

I walked around the park and decided to take a walk through the waterpark. I noted that while the wave pool appears to be no deeper than the pathetic one at Kings Island's waterpark, it appears to have decent wave action. Nearby, a fence has been moved so that the Skyscraper ride (Intamin Gyro Tower) is no longer in the middle of the waterpark...but riders of one of the major slide towers have to collect their tube at the slide exit, exit the waterpark, walk around the tower, and then re-enter the waterpark through another gate to climb to the top of the slide. It kind of reminds me of Darien Lake, where there are (were?) two different sections to the waterpark, with the dry midway in between. Come to think of it, Wyandot Lake has the same problem. Hmmm...all three of those parks were originally FunTime parks when the waterparks went in, though oddly enough, at Geauga Lake, FunTime was long gone when this strangeness was put into place. I guess another Lococo tradition lives on.

Further back in the waterpark is an extensive children's section, including some interesting mini flumes. The dumping bucket treehouse thing (formerly known as Hook's Lagoon, I think) was out of service, but nobody seemed to notice. As I went back up the hill from my glance at the kiddie splashdown pool, I noticed a large amount of water running down the sidewalk to the splashdown pool from somewhere just above the ladder to the kiddie slide. Further investigation revealed that a wading pool with a fountain in the middle had apparently been improperly built, allowing a constant torrent of water to overflow from one side of the pool and run down the hill. It looks like it was a construction error, but the consequence of the error is that on this one hill, Geauga Lake has solved one of the problems that plagues many waterparks: pavement that is too hot to stand on. It reminded me of the idea I mentioned to Dave Bowers when we visited Kings Island's "new" waterpark: that they should have 3" deep channels of recirculating water along the pathways so that people could walk in the water instead of on the hot concrete.

I saw Steel Venom (formerly known as Superman: Ultimate Escape) launch an empty train, so I went around in that direction. I guess the launched Intamin ride has been seriously misbehaving this season. What a, um, surprise. Upon closer examination it was clear that the ride was not going to open today, but at least I did get to see it run. Something to look forward to on my return visit, I suppose.

When I abandoned X-Flight, I returned to Head Spin (formerly known as Mind Eraser) where 'Avalanche Sam' was manning the entrance and telling people that the ride was out of service. I didn't know it was 'Avalanche Sam', of course, until he recognized me and introduced himself. He was one of about a dozen r.r-c/PointBuzz/CoasterBuzz people I met during the day. He's also the only one of the bunch that I know I can safely identify in this report. We chatted for a bit, then I decided to return to The Villain for a bunch more rides.

Ultimately, I didn't stay quite until close (after all, at closing time I was sitting in a truck stop starting work on this trip report!) but I finished the day with a ride on the Big Dipper. In all, the park hasn't changed a lot mechanically. And I wouldn't say it's yet turned into "Cedar Point East." The "new, improved" Geauga Lake reminds me mostly of the Geauga Lake that I had just started to get to know in the last years of FunTime, before Premier Parks bought the place. It's a park that seems to know, for the first time in about four years, what it is. I don't know if they know where they're going, but Geauga Lake has dropped the pretensions and is what it has always been, a very nice local amusement park. It isn't the superpark that Six Flags promised, but then it really never was. It is a good park, It is a nice park. It has a good selection of rides. And I think Cedar Fair is on the right track with it. I just hope that Cedar Fair is strongly considering bringing in about two dozen PTC roller coaster cars to fix Raging Wolf Bobs and the Villain.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: The creation of a trip report is a process that usually takes several sessions over a period of days, usually in short intervals, often in odd places. It's the magic of portable computing! [Return to text]

Footnote 2: My completely unbiased opinion, of course... [Return to text]

Footnote 3: Martin & Vleminckx, of course. [Return to text]

Footnote 4: I couldn't resist. It's a nickname that goes to the whole history of the park, back to the Sea World days... [Return to text]

--DCAjr

Next: >=Kennywood=>

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