Kings Dominion

Kings Dominion

Doswell, Virginia – Thursday, June 15th, 2023

They say it’s bad luck to meet your doppelgänger. But what about doppelgängers of places? That momentary comfortable feeling of returning to a familiar place, only to remember you’re somewhere you’ve never been.

Thanks to the cost savings and risk mitigation of replicating successful park plans, theme parks are full of instances of eerily similar but not-quite replica parks built hundreds if not thousands of miles apart. Tokyo Disneyland has inspired such feelings in countless American Disney fans. China is full of them, especially among the Fantawild chain. The U.S. has a few as well. Marriott built two nearly-identical Great America theme parks near Chicago and San Francisco that were later sold to different owners and grew quite differently over the next fifty years.

Then there are the original KECO parks, Ohio’s Kings Island in 1972, followed by Virginia’s Kings Dominion in 1975. Even though they’ve changed hands multiple times, these two parks have always stayed linked together under the same parent ownership. The original masterplans were nearly identical, and they share many attractions that are exact copies, near-copies, or at least similarly inspired. Yet these parks have evolved in significantly different ways that, for this lifelong Kings Island visitor, always strikes me as surreal on the couple of occasions I’ve made my way out to Virginia.

Approaching the entry gates are very similar, as is the main International Street just past that gate, terminating in identical 1/3 scale replicas of the Eiffel Tower. Yet immediately something feels different, like we’ve entered an inverted shadow realm. That’s because Kings Dominion’s Eiffel Tower is quite literally in the shadows when you arrive. At Kings Dominion the entire park is oriented facing south, a 180 degree switch from the northerly orientation at Kings Island. In the northern hemisphere this means the sun illuminates Ohio’s tower as you approach from the entrance, while from the same view it backlights the tower in Virginia, forcing you to squint to look up at the top.

Apart from International Street, both follow a similar rubric for the core themed lands. There’s the former Hanna-Barbara (then Nickelodeon, finally Snoopy) kid’s area near the front, the rustic woodland area in Rivertown and Old Virginia along the back right, the traditional amusement midway in Coney Mall and Candy Apple Grove near the back center-left, and then the African themed Lion Country Safari on the park’s lefthand side. That last section has diverged most radically between the two, getting completely eliminated from Kings Islands, while an evolving safari themed area has now grown to encompass nearly half the park at Kings Dominion.

But more than individual lands and rides, one thing that distinguishes the two parks from each other today is the sense of balance. Kings Island keeps a collection of small-to-medium sized thematic areas distributed around the central Eiffel Tower. New rides generally try to complement and contrast the rest of their collection. Kings Dominion, on the other hand, seemingly looks at what’s already popular in their park, and then continues to double down on that. For example, after both parks received copies of the world’s first LIM launch coasters in 1996, Kings Dominion continued adding launch coasters until they had a total of four just ten years later.1 Before that, in 1994 Kings Dominion built their fourth wooden roller coaster 23 years before Kings Island added their own fourth. Kings Island currently has eight different themed areas; Kings Dominion only has five, but they’re huge. And this zoning hasn’t grown the park with an even geographical balance. If you divide Kings Dominion down the middle of International Street, the eastern half covers more than twice as much developed area as the western. As of today, you can find ten of the park’s thirteen coasters (plus the water park) if you hook a left after entering. (An additional two are found if you walk directly straight to the back, and only one, Grizzly, requires a very slight veer to the right.)

Even the park names are similar but carry different connotations. “Kings Island” (named for the former Coney Island in Cincinnati) sounds regally exotic, a place that promises escape and adventure. Meanwhile, “Kings Dominion” (after Virginia’s historical nickname as the “Old Dominion”) sounds monarchically foreboding, a fiefdom where fun is lorded over guests.

All of this is a long way to say that Kings Island is one of the best regional theme parks in the U.S. and Kings Dominion… isn’t that. But it is a much odder park, one still in the process of figuring out its identity and searching for its future. Unlike the more sacrosanct Kings Island, at Kings Dominion there’s still plenty of room for big, risky, transformative ideas that could result in an entirely different theme park a generation from now. And more than just the familiar comforts, it’s that kind of place that I’m interested in returning to.

Dominator

This is my favorite floorless coaster. Or was. I love the size of this ride, the world’s longest floorless coaster with the second-largest vertical loop B&M ever constructed. Yet despite its scale, the five inversion count is on the low side for a B&M multilooping coaster, dedicating more of its layout to a broader dynamic range of twists and turns, particularly a huge, sweeping overbanked speed curve after that first loop.

I spent a good amount of time with Dominator when it was at Geauga Lake, before finally catching up to it again sixteen years later at Kings Dominion. Sometimes a relocated coaster fits its new home like a glove; Dominator is not one of those examples. It’s awkwardly located at the very, very front of the park, hanging out alone atop a big grassy lawn just behind International Street, wedged between the kid’s zone and the parking lot. At least it avoided the “parking lot coaster” fate of several other floorless coasters, but the loss of the lakefront setting definitely knocks it down a notch. The approach is also less impressive, entering from what was once the backside instead of the much more iconic view of the cobra roll and overbanked turn symmetrically framed overhead while the 157 foot lift hill and 135 foot vertical loop fill the background. And while the name stayed the same for the relocation, and the ride is essentially the only major roller coaster in the state of Virginia without a thematic identity, there is an odd bit of poetic synchronicity in having the Dominator dominate the entrance to the Dominion.

But it’s gotten much rougher, either from the relocation or due to advancing age. Despite being the second largest coaster in the park with no line, I only rode it twice, front and back. I hope my old friend will feel better whenever I next return to this park.

Woodstock Express

I rode this junior wooden coaster along with a gaggle of giggling children just once for the +1. It is, truthfully, a fairly good ride. The lack of high forces means the wooden structure is still allowed to bend and flex, giving life but not roughness to this 50+ year old wooden coaster. It actually predates the theme park by one year, opening as a preview ride attached to the Lion County Safari attraction while the rest of the park was still under construction.

I also looked into whether I could ride the Great Pumpkin Coaster nearby, but a maximum height limit for those unattended by a youngster kept it off my list. This policy has evidently been revised to be more accommodating since my visit, giving me yet another (small) reason to return.

Old Virginia & Shenandoah Lumber Company

A good themed environment can feel like stepping through a portal into another time. Old Virginia does just that, whisking visitors away to the long-forgotten 1980s. The last full-sized attraction to open in this section was in 1983. At present there is one roller coaster, two water rides, and two family rides, plus some shops and shows, and a lot of trees. This represents pretty much everything to the west of International Street. It’s actually very nice to have a section of a major theme park that doesn’t feel endlessly optimized to maximize its footprint, with a forest with depth that isn’t just used for sight block along the perimeter. Still, with the recent removal of former upcharge attractions such as the Go-Karts, Sky Coaster, and Dinosaurs Alive, this area feels way overripe for new development, so long as the mature trees shading Old Virginia’s pathways will continue to have a long life.

We didn’t spend much time in this section, but one ride I wanted to try was the Shenandoah Lumber Company. This is a very classic Arrow log flume ride that opened with the park in 1975, and I doubt the experience has changed much in that time. There’s a small lift and drop, then a long meandering run through the forest, and then a big lift and drop for the finale. Apart from a water wheel near the station, there are no major themed elements along the run, just the sound of water gently sloshing amongst the trees, and a refreshingly light amount of spray after the drops. It’s not one of the more interesting log flumes ever built, as even the name is pretty boring, but I’m glad it hasn’t followed the trend of removing older water rides entirely.

Grizzly

I had been to Kings Dominion only once before, in 2007, and my strongest memory was riding Grizzly lap after lap for the last hour of the night. Opened in 1982, this was essentially Kings Dominion’s answer to the Beast. By that measure the Grizzly is woefully inadequate. Despite the Beast’s tremendous success and enduring popularity, it seems KECO swore off ambitious custom-built wooden coaster projects again in favor of re-creating the traditional Coney Island Wildcat layout at three of their other parks during this time period. The other two installations, at California’s Great America and Canada’s Wonderland, are among the worst wooden coasters ever built.

Which is why it’s surprising that Grizzly, despite its modest ambitions, still manages to have more in common with the Beast than either of its clonal siblings. The densely wooded setting helps (although was compromised by the addition of Hurler). There’s a section in the middle where the train roars through a tunnel while mixing airtime with laterals that still rates as one of the best single coaster moments in this entire park. Apart from this intense section, there are several more moments of airtime or laterals, with good pacing and a relatively smooth ride.

When I visited, Kings Dominion was promoting a “Roar Restored” campaign for having recently completed a major wood-tracked refurbishment of the Grizzly using the Gravity Group’s pre-cut track technology. I vastly prefer this approach to other steel-railed track replacement products, which sound and feel too noticeably different from traditional stacked wooden track. Nevertheless, it still carries the same challenge that steel track replacements carry, which is that if it’s not applied to the entire layout, the difference between the old track and new is very noticeable. As we approached the smaller bunny hops for the last lap, it was like a switch turned on to suddenly transform us into ragdolls driving over potholes.

A good wooden roller coaster is often likened to a story with a beginning, middle, and end. But the current all-or-nothing approach to wood coaster restoration means that increasingly the “story” of classic rides is primarily told through the maintenance schedule. More than anything else that happens on the ride, the thing people take away from the experience is getting a smooth, exciting ride for the first half, and then in the second half you get a jackhammer for the shock absorbers. Upon disembarking I’d overhear several other riders, all of them seemingly “normie” park visitors, comment on how rough it gets at the end. Grizzly is undoubtedly better for the retracking, but in some cases I do ponder if a more consistently rough ride has its own merits over these frankensteined creations.

Candy Apple Grove & Apple Zapple

This area of the park has a somewhat complicated history. It opened in 1975 as more or less a copy of Kings Island’s Coney Mall area. Just one year later, it was rebranded as Candy Apple Grove, with a fanciful if somewhat loose orchard theme. The 70s Hanna-Barbera-esque aesthetic was gradually stripped away as it reverted to a generic amusement midway simply called “The Grove”. But nostalgia sells, and in 2014 it was restored to Candy Apple Grove.

I like the idea behind Candy Apple Grove. It’s a colorful, cartoony identity where such a look is usually reserved for children’s areas in regional parks, and it also offers much more specificity than a generic “fantasy” theme, especially like what you’d find in Europe or Asia. Yet despite the rebirth, it still feels stuck in the middle of a longer history that swings back and forth between kind of committing to the bit and not at all. There are some elements that retain the nostalgic 70s children’s entertainment look, others that have a more stylized mid-century modern aesthetic, while Twisted Timbers is doing its own “dark fantasy orchard” thing in the far back… but most of the main midway still looks more like “Coney Island” than it does “Candy Apple Grove” unless you look closely. Once they’re done with Jungle X-Pedition, I think they need to re-re-establish Candy Apple Grove so that the storyline comes across much more clearly and uniformly throughout the zone.

Most of the rides like Drop Tower, WindSeeker, or Delirium don’t connect to the Candy Apple Grove theme at all. The couple that do include the Bad Apple flat ride, as well as the Apple Zapple, a rethemed Mack Rides large wild mouse model formerly known as Ricochet. It looks cute, even if the name is just somewhat inexplicable jazz scatting around the concept of apples. I’m not a huge fan of Mack’s so-called “large” model mouse layouts, since it messes up the typical thrill progression that makes a wild mouse fun, just so it can have one big drop. That drop is placed at the very beginning, which gets the most exciting bit out of the way early and thus diffuses the usual tension for the elevated switchbacks that come next. It also leaves us waiting for the ride to switch back into some more sharp drops before it’s over, but instead it ends on a lackluster set of mild dips and an even more anticlimactic set of slow, low-to-the-ground switchbacks directly into the brakes. I’ll never forget sitting behind a young boy and his mother, where upon the end of the ride the boy indignantly declared “that was a ripoff!”

 

Twisted Timbers

After Kings Dominion was gifted the biggest prize in 2008 from the closure of Geauga Lake, followed two years later with North America’s second-ever gigacoaster, it felt like Cedar Fair had anointed Kings Dominion with “favored child” status from their acquisition of the Paramount Parks. But it didn’t last. The rest of the 2010s were a bit of a slump for this park, with a few significant ride closures and only one major new coaster near the tail end of the decade… and it was a reimagining of an existing ride. Still, Twisted Timbers could hold a credible claim as a top two headlining ride at Kings Dominion. Honestly, given the nearly concurrent closure of Volcano, The Blast Coaster in 2018, that wasn’t too difficult to achieve. My question was how it would compare to the rest of the RMC oeuvre?

The Hurler was both an obvious and a difficult candidate for RMC Ibox conversion. Being the fourth wooden coaster in the park, as well as the roughest, least nostalgic, and most thematically challenged, it was only a matter of time for a major retooling. The Hurler’s tall lift hill with a relatively low-to-the-ground layout already followed the patterns of previous RMC redesigns. However, the pill-shaped out-and-back configuration offered a more limited canvas to reimagine the layout. Hurler, like its predecessor Thunder Run, also has a design quirk where the lateral curves feature very long, gentle lead-ins as the track banks to its side. This isn’t really necessary with modern heartlined design, but it makes for some awkward compound curvatures along the footer pathways that would have to be accommodated in the new design.

Let me start with what I like about Twisted Timbers. The story, while less elaborate than Mystic Timbers (which clearly was the point of inspiration), generally works well as a “dark” extension of the Candy Apple Grove theme, especially with the rusted 1937 Ford pickup trucks as the ride vehicles.2 The barrel roll down drop inversion fits the original layout well and is a great visual for spectators approaching the ride. And I appreciate that they kept the series of three straight camelback airtime hills on the first part of the run. RMC designs sometimes feel like every element is straining to feel different from the others and compete for the rider’s attention, so to have three of the same, simple element sequenced in a row achieves a pattern of repetition and flow that’s relatively rare for an RMC ride. Also, the cutback inversion at the far turnaround is a little goofy but I had fun with it all the same.

But now here’s what I think could have been done better. The name is more than a little generic, and doesn’t adequately introduce the storyline nor the steel hybrid nature of the coaster. The whole section around the first overbanked speed curve with weird curving speed bumps leading in and out just doesn’t work for me. It produces a sharp lateral jab at the beginning and end, but then the main curvature itself is a bland maneuver that eliminates all lateral force in favor of mild positive Gs. I honestly believe it would have been better to have kept the exact same flat, lateral-heavy profile from the original Hurler design. I don’t know why sustained lateral forces are almost never allowed on modern coasters, given that it’s traditionally one of the basic ingredients in a dynamic ride profile.3

I also find that as the ride gets closer to the end, it gets increasingly less confident on what type of experience it wants to be… which I believe should have been an idealized version of what the original Hurler/Thunder Run layout aspired to be, a ride that alternates between fast speed curves and ejector airtime pops. After the cutback inversion there’s a series of four more airtime hills, the first and last ones straight, the middle two with alternating banking to the left and right, a fine if slightly uncomfortable variation on the main theme. The next curve tries to do a reverse banking maneuver at the top, but it’s too small to really execute on the idea. Then there’s another barrel roll, seemingly because every RMC coaster has to have three inversions with the last one a barrel roll near the end. The final curve has a lot of back-and-forth wobbliness, seemingly trying to find something interesting in an element that didn’t offer very much potential. Even the final brake run has a weird kink in the middle that feels like the result of a misalignment issue.

Overall, Twisted Timbers is a very good ride for Kings Dominion that I was happy to ride several times throughout the day. But to answer my question about how it stacks up to other RMCs: I’d put it near the bottom of the pile, just above Six Flags Over Georgia’s Twisted Cyclone. Fundamentally the Thunder Run/Hurler track profile wants to be a simple, sharp, straight forward experience, like a bite out of a crisp apple. Twisted Timbers gets halfway to respecting that recipe, but then feels compelled to throw in a few too many different ingredients in an attempt to elevate the dish, and instead just overcomplicates the palette.

Racer 75

The removal of a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 triggered a riot of white supremacists that resulted in numerous injuries and one death. One year later, Cedar Fair and Kings Dominion decided they were finally overdue to remove their own monument of sorts to the Confederacy in nearby Richmond, by renaming the Rebel Yell racing wooden coaster to become “Racer 75”. The new name, which includes a reference to the ride and park’s history both opening in 1975,4 is truthfully a little bland and unmemorable. Which is probably a good thing; the park avoided much media attention around the name change and never became subject to the increasingly militant right-wing harassment campaigns. I’m grateful that today I can experience Racer 75 only as a classic (if middling) wood coaster, not tied to yesterday’s Civil War or today’s culture wars.

Like several other attractions in Kings Dominion, Racer 75 is directly inspired by Kings Island’s The Racer, which opened in 1972. That ride is heralded as the spark that ignited the roller coaster renaissance since the 1970s. Racer 75 has a much smaller cultural footprint, and seemingly a narrower physical footprint as well. Instead of the larger divergence between tracks at the far end, Racer 75 keeps the twin tracks side-by-side on the full out-run until they split at the turnaround to return home. It further simplifies an already-simple formula, and I still find the original Racer the superior design (especially with its recent retracking effort that hopefully comes to Racer 75 next). Still, it’s a classic that you can count on to never have a long wait, and I hope it sticks around as a landmark at Kings Dominion for a very long time… which is much better than can be said for Carowinds.

Jungle X-Pedition

Jungle X-Pedition opened in 2022 as an updated version of Kings Dominion’s former Safari Village/Congo area. While at the time the only new ride was an S&S Free Spin, Jungle X-Pedition represents one of the most ambitious thematic overlays found in a regional American theme park in this century.

Functionally, there’s not much that distinguishes it from other recent Cedar Fair themed design projects—the landscaping and environmental design is pleasant if not overly ambitious, graphics and small props do most of the heavy lifting for storytelling and attention to detail (especially in the queues, restaurants, and gift shops), and there’s no real show action to speak of on any of the decorated thrill rides. But what sets Jungle X-Pedition apart is the commitment to developing a full backstory that connects everything inside the land to a consistent story and style guide. And that’s a big area to cover under one cohesive theme. In 2022, that was only three rides, but in the time since, it’s now expanded to cover the majority of the eastern half of the park, including six of the park’s thirteen roller coasters.

From what I can tell, the storyline behind Jungle X-Pedition is that there are multiple ancient temples scattered throughout the jungle, each dedicated to a different animal: monkeys, crocodiles, spiders, and now also panthers and birds of prey. Visitors are part of an archeological expedition to uncover these temples, with the shops and restaurants being outposts to service the explorers, and the rides themselves being manifestations of the mythical spirit animals found in each temple. You’ll notice the naming patterns and logo design for all the rides bear similarities to each other, which is satisfying to everyone’s inner graphic designer to appreciate the different variations of a theme.

But I also worry if Jungle X-Pedition is attempting a little too much cohesion, especially as it continues to grow. Excessive similarity makes it hard to distinguish individual components from one another. I still find myself somewhat struggling to mentally separate “Rapterra” from “Reptilian” from “Pantherian,”5 and I question the rationale that the logo for a repainted scrambler should be given a similar design with about the same visual pull as those for a landmark gigacoaster or a record-breaking launched wing coaster nearby. And at a certain point, relying on the same style guide and storytelling rubric gets tedious, exposing the weaknesses and limitations of what in a smaller context was a good idea. Sameness can translate to smallness, yet these are landmark coasters that should stand out and have their own strong, distinct identities from one another.6

Of course, the fracturing of a once-cohesive themed environment is a common process at many regional theme parks that will inevitably occur over time. I doubt Jungle X-Pedition will be an exception to that rule. One just hopes that it can retain the original spirit while finding new directions to grow and evolve, and doesn’t follow the usual pattern of conceptual Balkanization that happens to many lesser themed amusement parks.

Tumbili

When Tumbili was announced, at first I worried that it was yet another case of a theme park modifying an English word to give the impression of an exotic-sounding language. So I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that Tumbili is a real Swahili word meaning “monkey,” the fictional deity of this attraction’s temple. That it fits both the storyline and alliterates with the English word “tumble” to describe the ride experience is a happy bit of synchronicity that I have to commend them on.7

As a replacement for the old Tomb Raider: Firefall attraction, I’ll happily take a new coaster credit. Yet the smaller model of the S&S Free Spin Coaster offers relatively little to the experience that a Top Spin doesn’t already, only with a much shorter ride time compared to the flat ride. It also removes the only attraction that once had synchronized show elements from the current Jungle X-Pedition realm, so whether this represents a step in the direction of more immersive themed design may depend on your perspective.

As someone who had the displeasure of riding the Intamin ZacSpin variation at Six Flags Magic Mountain for several years before trying my first S&S Free Spin, I can say that Tumbili is a tremendous improvement in design given the similar footprints. Still, this thing is way too short. The regular sized Free Spin models found at many of the other Six Flags parks should be the smallest standard size available. On Tumbili there’s only about twenty seconds of action from the top of the lift to the brakes. While admittedly intense for that short duration, even with no queue I didn’t find it worth the effort of dealing with load and unload procedures to go around a second time in a different position. Kiddie coaster rules ought to apply where they send you out around the course at least twice.

Reptilian

This is now the only steel bobsled coaster in North America, making Reptilian the rarest and most unique attraction at Kings Dominion. Like the endangered suspended coasters, modern ride manufacturers don’t want the uncertainty and liability that comes from vehicles whose positions aren’t fixed to the track, even as free-spinning and flipping seats appear in increasingly extreme designs. (See, Tumbili above.) As such, I’m relieved to see the former 1989-built Avalanche bobsled coaster by Mack Rides get a major facelift to integrate it into Jungle X-Pedition (even though it had always technically been a part of Safari Village since its debut), which hopefully sparks renewed interest in this great family attraction and will help to ensure its longevity for years to come.

It had been a number of years since I last tried one of these ride models in Europe, and I forgot how strange the seating position is, essentially sitting on the floor of the ride vehicle, legs splayed out in front of you like you’re sitting for kindergarten story time. You can sit tandem if you want, but most people now opt for their own cars; we certainly did. Since the lap bar needs to accommodate up to two people it’s more of a gentle reminder of safe riding behavior than an actual safety retraining device. I love rides like this.

Despite its ferocious theme, the ride itself is quite gentle, even compared to most of the European installations I’ve tried. The first section consists of a single helix and then a long, drawn out ascent into the midcourse block brake. Fortunately there’s still more than two-thirds of the ride left to go, and while the brake takes a lot of the speed out of the next section, there’s still a good mix of S-bends and helices to keep things lively all the way up to the final brake. With a minimal queue, Reptilian was worth riding a couple times both front and back. It might even be a top five attraction at Kings Dominion.8

Backlot Stunt Coaster

It’s ironic how the most ambitious attempts to create immersive themed, story-driven roller coaster experiences now stand out as the most ill-fitting black marks that detract from the visual beauty and thematic cohesion of Kings Dominion. The first try was Flight of Fear which resulted in a massive gray warehouse in the middle of the “jungle,” and now the even worse offender is Backlot Stunt Coaster. The industrial concrete and gravel aesthetic is a poor match for the jungle safari themed part of the park, although in all earnestness I can’t imagine any other location at Kings Dominion it might have been a better fit. (Maybe off International Street next to the parking lot like Dominator?)

It’s too bad because I generally like this ride as a coaster. The launch into an uphill helix is a surprisingly intense maneuver you don’t see anywhere else. The steep overbanked curve into a trench and handful of quick S-bends in the middle section offer a fun variety. And the tunnel after the finale is impressively long. But there are so many missing effects and the drab landscaping is such an unpleasant heat island that I didn’t have any patience for it beyond a single courtesy lap. Hopefully the rumors bear out that it will eventually get re-themed as a jungle jeep exploration coaster… even if the budget for such an ambitious project will inevitably be linked to how investors are feeling about the corporate stock price.9

Anaconda

R.I.P. Anaconda. The 1991-built ride was always one of the weirder Arrow custom looping coasters, with its underwater tunnel on the first drop and the odd serpentine knot in the middle of the layout. I was sure to grab a couple of laps since I figured the big water snake wasn’t long for this world, and sure enough Anaconda met its fate a year later at the end of the 2024 season.

Truth be told, it wasn’t one of the better Arrow Dynamics looping coasters. Despite having a 144 foot first drop, it didn’t feel particularly large, with just four inversions in an era when six or seven were the norm. The curving first drop was more of a flat ramp, the underwater tunnel looked cool from the ground but was very brief on ride, and the first two inversions were rather disorienting and with the characteristically bad transitions. The midcourse brake takes most of the speed out of the remainder of the rather lethargic layout. The butterfly figure-eight element was perhaps somewhat conceptually interesting, as Arrow’s first attempt at the more complex maneuvers being performed by European manufacturers that had recently entered the scene, but the formula isn’t quite right and the imperfections are made far worse by the horsecollar restraints.10 The final corkscrews over the water come with a lot of hangtime due to the heavy braking needed to make the butterfly element less brutal.

In general I like Arrow looping coasters, the way you feel hugged in your seat, the way every element announces itself with a snap, and the satisfying metallic “clug-clug-clug” it makes going up the lift. Being a fairly unique example, I was frustrated that I couldn’t enjoy Anaconda more than I did. It wasn’t so bad as to be a firm “one and done” ride, but I still had to rationalize a re-ride as likely being my final on the coaster. Of course, the fact that Arrow Dynamics struggled this much with their slightly more novel designs (and Anaconda doesn’t even have any particularly complex customizations) was part of the reason that ultimately brought down not just the Anaconda, but the company as a whole.

Flight of Fear

Yet another thematic misfit for the Jungle X-Pedition area. Interestingly, Flight of Fear did get an exterior refresh after my visit to repaint the top secret government warehouse in earth tones. I guess the idea is to make it look more like an archaeological storage site or something, although this might only further draw attention to the contradictions and messy storyline. Maybe they can eventually update the story on the interior to something like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

Somehow I never realized that after all these years, Flight of Fear continues to operate with shortened five car trains compared to the planned six cars found on the outdoor models. That would partially explain the poor capacity and extended wait times this ride gets. With most of the other attractions being near walk-ons all day, this was the only one with a half hour wait. As such, we only rode once to get the +1 (it was closed on my one previous visit), as I was very familiar with the experience from Kings Island.

The heavy-handed midcourse brake run makes what could be a great ride into an okay one, with the awkward pacing and lateral hangtime through most of the middle portion. It also doesn’t help that the main ride building is lacking the total light block and special effects needed to make it feel like you’re whizzing around outer space and not a dark warehouse. Still, the layout is one of the most effective space-constrained spaghetti bowl designs ever devised, with fluid twists and a great set of inversions, far superior to Disney and Vekoma’s attempt to copy the same formula.

Intimidator 305

When Intimidator 305 was first announced, everyone immediately drew the comparison to a Millennium Force-sized ride with Maverick-style elements. Given those are two of my favorite coasters in the world, and my top two produced by Intamin, I felt guilty that it took me well over a decade to finally ride I-305 for myself. As I walked up to Intimidator for the first time, I approached it with the excited mentality as if it was still the big new ride at Kings Dominion, but the faded paint, overgrown field, and empty queue told the story of an older ride past its prime years… yet it still reigns as the king of its dominion.

After a disappointing experience with Fury 325 the day before, I was especially curious what my reaction to Intimidator 305 (now Pantherian) would be. Part of my challenge with Fury was that the wind and force was a little too much while still not being very much. Intimidator I knew to be an order of magnitude more intense, so would I even last more than a couple of laps?

In my analysis of Fury 325, I concluded that placement and presentation are essential elements to a successful gigacoaster. Intimidator 305 doesn’t score particularly well on this metric. Like both Millennium Force and Fury 325, the slender profile of the lift rising directly away from view, the drop secretly tucked away from view on the far end, is the magnet that draws you closer. But then, also like Fury 325, the brake run is the most prominent element in the foreground. At least this one is closer to ground level so you can watch riders’ reactions at the end of the run. One telling feature is actually an absence: there are no nearby restrooms in this cul-de-sac at the back of the park. That means no plumbing was routed here, and it underscores how Intimidator was set in a remote undeveloped corner rather than attempting to be integrated with the park. The fact the ride was confined to its own rectangular plot, requiring it to frequently cross over and wrap around itself, rather than being allowed to more organically thread in and around a broader area of existing development, may be one of the key factors that led to its intense reputation.

The cable lift is fast and the first drop has a similar rounded profile to Millennium Force, making the drop seem bigger than it really is since you keep getting pulled over it. The ground level turn at the bottom is the ride’s most controversial feature: the heavy G-forces cause tunnel vision on nearly everyone who rides it. I was no exception, and while I like intense rides, I’m not one of those perverts who enjoy the amusement park equivalent of erotic asphyxiation. (Trust me, those folks are out there.) Fortunately a camel back airtime hill is the next element, which quickly brings the blood flow back up to the brain and lifts the fog of stupor that was setting in. I don’t love this as a beginning, and wish I could enjoy the main camelback hill on its own terms rather than as a recovery for the preceding turn, but it does prove early on that Intimidator absolutely lives up to its name.

And while I-305 has some of the most intense positive forces around, it doesn’t make the mistake that Fury 325 does of only serving one flavor for extended periods of time. The onslaughts of positive forces are interspersed every few seconds with airtime, in both sustained parabolic crests and whippy rotational snaps. Make no mistake that Intimidator is an incredibly intense ride, much more than Fury, but that intensity is usually balanced in equal and opposite measure so it doesn’t become too overbearing for too long. The unique problem with the first turn isn’t the raw force, but the slightly too-long duration of it.

After the camelback, Intimidator begins what might be one of the most amazing sequences of elements ever built on a modern steel coaster. First there’s a snappy speed hill before it roars around another ground level turnaround. A Maverick-style S-bend throws the train from left to right in a fraction of a second, creating a demented pop of airtime from the rapid rotation around the heartline. I love these intense rotational whips because visually they appear too extreme to survive, but because torque is not actually a force, you come out the other side without taking much of a beating. A second transition back from right to left is a bit gentler, but then the final twist from left to right again is just as aggressive as the first. Incredible pacing, beautiful symmetry, and a smorgasbord of extreme forces in all directions that nevertheless leaves me wanting more.

However, after this sublime sequence, Intimidator begins its final act with a strong trim brake as it rises into a mid-sized camelback hill. There’s still plenty of airtime over the crest, but this is the point where the ride noticeably downshifts into a lower gear. Yet it’s not necessarily the loss of speed that weakens this finale, but the lack of cohesion and symmetry between elements. After the first hill, it rises up as if to repeat the same camelback element, but at the top of this second hill it then tips to the side to transition into a banked curve. To me this comes off as an incomplete thought, like a song on 4/4 time starting a new bar after the sixth beat. Then following this curve, there is a single rotational snap from right to left, which again feels isolated and out of place when previously these elements were always paired together in a longer sequence. A final high-banked turn has a slightly odd snap into the downhill brake run.

In the end, I really enjoyed Intimidator 305. I would rate it my second favorite gigacoaster, but some issues near the beginning and end of the layout still keep it a comfortable distance below Millennium Force. Yet I didn’t find it “too intense” as I know many others have, and thought the overall dynamic balance of forces was more palatable than the more monotonous Fury 325.

And that middle sequence… as the sun went down and we finished with the last lap of the night, I knew I’d be dreaming of it for some time to come. Just imagine a coaster that could have sustained that kind of experience all the way from beginning to end.

Next: Busch Gardens Williamsburg

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June 15th, 2023 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Category: Kings Dominion | One comment

Geauga Lake

Aurora, Ohio – Friday, October 14th, 2011

The overcast skies part for a moment, allowing the October sun to cast a long, crisp shadow in front of me. Nearby a flock of Canadian Geese are taking a respite from their southerly flight, and all that can be heard apart from the muted Doppler effect from distant traffic is the rattling of dried leafs scuttled by wind across the pavement like fiddler crabs. I take out my cell phone and dial the most recent contact.

“Hello?”

“Listen, I got caught by security for trespassing. They’re driving me down to the police station right now. I need you to come downtown to post bail.”

“Oh my god! You’re kidding?”

“You’re right, I am kidding. This place is dead. Anyway, I think there’s an access road along the back of the property if you drive down Aurora Road a little bit further. You’ll see it on the right. I’ll meet you along there in ten minutes.”

Obviously I wasn’t stupid enough to attempt to scale any fences marked “Private Property”. Although the land for the parking lot and other areas around the perimeter fence are also owned by Cedar Fair, without any barriers or signs protecting this land from the outside world I appeared to be perfectly within my legal ability to walk right up to the front gate and take as many pictures as I pleased. Or, at least, within my personal physical ability to do so without getting caught. Graffiti and broken beer and whiskey bottles strewn next to the admission ticket booths suggested I was not the first to pay the shuttered amusement park a visit, nor if I was willing to wait long enough would I be the last.

It’s amazing how quickly nature can reclaim land. Weeds taller than waist-height are already peeking through every concrete gap that can be found, the paint uniformly weathered and faded, and the entire parking lot looks like it recently survived an earthquake. It was less than four years ago when Geauga Lake finished what seemed like the end of just another season, only to post a brief and largely unexpected announcement the next week that they would be taking the 119 year old amusement park in a “new and exciting” direction by focusing their attention exclusively on the 20 acre “premier water park in northeast Ohio” they opened four years ago over the demolished remains of the formerly 56 acre SeaWorld Ohio. Apparently according to guest feedback surveys this water park had made redundant any need for the historic amusement park on the opposite side of the lake, so although they were sad to see the roller coasters go, this was a long-term win for everyone, especially for Cedar Fair.

I can’t decide. Whoever was tasked with drafting that letter either held a profound cynicism and condescension towards the many stakeholders in the community to believe that spinning the permanent closure and demolition of Geauga Lake as a good thing would help maintain their positive image, or it was just another example of Cedar Fair’s general incompetence at anything that requires an understanding of more emotional depth than “build big colorful roller coaster, throw confetti, and cash check at bank”. (It was signed by the park’s General Manager Bill Spehn, but carried the distinct reek of being wrung through their PR Department’s spin machine several times.) Listen, PR professionals across the world, there are times when the best way to preserve a favorable image with people is to admit some culpability and shared remorse for an unpleasant but necessary situation. Later press releases and interviews at least showed the company had the common decency to demonstrate some humility and regret over the decision. Cedar Fair CEO Dick Kinzel lamented that it was his decision to buy the property off of Six Flags in March of 2004, and the surprising financial failure of the park after only five years of removing rides and aggressive depersonalization of the park turning it into “Cedar Point East” ultimately reflected as his failure as a business person.

The closure was partly justified by rising real estate values that made the lakeside location more valuable for other commercial purposes. It was a vague promise that even though it was sad to see it removed, something of value would soon take its place, probably in the form of a strip mall or upscale residential complex that would be a boon for the local economy. One year later the economy would crash and Geauga Lake would seem destined to remain a rotting hole in the ground southeast of Cleveland for the better part of the next decade.

Some rides would be relocated to other parks in the chain while most others would either be auctioned off or sold for scrap. The property has been stripped of all steel structures save for the old Geronimo SkyCoaster, which I’m guessing the tall spindly structure must have required a specialized deconstruction process too expensive to offset the going rate for scrap steel. That was my first (and, even to this day, only) sky coaster I’ve ever been on, way back in 2001. I don’t remember much except for I had a bit of difficulty pulling the cord on the first try. I must not have found the experience that followed to be memorable enough to be worth paying the upcharge again. However, the first time I went to Geauga Lake was two seasons prior in 1999, before the park turned into Six Flags Ohio which was before the park turned into Six Flags Worlds of Adventure which was before it turned back into Geauga Lake (whew). The Serial Thriller was the big, impressive new roller coaster, although it wouldn’t last that way for long. I loved it back then, almost as much as Raptor. It has since been relocated to my home park and renamed Thunderhawk. It’s still one of the smoother SLCs I’ve ever ridden, but I wish I could retain anywhere near the same affection for it that I had back then. That evening when the line went down my dad and I ran around and rode it as many times as we could, one of the first times I got to marathon a “major” looping steel coaster.

We did the same with the Dominator on our very last visit in 2007. It was August and had we known that in less than two months the park would close forever we would have taken a lot more pictures and bought a lot more souvenirs. I still consider that ride (formerly Batman: Knight Flight) one of B&M’s best above-the-rails looping coasters ever made, along with Busch Garden’s Kumba. Although it only has five inversions, it also has the longest layout of any floorless coaster which means there’s more track devoted to a unique, non-standard layout. The massive, hangtime-filled vertical loop opener that leads directly into a lightning fast overbanked speed curve a few meters above the entrance was about as good as B&M ever got (at least with their floorless designs), and this particular cobra roll always felt more special to me. Probably because it was incredibly iconic set right above the entrance, and because it wasn’t immediately bordered on either side with another inversion. If I recall correctly, they also had Pink Floyd’s Welcome to the Machine playing over the station safety announcements. That was one of the few examples of Cedar Fair demonstrating halfway good taste. Dominator has since been relocated to King’s Dominion under the same name (how apropos), although it’s missing the cobra roll/overbanked turn walk-under at the main entrance. Sadly, the unique location at the edge of the lake set over a marshy, island-filled cove has also been substituted with a location at the edge of a parking lot set over an empty grass field, but at least the paint job looks better. I don’t know yet if the soundtrack has also moved to Virginia or not.

Although the Dominator was as good as ever in 2007, the 1950’s Americana themed section (creatively called “50’s Midway” on the guides) on the southern side of the park was an ominous warning of what was soon to come that I should have taken more serious heed of. Steel Venom (formerly Superman Ultimate Escape) and X-Flight had both already been removed the previous winter, leaving behind nothing but some footers and the shell of a station platform. Both the Skyscraper observation tower and Bellaire Express monorail were decommissioned, although that was no recent news for either. Perhaps the biggest loss was Mr. Hyde’s Nasty Fall, a rare Intamin First Generation drop tower with a clever 1950’s B-horror movie drive-in theme. Removed in 2005, there was little more than a façade covering a hole in the ground in 2007. Likewise, the nearby waterpark had been abandoned and left to rot with the opening of Wildwater Kingdom across the lake.

Apart from the Big Dipper, this left only the Head Spin Vekoma Boomerang and the also uniquely themed El Dorado as the last significant rides in the area. Needless to say, it was a bit depressing to walk through. At the time I naïvely believed that the area would have to be getting a major renovation in the near future, maybe not to bring back any major rides (Steel Venom and X-Flight, both parts of enormous but sloppy Six Flags expansions to headline their back-to-back rebranding efforts in 2000 and 2001, never felt like they belonged at Geauga Lake anyway so I didn’t mourn their departures for Cincinnati and Allentown) but at least they would add some new flat rides or other decorations that would bring back an updated look to the area’s faded pastels and broken neon.

The former Coyote Creek section was probably the best area of the park. Although not on the lakefront, the older, classic rides fit well with the rustic architecture and mature trees covering the smaller winding pathways that escaped the bustle and agoraphobia of the main midways. The 1972-built Log Flume (operating under various bottled beverage sponsored names during its later years, although known as the Gold Rush for most of its life prior to Premier Parks’ takeover) was one of the extreme few wooden structured flume rides remaining at an American amusement park. A Mack Matterhorn flat ride called the Hay Baler felt very much at home inside a rustic barn. And the 1977 Arrow Dynamics-built Double Loop, despite being undersized and outclassed by the other modern steel coasters, I always found to be a funky and retro flavor of fun. A wooden tunnel right out of the station recalled several classic wooden coaster designs, and the first hill and turnaround that narrowly scraped through a canopy of trees was delightful without having to try very hard. Then it got to the ride’s namesake, a pair of partially subterranean vertical loops followed by a rapid downhill helix that could make me dizzy in a way that the big Beemer across the midway could not.

The reason this area was relatively pleasant even up to the very last years probably has to do with the fact that Six Flags hardly touched it except for the addition of the Villain. That was the only major attraction built under Six Flag’s watch that felt ‘right’ at Geauga Lake, something that Funtime might have built that year had they never sold out to Premier Parks five years earlier. Aside from the thematic continuity with the area, the ride itself was a natural fit along the far perimeter of the park, its old west entrance and station placed alongside the Double Loop’s for a nice one-two combo of traditional roller coaster experiences. The Villain was a deceptively large ride; at 120 feet it was about the same scale as Shivering Timbers, with some equally towering camelback hills. Unfortunately it was built by Custom Coasters International in the year 2000, which meant its rolling stock would be provided by Gerstlauer. The Villain picked up some notoriety for roughness and was generally not aided by poor operations which meant a rough ride was only found at the end of a long, slow queue (with one train operation I only got two final rides in 2007 despite the rest of the park being nearly empty; the second lap demonstrated considerable dedication towards the hobby on my part). However, I always found claims by local fans that if it could be maintained and operated properly then it would reveal itself to be a top ten wooden coaster to be a little shallow. Sure, it was a big wooden coaster with a few killer drops near the start, but even on its best days a double out-and-back tracing a broad circle with no progression and little variation would have a very hard time amounting to anything deserving worldwide recognition. Not that I ever wished it to end in a scrap heap after a mere eight years of service life.

Today, the Villain and Double Loop refer to nothing more than an abandoned lot of weeds and rubble, their steel structures too unwieldy to relocate intact but too valuable to simply abandon. Only the wooden farmhouse for the Hay Baler and a couple other small buildings are still standing in Coyote Creek. The Raging Wolf Bobs has had much of its track chopped and piled up, but the superstructure still remains in the far back corner of the park. That ride wasn’t much of a loss; it barely ever operated in its last years, and when it did it had a nasty tendency to derail. My memories are vague, as I only remember even seeing it run back in 1999 and 2001, when I recall a very rough, slow, and dynamically uninteresting ride, assuredly the opposite of what its Chicago namesake was said to be like. Maybe I would have enjoyed the Bobs earlier in its life, but otherwise it seems like a perfect example of why remakes are a bad idea even in amusement parks.

That leaves the Big Dipper as the only completely intact roller coaster structure still standing on the property. It opened in 1925. It was older at the time the next oldest major attractions first opened (Log Flume and Double Loop) than either of those attractions were when they were ripped out in 2007. Yet the Big Dipper continues to live on, but just barely. Not much of an effort was made to save it. Cedar Fair offered ACE and the National Roller Coaster Museum the first chance to bid on it, but when the price wasn’t right (neither organization is financially secure these days, and a relocation requires at least seven figures even if the material is offered for free) rather than work out a deal with another park or professional team in the industry which would guarantee the historic ride’s continued existence, they opted for the quick profit and unexpectedly placed it on the general auction where it went to Apex Western Machine Movers, a company with no experience, land, or even an intention with personally relocating a roller coaster, for the bargain price of $5,000. When ACE tried to negotiate another deal to save the coaster, Apex agreed on the condition that their inexperienced company would be hired to do the deconstruction at a going rate in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. ACE was forced to decline. By this point Cedar Fair could be of no further assistance. The ride was sold, and their office in Sandusky had cleaned their hands of the Big Dipper. They bore no responsibility for its fate.

But of course nobody regretted the decision to close the amusement park and relocate, auction, or demolish the rides more than Cedar Fair did. After all, the park had only been the economic backbone of the community for 120 years, and it’s never an easy decision when the parent company that acquired the property five years prior has to liquidate some assets to help ease the debt burden of an even bigger acquisition made in 2006.1 They lost a lot of money on this deal. It’s not like the community, long-time patrons, or other stakeholders had lost anything nearly as significant. The city and citizens of Aurora never once used community resources to support the economic well-being and growth of Geauga Lake at any time during the past century, so why should they feel annoyed that everything of value on that property was shipped off or chopped down by a company that had no involvement in the community five years prior? They have no business with Cedar Fair’s affairs, so how could anyone blame them for less than ethical behavior when they kept the impending closure a secret from everybody (even instructing employees to lie about their future demolition plans when directly asked by suspicious patrons) until long after the writ of execution had already been signed and delivered?

Still, I have to admit that ever since the Geauga Lake closure and Paramount Parks acquisition, the company culture at Cedar Fair has seemed… different. I used to idolize them. During an era when Six Flags seemed bent on buying every single small park across the country and filling them with context insensitive DC Comics themed roller coasters and jacking up parking and food prices while lowering the rates of season passes, Cedar Fair seemed like the good guys by comparison. They knew how to keep their parks fun, clean, a good value for the money, and could build a good roller coaster every now and again. The best part was, they resisted a trend of bland corporatization seen at other park chains and allowed their properties a relatively large degree of self-determination at the local level. When it was announced my home park, Michigan’s Adventure, would now be covered by the same season pass as we used at Cedar Point, I thought it was a dream come true.

As Six Flags Ohio and then Six Flags Worlds of Adventure (a name that promised much more than it could actually deliver) I was pleased with the new coasters but thought they didn’t necessarily belong at this park. Six Flags acknowledged pretty directly (even in their advertising) they wanted to go head-to-head with Cedar Point, which was a bad fight to pick. Not necessarily because Six Flags couldn’t do better than Cedar Point, but because Northern Ohio isn’t exactly a place of economic prosperity with tons of disposable leisure dollars among the population. Did they really think it could handle two high-priced mega parks? Geauga Lake’s fate was probably sealed as soon as Funtime sold to Premier and the competitive nature of the industry (coupled with the fact that the amusement industry tends to be run by businesspeople who couldn’t make it in more profitable but cutthroat sectors; no offense…) forced the park to grow faster than the market could possibly bear. To be honest, I was glad when Cedar Fair started taking down the major coasters Six Flags put in and relocating them to different parks in the chain that needed the growth. Cleveland deserved to have a smaller, mid-priced regional family park, and I was willing to overlook the fact that in the wake of these ride removals many parts of Geauga Lake were starting to resemble certain parts of Cleveland you wouldn’t want to walk through alone at night.

But then Geauga Lake closed, and I realized this company that had slowly bought every major park in my home market between Michigan and Ohio had a different side to them. Cedar Fair is fundamentally a very conservative company. Their selection of managers and vice presidents are almost entirely in-sourced (read the bio-page on their corporate website, nearly everyone of status has a story about how they started work at Cedar Fair decades ago as a sidewalk sweeper), while their creative design is almost entirely outsourced; or, more usually, non-existent. Their sudden acquisition of the Paramount Parks required a rapid, major rebranding effort to escape the movie licensing requirements, and in the process they went from “no branding” to the “generic brand”, a subtle but key difference. Back when parks were still somewhat recently new additions to the Cedar Fair family, I think they retained a lot of their old personality which the expansion of one or two major thrill rides helped accentuate. But now that many of these parks have been under the Cedar Fair influence for more than a decade they’ve become rather same-y.

With monopolistic power over the Michigan/Ohio market, Michigan’s Adventure has stagnated in capital growth despite steadily increasing annual attendance (they were all but confirmed for a second major wooden coaster following Shivering Timbers under family ownership); King’s Island has turned into Cedar Point South with the rebranding of Soak City and Son of Beast is now entering its fourth season as a permanent lawn ornament; Cedar Point has traded in coasters (longest dry spell since following 1979 and Wildcat is getting the boot with no immediate replacement) for upcharge dinosaur dioramas; and Geauga Lake… well, that’s why you’re reading this, right?

They cited the fact that the amusement park was unprofitable as the main justification for closing it, but they only tried to make it so for four years (I’m not counting 2004 because they didn’t buy it until March, which sort of guaranteed that year would be a loss because there was no time to organize any form of strategy, and most efforts had to be expended just on removing every trademarked reference in the park). In fact, I’d say they only really tried to make it successful for one year: 2005. That year they opened a reasonably expensive new waterpark on the site of the old SeaWorld property, a move that, even if it reduced the overall size and offerings of the park, I can’t fault them for since I think their policy to not keep exotic animals in their parks, especially for use in shows, is a wise one, and the old waterpark was awkwardly integrated and needed updating anyway.

However, the following year (incidentally the same year Cedar Fair spent $1.25 billion to acquire the Paramount Park chain) they drastically cut back on the already announced phase two of Wildwater Kingdom and starting decommissioning several rides, such as the Sky Scraper and Bellaire Express, and Steel Venom broke down halfway through the season and never reopened. 2007 was such a bust year devoid of any attempt to attract new or repeat guests to the park that nearly everyone was predicting the park as a whole would be gone by 2008, with the only evidence to the contrary being the management’s continued insistence that nothing bad was happening to the park. And I was one of those people stupid enough to believe them. I couldn’t believe any rational enterprise would completely give up after four years of not really trying to turn things around. Cedar Fair just got greedy when the Paramount deal landed on their laps, and after biting off more than they could chew there had to be some park in the chain that would become the sacrificial lamb to the debt gods. It’s just a shame they had to be so deceitful and backhanded to fans and the community just before they decided to shut down the park for good.

Cedar Fair’s interest first and foremost is to make a profit and appease their stockholders (of which I have been one for nearly a decade now, albeit not in any significant quantity), and the situation surrounding the closure of Geauga Lake confirmed that. ACE was very close to striking a deal which could have allowed the Big Dipper to remain on site and continue to be part of the Cleveland community for the indefinite future, but Cedar Fair was impatient and wanted to quickly liquidate as many assets as possible. A line of black ink on the balance sheet reading $5,000 (remember this is a company that has billions of dollars of revenue each year) was all that they needed to justify selling it to an unknown party whom there was good reason to believe would ensure that it would never run again.

And do you know who I blame most for the demise of the Big Dipper? Not Cedar Fair or Apex. I blame the roller coaster enthusiast community.

On the Genealogy of Online Coaster Enthusiast Morals

The only reason there could be any imperative to save the Big Dipper is if there are people in the world for whom saving the Big Dipper would have been important to. After the second deal with ACE fell through, an increasingly unlikely series of attempts to rescue the coaster took place, and it ended up revealing a very ugly side of the coaster community that more than ever made me question if I was comfortable calling myself an “enthusiast”. At first it seemed as if no one wanted to rescue the historic roller coaster. Sure, there may have been some sentiments that it would be nice to see it preserved, but an extreme few were willing to do anything about it. Two enthusiasts actually were willing to do something about it: a college student from Ohio and a man from New Zealand. They got in contact with Apex, who apparently realized that once ACE left the table they were left with a big pile of wood and so was willing to accept any offer from anyone still interested in buying the coaster off of them. Needless to say, the duo’s plans for the coaster weren’t exactly as complex as a Swiss Army Knife, and even if they could raise the amount of money they were asking for through donations, skepticism over their ability to successfully transport and relocate the coaster was justifiable, to say the least. However, the response within certain large online enthusiast sites quickly devolved from reasoned skepticism into a collective attempt to ridicule, belittle, and even intentionally sabotage the (extremely) grassroots preservation effort.

The problem wasn’t that these two were trying to save the Big Dipper; it was that these two were the only people left trying to save the Big Dipper. An argument could probably be made that ACE in the 21st century is out of touch with younger enthusiasts in the digital age, and the organization serves little function besides holding the occasional prosaic events and a dedication to the expansion of waist lines. But back in the 80’s and 90’s when they constituted a pretty sizeable bloc of enthusiasts, ACE was able to organize enthusiast led and funded relocation and/or restoration projects that got results. The top ten ranked Phoenix at Knoebel’s, the beautiful Giant Dipper in San Diego, the 1901-built Leap The Dips at Lakemont Park, and others, would probably not be thrilling riders to this day if coaster enthusiasts never felt empowered in their ability to make a difference in the fate of these rides.

Since most enthusiast groups have migrated almost exclusively into the internet, there has been an increase in attitudes of passivity and fatalism. This is easily measurable in the decline of significant enthusiast-led preservation efforts of historic roller coasters over the past decade, but it becomes readily apparent just through reading message board discussions. Something that I will call “Online Enthusiast Morality” has developed as a means of regulating enthusiast’s behavior and disenabling them from active participation beyond role of the passive spectator and obedient consumer.

The reason that a morality would develop that subjugates the fans to this role is tied to the proliferation of the internet as the dominant medium through which enthusiast participation takes place. The decentralizing effect of the internet has limited the bargaining ability over parks of a lone virtual community, unlike when this power had been aggregated into a single, physical card-carrying collective. With reduced numbers and minimal resources, to be granted special treatment from the parks (enthusiast events, interviews, etc.) the online enthusiast community needed to sell themselves to the park as an extension of their Public Relations tools. This generally required the enforcement of norms in the community that ensure the interests of the enthusiasts are always aligned with the interests of the business. Although a certain degree of free speech is allowable at the individual level where it is harmless to the business organization, the community as a whole must never pursue interests that threaten to destabilize their relationship to the park as a promotional tool.

To achieve this, a subtle form of fatalism is promoted as a virtue for Online Enthusiast Morality. The individual can do nothing to affect their favorite park’s policies or the design of the most recent attraction, and so to criticize parks along these lines is not just a waste of productivity (by the time you sit down to talk about coasters online you’ve already said to hell with productivity), it risks various forms of reprimand, even potentially getting banned from all future discourses. There’s an often unstated (and sometimes stated) commandment that a good enthusiast understands and empathizes with the fact that theme parks are a business, and (so the argument goes) businesses are in business only to sustain their own profits. Not only does this justify any decision made by the business as long as it helps their own income, but the interests of the good enthusiasts must align with the interests of the business. (This usually ignores countless counterexamples of businesses and individuals being motivated to act by other sources than immediate monetary gain.) Enthusiasts that openly reject this fatalistic norm, such as the two who tried to independently save the Big Dipper, quickly become labeled as “bad enthusiasts”.

Attempts to criticize parks on the grounds of what should be done (for example, Geauga Lake should have refused to put the Big Dipper up for auction and donated it to ACE to help find a way to preserve it, or they should not have closed the amusement park at all) are usually dismissed for failing to understand the business interests at stake in an amusement park operation. A “bad” enthusiast might say “The case is that X, but it should be that Y”, to which the “good” counterargument is often “But the case is that X, and a full understanding of the situation would probably reveal that there are no alternatives, so statements of ‘should’ are meaningless”. While a causally deterministic model of reality would support such an argument, it serves absolutely no purpose on the human level other than to enforce a norm of (usually condescending) fatalism. Many people argued the fact that Cedar Fair is a business and the Big Dipper was no longer part of their interests once they decided to close the park, while making no distinction between the factuality of the situation and any sort of ethical imperative. Some people not only demonstrate pride in their ability to show no emotional affliction at the needless demolition of a beloved ride by private interests, but seem pleased when these outcomes actually do happen, because it reinforces the perceived accuracy of their ‘realistic’ worldview. The underlying belief in this behavior seems to be that realism is mutually exclusive to idealism. This fails to make the distinction between discussions on the world as it is versus how it ought to be, while both are extremely valuable discourses that should run independently of each other.

Notice, in Online Enthusiast Morality, “criticism” is always reducible to “complaining”. It can’t even be reduced to “a complaint”, because that indicates a one-time observation spurred by a specific incident, while “complaining” is a perpetual state or attitude of the individual that can be dismissed as the trait of a bad enthusiast. The choice of language is an extremely important tool for perpetuating a particular normative standard within a community. To criticize a park within the confines of Online Enthusiast Morality, one must first take caution to signify their statements as “my honest opinion”. This is basically a way to avoid responsibility for the criticism, since a totally subjective opinion is essentially arbitrary and doesn’t impact the opinion of anyone else, unless by coincidence they already happen to share the opinion. This ‘moral’ behavior of stating harmless, subjectively-grounded “opinions” rather than harmful, objectively-grounded “criticisms” (unless the criticism is obvious and already community endorsed) is promoted under the guise of keeping civility and order in the discussion, but it really is only a means of minimizing any potential threat to the established community norms or the financial interests of the amusement park in question.

Then there is a belief perpetuated among members that the enthusiast community is of little to no value to the amusement parks. They create an entity called the “general public”, which is basically an anonymous out-group consisting of anyone who is not part of the broader enthusiast community that visits amusement parks. The “general public” is usually characterized condescendingly, as ignorant, impulsive, and of poor tastes relative to the enthusiast. Yet at the same time, the GP are of infinite more importance to the amusement park than the enthusiasts, because parks are only profit-motivated and the general public is how they make the vast majority of their profits. (As if entertainment businesses make decisions only by running focus groups with customers of the lowest common denominator, and place absolutely no higher value in the critical consensus of people with experience or good taste.) This apparent contradiction between the inherent superiority yet fundamental inefficacy of being an enthusiast is a means of encouraging people to remain involved in the community while simultaneously limiting their belief that anything they say within the community will have any material importance outside the online walled gardens. People only participate as enthusiasts for their own instantaneous gratification, and critical thinking can therefore only be harmful to this objective. Therefore, enthusiast morality states that theme parks should not be grateful for having fans. Rather, fans should be grateful for having theme parks. Unlike the general public, who only owe theme parks their money, fans owe them their money and their continued, uncritical loyalty.

As a result of this lack of critical scrutiny, the amusement industry has been afforded the luxury of being one of the most secretive and closed door entertainment industries relative to their fanbase. There are virtually no media institutions in the amusement industry that are not extended promotional tools to advance their immediate business interests, as there are with professional film or music criticism. Interviews rarely talk at any depth about craft or theory as a filmmaker or musician would (“industry secrets”), but are essentially viewed as PR tools useful for selling more tickets to a particular category of customers. The industry is in such a creative rut that it’s hard to even think about ways in which attractions could be better (conceptually, thematically) that’s different from the established order.

This lack of information flow or critical/theoretical framework has meant that “critical” enthusiasts become easy targets for derision from “moral” enthusiasts. Discussion among fans tends to be very misinformed due to the almost complete absence of any useful literature or news sources, either from within the industry or from professional criticism. This makes it much easier to keep the population subjugated under Online Enthusiast Morality because any attempts to criticize are always dismissed as being made in ignorance. But there’s virtually no way for one to become informed without becoming involved in the industry first-hand, at which point their interests will once again be aligned with the perpetuation of these norms. Accordingly, critical enthusiasts have almost nothing to talk about except exceedingly insignificant details; i.e. “I don’t like that paint selection, the paneling looks weird”. While this sort of discussion is usually (rightly) yelled at for being unacceptably negative in tone relative to the triviality of concerns, the exact same discussion in a positive fashion (I love this new paint, the paneling on this building looks spectacular!) is often commended.

This wall secrecy and a complacent, fatalistic attitude among fans has allowed companies like Cedar Fair to do things like unexpectedly close a 120 year old amusement park without any sort of resistance from the relevant communities (locals, fans, activists, etc), and they take absolutely no responsibility these actions because of it. The enthusiast community has enabled this sort of behavior both indirectly (a more actively involved community might have had enough leverage with the companies to have discovered the plans for closure before it was too late, and could have at least alerted people to make final visits and/or picket Cedar Fair) and directly (enforcing moral norms that try to limit the role of the enthusiast as that of the complacent consumer). Until the ability to have a free, rigorous, and informed critical discourse about these attractions is achieved on the same level that it has been for other entertainment sectors, this sort of irresponsible behavior towards our valued historic attractions will continue to perpetuate and be deemed acceptable.

I reconvened with my dad along Geauga Lake Road after taking my fill of pictures from the parking lot and the front gate. We drove around the back of the perimeter towards the remaining Raging Wolf Bobs structure. As we parked along the road, he suggested I climb up onto the roof of the car to get a better angle over the fence. I shimmied up, careful not to dent the hood, and took a couple photos of the decaying wooden structure and piles of track bed laid in a nearby clearing. I got back down, and we turned up the heating and drove on. We completed our tour around the lake, getting a few brief glimpses of the water park and the Big Dipper from across the water, and then turned east for our planned evening in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I doubt I’ll ever see the Big Dipper or Geauga Lake again.

The Big Dipper is dead.

Geauga Lake is dead.

Geauga Lake remains dead.

And we have killed it.

_

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October 14th, 2011 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Geauga Lake | 14 comments