GEAUGA LAKE: The Legendary Life and Loss of The World’s Most Adventurous Amusement Park

Lost Legend

Geauga Lake opened in 1887. It was as old as automobile; the telephone; the lightbulb. It survived the tenures of twenty-one U.S. Presidents – from Grover Cleveland to George W. Bush. Founded in an era before motion pictures, this little picnic park in Aurora had somehow survived for a century before being rocketed into the “Coaster Wars” of the 2000s, anointed by new corporate overlords as “the next Cedar Point,” at any cost, before folding and being bought by the very company it sought to defeat.

Geauga Lake’s 119th season came to a close on September 16, 2007.

Five days later, on Friday, September 21, 2007, Cedar Fair announced via a press release that the amusement park they’d purchased less than four years before would never open again. Then-chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Cedar Fair, Dick Kinzel, concluded in the announcement:

“After four years of operating Geauga Lake as a combined water park / amusement park attraction, we have concluded that its future should be entirely as a water park. Visiting Geauga Lake is a 119-year-old tradition in northeastern Ohio. That tradition will continue, but in a new and exciting way.”

Cedar Fair’s spokesperson nervously reported to local news that the timing hadn’t been malicious; Cedar Fair’s Board of Directors had carefully and thoughtfully determined only the day before that “the market demand wasn’t there to support the park as structured,” and that the company believed “the park will be most successful operating exclusively as a water park.”

There were no goodbyes. No last rides. No apologies. No final tours or memorial events. No last chance for photos. No farewell season. Nothing. A park passed down by generations, shared across 120 years, was no more. Six years after becoming “the world’s largest amusement park,” only a fraction of the property around Geauga Lake would re-open in 2008.

A decision that felt immensely personal for generations of guests was certainly more strategic than mean-spirited. After all, just as Geauga Lake was gearing up for what would be its final season in 2007, Cedar Fair purchased CBS’s five Paramount Parks for $1.24 billion, nearly doubling their national footprint (and interestingly, giving the Sandusky-based company control of Ohio’s three parks, each a flagship of their own-time owners – their own Cedar Point, Paramount’s Kings Island, and Six Flags’ Worlds of Adventure).

Riddled with debt thanks to the gargantuan purchase (and staring down the barrel of the hefty thrill ride investment each of the former Paramount Parks would require to get up-to-Cedar-Fair-snuff), it’s fair to imagine that the overexpanded Geauga Lake was simultaneously too big a burden to bear… and its ride collection too great an asset to ignore.

What else should Cedar Fair have done but use the pieces of the overexpanded and financially faltering Geauga Lake to bolster its legacy and newly-acquired parks? Yet the relocation of any viable thrill ride simple added to the perception – true or not – that Geauga Lake had been bought for spare parts, and shuttered to ensure there would not arise another competitor in the state…

• The two coasters that had been removed a year earlier – at the end of the 2006 season –found life elsewhere. X-Flight reopened as Firehawk at Kings Island (closing in 2018), and Steel Venom (formerly, Superman: Ultimate Escape) still operates as Possessed at Dorney Park;
• The original 1926 Marcus Illions Grand Carousel was relocated to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, Missouri;
• Dominator (formerly, Batman: Knight Flight), the Americana Ferris wheel, and the El Dorado “magic carpet” flat ride were relocated to Kings Dominion in Virginia (the latter closed in 2016);
• The Texas Twister HUSS Top Spin went to California’s Great America as FireFall (closing in 2016);

• Head Spin (formerly, Mind Eraser) was moved to Carowinds as Carolina Cobra (now called The Flying Cobras);
• The Beaver Land Mine Ride (originally Roadrunner Express) was sold to Papéa Parc in France, and operates today as Roller Coaster;
• Easily-relocatable flat rides from the KidWorks Play Zone (originally Looney Tunes Boomtown) were sent tboom to Cedar Point and reclad as a new family area, Planet Snoopy;
• Thunderhawk (originally, Serial Thriller) still operates at Michigan’s Adventure

The classic Double Loop was sold to a scrap dealer for $23,000; the Villain – just seven years old – was scrapped for $30,000. The Raging Wolf Bobs coaster was sold for $2,500 to a private buyer, but was ultimately demolished.

The historic Big Dipper – the third oldest operating roller coaster in the US at the time – was rumored to have been auctioned or sold several times, but remained standing but not operating (above) for nearly a decade. At least the auction process allowed for an album of final photographs of a park that – other than its vanished coasters – still looked ready for guests. (Ultimately, the Big Dipper was demolished in 2016.)

Calling it “the end of an era,” Aurora’s then-mayor Lynn McGill said of the closure, “It’s a bittersweet day. It’s sad they’re closing the amusement park, but it could have been worse – they could have closed everything.” (Remember what we said about even the darkest moments one day being remembered as “the good ole’ days”?)

The rest of Geauga Lake wasn’t merely abandoned; it was bulldozed. Everything from food stands to gift shops were ransacked and cut to their foundations, with copper, plumbing, and infrastructure torn out; obliterated. The iconic red-brick “train station” entry with its decorative teal towers was reduced to the turnstiles alone, seemingly only to spare Cedar Fair from the backlash of seeing those towers crumble on their own from neglect, age, and vandalism.

The park was, quite literally, flattened. To fly over it in the 2010s was to see its paths, still arranged into its themed lands, snaking their way around concrete building foundations and ride footings among overgrown wilderness. Not even a restroom remained standing. Only the original 1925 Big Dipper was left until it, too, was demolished and sent to a landfill in 2016.

Cedar Fair officially listed the 377-acre plot of land for sale in 2008… but no one bit. Five years later, the company relisted the real estate, now willing to sell it in parcels rather than all-or-nothing. A series of redevelopment proposals came and went.

Every few years, a new plan to turn the property into residential neighborhoods or a retail district or a high end shopping mall or condominiums or office parks was announced with much fanfare, but nothing ever made it through the township’s approval. Instead, the remains rotted.

If you can bare it, we invite you to watch the drone footage above, capturing the park’s remains in 2016, just before the Big Dipper’s demolition. If you ever visited Geauga Lake in any of its forms, you’ll no doubt be able to trace landmarks or map treasured memories onto the crumbling paths. If you hadn’t visited, imagine this footage taken of your own, local, hometown park… maybe that’ll help explain why Geauga Lake is a story that can only be told through the lens of open wounds.

Including the way it ended…

Evaporating

As promised, the waterpark portion of Geauga Lake opened Memorial Day weekend 2008 with its sixth name in ten years: GEAUGA LAKE’S WILDWATER KINGDOM. Unchanged since 2006 and without its “Phase II” expansion, it still contained the multi-slide Thunder Falls complex, the Liquid Lightning Tornado slide, the Splash Landing water play fortress, the Riptide Run lazy river, and Tidal Wave Bay wave pool.

The park wasted no time walling off the vestigial remains of SeaWorld. Ascending the stairs to the Thunder Falls slide, guests could gaze out over walls erected to block access to the former “Happy Harbor.” The overgrown, abandoned pavement that had already become a hallmark of the lake’s west side was now creeping along the east side, too.

The three-story climbing nets and simple family flat rides in the area had already been removed during the off-season. The 4D theater and motion simulator buildings remained (and lasted until at least 2021) in an oddly callous reminder of what was.

More to the point, it’s difficult to imagine why even the pared-down Wildwater Kingdom couldn’t have made use of those attractions rather than mothballing them so publicly. But given the park’s limited, local appeal, expectedly low attendance, and its waterpark business model and staffing strategy, it’s probably no surprise that such extraneous attractions were better off placed behind walls than serving audiences of dozens.

In 2009, the park added Little Tikes Town, a small children’s area lined with the familiar backyard Little Tikes playhouses and tot toys manufactured in nearby Hudson. The next year introduced The Beach Family Fun Area, a sandy courtyard offering an oversized chess board and beanbag toss boards.

Eventually, the water ski stadium was demolished to make way for a lakefront beach chair patio. But otherwise, no further expansion ever came to the park. In 2011, the “Geauga Lake’s” prefix was dropped in favor of a seventh name change. WILDWATER KINGDOM operated for a full decade without a noteworthy new addition after 2006’s wave pool.

All the while, arriving locals followed road signs to Geauga Lake, parked alongside a few dozen cars occupying just a row or two in SeaWorld’s parking lot built for thousands, passed through the historic entrance turnstiles and “Main Street” that had once been SeaWorld’s, then gazed across the lake at the Big Dipper – the single feature still visible where a skyline of 100-foot coasters had once stretched across the lakeshore. Ouch.

On August 19, 2016, Cedar Fair finally pulled the plug. After trying for years and years to sell the abandoned amusement park side of the property, they announced that in working closely with the city and township, they’d made the decision that for any of the property to move forward, the entire property needed to be redeveloped. “After examining its long-range plans, Cedar Fair has determined that the time is right to begin this transition…” In layman’s terms, after its seasonal closure on September 5, 2016 and just a decade of life, Wildwater Kingdom would finally close forever. With a whimper that barely registered with enthusiasts, it was over.

Though the life of Geauga Lake had surpassed a century, its death was an excruciating and prolonged one – like ripping off a Band-aid one hair at a time for nearly twenty years.

New Life

In August 2020, the Pulte Group purchased a portion of the gargantuan plot and began construction on a residential neighborhood on the site of SeaWorld’s former parking lot. (That small housing complex has indeed taken shape, with “tribute” street names like Dipper Lane and River Run Road, despite being on the SeaWorld side of the lake.)

That October, the rest of the 377-acres of Cedar Fair-owned land was purchased by the Industrial Commercial Properties development company, with stated aims of filling the space around the lake with mixed used retail, dining, and living development. They never actually broke ground, but at least ICP’s purchase finally rid Cedar Fair of the last of its Aurora real estate.

In June 2023, the city of Aurora announced their intention to purchase 40 acres of ICP’s land holdings as well as the 53-acre lake using a combination of city budget and funds remaining from the COVID-related American Rescue Plan.

In what may be the greatest tribute to its former resident that could reasonably be hoped for, the city of Aurora intends to use the piecemeal remains of SeaWorld (like the iconic pyramidal aquarium and the pearl-diving “Asian Adventures” waterfront pagoda) and Wildwater Kingdom (the wave pool) as components of a new city park. As part of the agreement, ICP also agreed build a “Lake Loop” trail or boardwalk on the water’s edge.

Of the $4.5 million transaction, Aurora’s mayor Ann Womer Benjamin said, “This is a legacy purchase for the people of Aurora. It is the opportunity of a lifetime to guarantee our residents lake access and a destination that is going to be one of the gems of Northeast Ohio.”

Though the site plans Aurora floated will eventually be reshaped by budgetary constraints, community conversations, and multi-phase development, it would be difficult to characterize the concept as anything but a win.

It may take years to see if a restaurant really does overtake the aquarium, if the beach really can be opened for lake swimming, or if the long-abandoned wave pool is salvageable (much less realistically operable for a city). But the opportunity for guests to visit this locally-hallowed ground in any form would be a welcome one.

The End

Most of the inner-city “trolley parks” or waterfront “picnic parks” from the turn of the last century are long gone. Among those that survived, little traditional amusement parks like Geauga Lake flicker out of existence every year. For most of those parks, locals mourn, coasters are scrapped, mixed use zoning ushers in retail, dining, and residential areas with street names like “Carousel Court” and “Big Dipper Way,” and life goes on.

But the story of the little parks in Aurora, Ohio is different. A century-old family amusement park sharing a lake with a marine life park, both catapulted into international news… The “world’s largest theme park” crashed onto the scene in 2001, and a decade later, nearly every trace of it had been wiped off the face of the Earth. From the complementary pairing of Geauga Lake and SeaWorld to the monumental super-park of Six Flags Worlds of Adventure, there’s never been a story quite like Geauga Lake’s before.

And hopefully, there won’t be another story like it ever again.

Be sure to visit Park Lore’s in-depth histories of other Midwest classics, like Kings Island’s Lost Legends: Son of Beast and TOMB RAIDER: The Ride, or the outer space mess of Cedar Point’s Declassified Disaster: Disaster Transport. Or just visit our Lost Legends collection and set course for another industry story.