Remembering Geauga Lake

I visited once back in '05 when I worked at Cedar Point. I thought it had a solid collection of coasters (Dominator is still one of my favorites, and I thought Big Dipper and The Villain delivered), and I was very impressed with the water park. The Thunder Falls body slides are the best I've ever been on and one of the few rides that actually intimidated me.

I can imagine how sad it was for Clevelanders and other locals when the park closed, but even for a one-time visitor like me, whose experience at the park is one of many fond memories from that summer, it's tough to see it happen.

I went to the park under all 3 owners. I was not impressed with Geauga lake before it was ran by Six Flags. It was full of rotten teenagers, and the rides were in horrible shape. If had not been for a wonderful trip to Sea World, I think I wouldn't have drove 7 hours from Michigan to get there. The difference between the care of Sea World, and the decay of Geauga made me sad.

When Six Flags turned Geauga into Worlds of Adventure. I was highly impressed with the park. They added some really great rides to it, and made it 100 times better than it was before. The park was cleaner, the employees were friendlier, and the lack of kid street trash, made it very enjoyable. They made huge improvements to the park.

It still amazes me that people gave more credit to Cedar Fair for it's improvements, when all Cedar Fair did was buy the park, and change a few names of the rides. And, the only reason they changed the names of the rides was due to Six Flags hold on the DC comics. Then it was Cedar fair that decided to do nothing with the Sea World side of the park. I did not see anything that Cedar Fair did to the park to impress me.

It was obvious from the get go, that the only reason they purchased the park was to get rid of Cedar Points only real competition. People say it is not competition if they own it. But, sure makes a lot of people go back to Cedar Point now that Geauga is no longer a full amusement park.

I was looking at the Cedar Fair website, and in their list of competitors for Michigan's Adventure's market, of 5 million potential customers. They have Great America, and Cedar Point listed as it's major competitors for business. I'm sure it was the same with Geauga Lake.

*sigh* I thought all that foolishness about Cedar Fair having some nefarious scheme to 'destroy' Geauga Lake as competition by pouring millions of dollars into the park and trying to fix what Six Flags had wrought was long gone...

I was at the park in 2003 or 2004. I was blown away at how awesome the place was! I really enjoy it, to this day, its one of my all time favorite parks!

I was at the water park today. Clearly, the park is right-sized.

Wildwater Kingdom is awesome! I am thinking about taking a trip there soon and using my Platinum Pass.

We'll be there on Monday. While I would love to see a couple new slides added, I am satisfied with what they have. It's only 40 minutes away for us, and makes for a great family day for us (2 girls, 1 and 5).

At the very least, someone needs to clean up the mess left over...not only from the ride-side, but also the Sea World leftovers. Just slightly tacky IMO.

I haven't been to Wildwater Kingdom in a few years, not because of any particular reason, I've just not made it out there.

I'm thinking I need to start making regular trips out there again. It's around a half hour away, and I can float in the lazy river for most of the day and not think twice.

In fact, I might try and go there today.

The lazy river isn't very lazy on Saturday afternoon, we learned. It gets really crowded. I don't know why I would expect anything different.

I'm five and a half hours away from WK, but I have rekindled my love for waterparks after visiting Hersheypark last week, and am contemplating a big waterpark adventure.

Jeff said:

The lazy river isn't very lazy on Saturday afternoon, we learned.

Just so long as the river doesn't get 'hazy'. Avoid the ass soup.

Yes, around mid-afternoon, we had to wait to get a tube from people leaving the river as all the tubes were being used. Once we got in the river, it was quite crowded.

While riding the tube slides we saw the same issue. We got some of the last tubes. There appear to be enough tubes to take the line to the bottom of the stairs. So, it's not that they were skimping out on tubes, it's just that they were likely near capacity.

We took advantage of getting in the park eary to get 2 rides on The Tornado Slide in about 30 minutes. By mid afternoon, the line was full.

I always enjoy myself at the park. Saturday was the perfect amount of heat (mid to upper 80's) with a nice breeze.

I'd love to see them add an action river and another slide complex at the other end of the park. It doesn't need to be done quickly. But, it would be nice to see something go in after 6 years of minor improvements. More capacity would be appreciated on busy days like Saturday.