Will Geauga Lake's WWK Phase 2 ever happen?

Aurora did have a height restriction applicable to the entire city, but so what? Cities give zoning variances all of the time.

And I hope you're not suggesting that the stadiums being buit into the ground was because of some limitation. Not only was the ski stadium nearly as tall, but if you have a hill you can build them into and drastically reduce the cost in the process, why wouldn't you?

Hill or a hole in the ground...you get my point. Eather way, they are below tree level.

The ski stadium was the tallest structure built at seaworld.

Jason Hammond said:

I'm not exactly sure which venue your refering to. But, this map is no older than last year.

If you look at the other side of the lake, you can see the ride side of Geauga Lake demolished.

The buildings are still there on that map. You can see the remnants from when the floating bridge connected to the "Wildlife" side to the "Wild Rides" side. I remembering finding it odd that a major traffic path was fed directly into the side of a small-ish gift shop.

The map seems to be pretty recent, probably within even just a few months. It looks like parts of the new-for-2010 The Beach Family Fun Area are in place, particularly the oversized chess board.

If Geauga Lake did in fact sell SeaWorld the land then there could've been a non-compete agreement, but that's about the only scenario I can think of where such an agreement would come to be. If the two parks were in the same township then the city could impose said restrictions. However, adding rides wouldn't have fixed the fundamental problem with SeaWorld. There is a good reason why marine animal parks are not typically seasonal operations.

Yes, Aurora had height restrictions on the SeaWorld property. Apparently Six Flags was planning to build a hypercoaster for '02 or '03 on that side and the height restriction became an issue. If I recall correctly, Six Flags either planned to request or got approval to build a 150-foot tall ride, but that project died as fast as the park did.

egieszl said:
If the two parks were in the same township then the city could impose said restrictions.

Both parks resided in both Aurora and Bainbridge. On top of that confusion, Aurora is in Portage County and Bainbridge is in Cuyahoga County.

I used to visit Sea World as a kid and I thought there was a sort of partnership between the two parks. You used to be able to ride a ferry across the lake to visit the other park and I thought they discounted if you did that.

I was just a kid and wouldn't know about any restrictions or anti-compete agreements, but it always appeared to me that the two parks complemented each other.

They did compliment each other. Geauga Lake had Sea World to thank for much of it's success throughout the 30 years Sea World was there.

I believe there was a non-compete in place. That said SeaWorld was almost entirely in Aurora, and as far as I could tell, none of GL was in Aurora.

None of it matters. It didn't change the fact that SeaWorld was not a sustainable business when the critters had to eat year-round, even if there weren't people buying tickets in December. As market tastes and desires for entertainment changed, and people fled Northeast Ohio, it became less sustainable over time.

You can see here that Sea world's property was split in half. Geauga Lake only had a small portion in Aurora.

<edit> This was the best thing I could find showing the county line and the park boundaries. The Orange (dash double dot) line is the county line. The red border shows what land is for sale. The blue shaded area is what the park is keeping. The left photo was what they were originally planning on. Some time later, they revised the sale offering to the image on the right.

Yes, there was a non-compete in place that prevented SeaWorld from building any mechanical rides. Also, Bainbridge is in Geauga County, not Cuyahoga.

When BEC decided to start branding the parks as "adventures" and emphasizing rides it was the reason they approached Funtime first to buy all of the complex. The deal didn't work out as Funtime wanted to sell all of its parks as one whole package which BEC was not interested in, Premiere Parks came in bought all of Funtime, and eventually BEC pulled out.

What is incredibly sad to me is Ohio could have had the first version of what BEC was trying to do in Dubai having Busch Gardens and SeaWorld parks right next to each other (ie. Worlds of Discovery.) I personally believe it would have complimented Cedar Point, just as Disney-Universal-SeaWorld feed off of each other in Orlando. Sadly, there is a complete lack of vision in political leadership around Aurora/Bainbridge to accomplish such a great opportunity.

Your right. I meant Geauga.