Six Flags Worlds of Adventure

This article is about a former Six Flags theme park, property, or attraction.

The content of this page may not reflect the subject in its current form, but rather as it was while operated by Six Flags.

Six Flags Worlds of Adventure, formerly Six Flags Ohio, (known as Geauga Lake) was a large Six Flags amusement and wildlife park in Bainbridge Township and Aurora, Ohio. It operated under Six Flags ownership from just 2000 to 2003, making it one of the shortest-lived Six Flags parks in history and only one year longer than Six Flags New Orleans.

Originally opening as Geauga Lake in 1887, the park had seen many changes in its over 130 years of operation, including new owners and in the second half of the 20th century, new attractions including thrill rides and roller coasters. The park was purchased by Funtime Incorporated in 1969, and the Oklahoma-based Premier Parks later acquired Funtime in 1995 and with it Geauga Lake. The park was re-branded as Six Flags Ohio in 2000.

Six Flags purchased SeaWorld Ohio, on the opposite side of Geauga Lake, for $110 million in 2001. This combined both parks into one, and the new mega-park was renamed Six Flags Worlds of Adventure. It was once the largest amusement park by land acreage when it was owned by Six Flags at 700 acres.^[1] The park would later close after being sold to Cedar Fair and reverting back to Geauga Lake, but they would continue to operate the Wildwater Kingdom waterpark until 2016. Today, the land has been cleared for commercial and residential developments.

History[]

Early history (1887–1969)[]

Geauga Lake, a small lake located in Aurora, Ohio, opened for picnics and swimming in 1872. It was originally known as "Giles Pond" as it was first owned by a man named "Sullivan Giles". It quickly became a popular tourist spot in the summers. Geauga Lake Park would officially be established in 1887 on the north side of the lake. At this time, three major league baseball games would be played on Sundays. In 1889, the park had built its first ride, a steam-powered carousel.

In 1925, the Big Dipper wooden roller coaster would be built, marking the first coaster of the park. The Big Dipper was the largest roller coaster in world at that time. At this time, the park would build an Olympic-sized swimming pool, as well as a theater, dance hall, ballroom roller-rink, and a bowling alley. The dance hall and ballrooms of the park continued to bring in big names in the music industry at the time. The original carousel was removed and in 1937, a 1926 hand-carved Marcus Illions Grand Carousel was added to the park.

In 1942, a tornado had damaged buildings and the Big Dipper, but they were quickly repaired. Ten years later in 1952, a fire would damage the park's bowling alley, dance hall, theater, and roller-rink. It was at this time when Geauga Lake would become strictly become a seasonal amusement park, beach, and swimming area. The swimming pools were removed in the 1960s, though lake swimming was still permitted.

Funtime Incorporated era (1969–1994)[]

Funtime Incorporated, a company based out of nearby Cleveland, was formed to purchase Geauga Lake in 1969. Earl Gascoigne, one of the founders of Funtime, was impressed with SeaWorld San Diego and persuaded SeaWorld to build a park on the south side of the lake. The lake was divided by two counties, with the north side located in Geauga County and the south side located in Portage County. SeaWorld was looking for a spot for their new park, preferably between Detriot and Pittsburgh, as this was the area with the highest-paid blue-collar workers in the US at the time. Eventually, SeaWorld did build a park, and in 1970, SeaWorld Ohio opened to the public making it the second in the SeaWorld chain. Through its life, it would be the smallest SeaWorld park. Although owned separately, the two parks were friendly neighbors, and worked together to turn Northeast Ohio into a regional destination for all families. SeaWorld would go onto be purchased by Busch Entertainment in 1989.

Funtime would go onto build multiple attractions for the park. This included Gold Rush, a water ride in 1972, the Skyscraper, an observation gyro tower in 1974, Double Loop in 1977, and Corkscrew a year later. To celebrate the centennial anniversary of Geauga Lake, Funtime partnered with the Dinn Corporation to build Raging Wolf Bobs. In 1983, Boardwalk Shores was added, the parks official water park. Two years later, the owner of SeaWorld announced their intent to purchase Funtime and combine the two parks into one, but the deal fell through.

During the 80's Funtime Inc. would go on to own other properties, including Darien Lake in Darien, New York, and Wyandot Lake in Columbus, Ohio. In 1995, Premier Parks would purchase Funtime Inc. and all of the parks for $60 million.

Premier Parks era (1995–1999)[]

In 1995, Premier Parks purchased Funtime Incorporated. This meant Geauga Lake would fall under Premier Park's ownership. New additions included Mind Eraser, a Vekoma boomerang and Grizzly Run, an Intamin water rapid ride. Both rides opened on May 10, 1996. Corkscrew was removed in 1995 and sold to Dizzee World in India.

In 1998, Premier Parks purchased the Six Flags brand from Time Warner. Serial Thriller, a Vekoma Suspended Looping Coaster, was added in 1998 and sat partially over the lake. The Premier Parks ownership would be short-lived, as Premier Parks would re-brand themselves as Six Flags Theme Parks Inc following the turn of the millennium.

Six Flags era (2000–2003)[]

Towards the end of 1999, Premier Parks announced they would re-brand Geauga Lake as Six Flags Ohio starting in the 2000 season. This new park would feature a $40 million expansion, which featured 20 new rides including four new coasters. These coasters including Batman: Knight Flight, Roadrunner Express, Superman: Ultimate Escape, and The Villain. Also, a new kids area, Looney Tunes Boomtown was added, as well as a new shoot-the-chute water ride. Also Boardwalk Shores would be expanded with a lazy river and new wave pool and renamed Hurricane Harbor.

Around the turn of the millennium, Busch Entertainment, the current owners of SeaWorld Ohio, were changing their SeaWorld parks nationwide to include rides and coasters, straining away from their original educational aspects. Busch wanted to expand the Ohio park, as attendance was growing to record numbers. However, due to a non-compete clause with Six Flags Ohio, as well as height restrictions set by Portage County, Busch was unable to construct roller coasters and water attractions, therefore approached Six Flags about purchasing their park.^[2] Six Flags ended up making a counteroffer, and Busch sold SeaWorld Ohio to Six Flags in January 2001 for $110 million. Instead of operating the two parks separately, Six Flags merged them into one. Thus, creating Six Flags Worlds of Adventure. The northern side of the lake would become the "Wild Rides" side, and the southern side of the lake would hold the "Wild Life" side. The Wild Life side would still hold aquatic and animal shows, similar to SeaWorld. For the first time in the park's history, one ticket would get you into all three parks, including the waterpark. Guests could now park on either side of the lake, and they could walk across a floating bridge, or take ferry boats to get across the lake. The park would become the largest by acreage, spanning over 700 acres.

Six Flags Worlds of Adventure would build X-Flight, a Vekoma Flying Dutchman in 2001. In 2002, the park would add various small rides to the Wild Life side of the park. Originally, park officials had planned on building a hyper coaster on the Wild Life side close to the south parking lot. However, zoning restrictions and complaints from local residents at a planning commission meeting ultimately canceled these plans.^[3] In 2003, the water park was expanded with 10 new slides. This would be the last new addition to the mega-park, as Six Flags would list the park for sale following the 2003 season. This was due to corporate financial difficulties as the company was close to filing for bankruptcy. Company executives said the Cleveland market was "tough" as the expected 3 million guests were never reached in the four years the park operated under the Six Flags name. In fact, attendance plunged 25 percent from 2001 to 2003, despite the combination of the two sides. Company executives also called the attendance of the new Wild Life side "disappointing".^[4] Selling the park would allow the company to climb out of debt, and find new opportunities in North America.^[5]

Cedar Fair era (2004–2007)[]

and in — Thunderhawk and Dominator in 2005

Six Flags' rival Cedar Fair announced a deal in which they would purchase the entire park for $145 million in March of 2004. For the 2004 season, the park would be re-branded back to its original name Geauga Lake. With this, Cedar Fair would rename multiple rides and attractions that featured DC Comics or Looney Tunes Licensing, as they did not own the rights. Roadrunner Express was renamed "Beaver Land Mine", Superman: Ultimate Escape was changed into "Steel Venom" (the ride still kept its red & blue paint scheme), and Batman: Knight Flight was renamed "Dominator". Also, other rides that didn't contain any licensing were still renamed due to trademarks by Six Flags: Serial Thriller was renamed "Thunderhawk" and Mind Eraser became "Head Spin". Peanuts characters were added to the park. Hurricane Harbor would be also be renamed to Hurricane Hannah's. Finally, the Wild Life section of the park was razed, as Cedar Fair did not specialize in animal entertainment or exhibitions. Animals would be transported to other Six Flags parks. It is speculated that Cedar Fair's vision for Geauga Lake was to rebrand it into a "family amusement park" in an attempt to re-attract local guests back to the once small, local park. In 2005, Cedar Fair would invest $26 million for a new water park, Wildwater Kingdom. This would sit on the old site of the Wild Life side and would use SeaWorld's old entrance. It would feature six slides and a children's play area. A new floating bridge was constructed in the middle of the lake and the ferry service was terminated. This new water park would alter the name of the park to Geauga Lake & Wildwater Kingdom.

In 2006, Hurricane Hannah's was shut down, and a wave pool was added to the Wildwater Kingdom. The season was also shortened, with the season-ending in September. This meant that the Halloween event, Geauga Lake Halloween Haunt, would be discontinued. Towards the end of the season, many peoples fears came true when two major coasters were removed, Steel Venom (previously named Superman: Ultimate Escape) and X-Flight.

On September 16, 2007, Geauga Lake closed its doors for the 2007 operating season. However, many guests did not know this would be the last day the park would ever operate. On September 21, 2007, just five days after closing for the season, Cedar Fair would publicly announce the park's closure. Wildwater Kingdom would still remain open, operating as Geauga Lake's Wildwater Kingdom until the "Geauga Lake" subscript was dropped in 2011. Multiple rides and major coasters were saved and relocated to other Cedar Fair parks. However, many were demolished, including the iconic Big Dipper and what was left of the park's entrance in 2016. On June 17, 2008, visitors were granted one final opportunity to enter the park for the auction previews. Wildwater Kingdom would go on to operate before meeting the same fate and closing its doors on September 5, 2016.

Cedar Fair was criticized for buying Six Flags Worlds of Adventure with the intention to close it and redistribute the coasters to smaller Cedar Fair parks. However, Cedar Fair claimed that the reason they removed rides was to scale back Geauga Lake to its original family park style. Cedar Fair also claimed the park was costly and not profitable^[6] as attendance dropped from 2 million in 2003 to just 700,000 in 2004.^[7] Other attributing factors for the parks closure was the overexpansion at the turn of the millennium, Cedar Point being less than two hours away, lack of overnight accommodations in the area, ordinances and zoning with both the City of Aurora and Portage County, and Cedar Fair's then-recent $1.23 billion acquisition of Paramount Parks in 2006.

In the coming years, many rides and other assets were moved to various Cedar Fair parks or sold to other parks around the world. In June 2008, an auction took place in the park. The land in which the park sat contained nothing but pathways, coaster footers and overgrown foliage for many years. Since the closure of the park, Cedar Fair has continued to own the land where Geauga Lake once stood. After failed attempts at selling the land in its entirety, Cedar Fair would re-sell the land in multiple parcels. In August 2020, PulteGroup, a home construction company, announced they were constructing "Renaissance Park at Geauga Lake," a 245-acre suburb built on the former Wildwater Kingdom parking lot. In October 2020, a local development company bought the remaining land to develop a mixed-use housing, shopping and dining complex which would be known as the "Geauga Lake District." The new area will also contain multiple nods towards the parks history, including a sign with a scale model roller coaster modeled after the parks iconic Big Dipper roller coaster. As of late 2020, both of these projects have officially begun construction with homes being built on the former SeaWorld parking lot, and land being cleared on the north end of the park.