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It was 2 years ago literally to the minute, at 8pm on Sunday September 16, 2007, that the gates of Geauga Lake closed for the last time. Many were simply enjoying the last day of the season and celebrating Oktoberfest. But, five days later, Dick would announce what we all already knew. How tragic.

The icing on the cake, to me, was the security around Big Dipper and all of the bigwigs taking that ride right after closing.

I had said my goodbyes in person a few days earlier, but was watching on the webcam. Octoberfest decorations. People eating and talking near the fountain. Two women and stroller wandering by right around 8 p.m. A final security guard making the rounds. And then it shut off. It sounds like those who went had a great time, Snoopy and the Peanuts were dancing with the kids and Villain was ripping through the autumn night.

Here's hoping that two years from now the Big Dipper might be creating future memories.

Unfortunately I was unable to go most of the weekend, I did show up late Saturday and got my last night rides on Villain, oddly enough the park was quite packed!

I made it back Sunday with camera in hand and an extra battery. I took a ton of pictures on ride and off, oddly enough the park was packed again.

The whether that day kind of echoed the feel of what I had a good idea was happening. The overall feel of the park that day was odd also, it seemed like the staff knew.

I took my last ride on every coaster, but my last ride of the night was amazing. It was on Villain with Gunky. It wasn't completely dark but dusk, Villain was flying through the course at a pace I don't ever recall. At the end everyone cheered and I hoped that this ride would be saved, unfortunately as we all know it was scrapped.

I took a few more pictures on my way out and my last purchase was a 2 for 1 Stromboli deal one of the Oktoberfest vendors had. As I exited the park I knew I would never be back at the park in the way it just was, what a damn shame.

Everything is gone now except for Dipper, lets hope that one day we can ride it once again, maybe even at a NEW Oktoberfest!
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GL's demise was caused by one mans foolish greed.

In the end the truth will come out as it always does.

The owner of the Big Dipper saw this post and has directed me to make this response; " I feel your pain, for it was at dusk when I rode on Dipper for the first time with the girl who would become the woman I have grown to love as my wife. Our first kiss was on The Big Dipper and the magic I felt that night has grown with our marriage. To drive by Dipper now, standing there alone, saddens me. I find comfort in my memories and the love my bride and I have shared over the years. I encourage all those who love Geauga Lake Park, its rides and history, to focus on what makes you feel good and let go of what doesn't ".

This is the statement from the owner of the Big Dipper as a response to this post. Best Wishes

Thanks for sharing your memories about the coaster. It is good to know that the current owner of Big Dipper has strong sentiments attached to her.

The closing of Geauga Lake is extremely painful for many of us. What makes it even more painful is to look at the blighted property knowing damn well it didn't have to happen. If Geauga Lake was a run down park with crappy rides, questionable guests, in a bad neighborhood, or any other reasonable reasons for its closing this would be much easier to take.

As a Six Flags park it was pulling in over 2 million guests, people did come. Six Flags made some very poor decisions and had equally poor customer relations. Cedar Fair could have easily fixed the problem, but what was their first PR move? They told kids who had won SF tickets they couldn't honor them - brilliant! Things didn't get better after that, tearing out rides to no advertising confirmed that they were not committed to making the park work.

Bottom line is that Geauga Lake should still be open and we should still be enjoying the park. If someone thinks that this is easy to let go then they don't know or understand he whole story.

I agree. No matter what, please don't tell people to let it go. To me, that equals "Get over it", and we have been told that over and over again, so please give it a rest.
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Jerry

It was interesting that Coasterdad mentioned the weather on 9/16/07. It was overcast, some fierce looking storm clouds that day. From what I remember, there was a lot of rain Friday night but not as much Saturday or Sunday, despite the foreboding skies.

Friday nights weather was awful. I was at Thunder Alley Speedway. It rained off and on at the beginning and then we shut the ride down and went home. Saturday night it was really cold. We were opened until 12 and I was only wearing shorts and a shirt. Sunday was sad knowing it was the last day of the park everyone (employees) knew it. I will never forget geauga lake it was my first park ever and first park to work at.
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2007- Skyscraper Triangle crew 5/18/07-5/28/07
Americana/Time Warp Crew-5/28/07-8/5/07
Shipwreck Crew-8/7/07-9/16/07
2010-Wildwater Kingdom or Disney

When I look back at the photos I took that weekend as well as the little bit of video I took the only thing that really stands out is the sky. Patches of blue mixed in with ominous clouds. It was if it trying to tell us something.
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On September 21, 2007, a historic 119-year old amusement park had been secretly murdered. Never forget it.

BigDipperLover wrote:

I agree. No matter what, please don't tell people to let it go. To me, that equals "Get over it", and we have been told that over and over again, so please give it a rest.

You make my job so difficult. Read what the owner said. ".(----focus on what makes you feel good and let go of what doesn't " ).
Every post that details anger about this is not helpful, no matter what.
" Focus on what makes you feel good ", is not telling you to "Get over it".

Quit digging at this scab and give the wounds a chance to heal. When you think about the park, try starting every thought with " I remember how good I felt when-----" Give it a try. If you are divorced, how long do you think a new spouse would put up with hearing constant stories about your first marriage, how it went wrong and who's at fault ? This is like that.

If that won't do it for you, maybe nothing will. In the mean time, give the owner the respect and encouragement needed to help save Dipper. If you still can't find solace, ask yourself why you didn't buy her. And leave out the, " Well, if I won the lottery " stories. This is here and now, just like June 2008 was. One bid was made for The Big Dipper. Cedar Fair has no idea who the owner is. She is still standing because the owner wants her to. Cedar Fair has withstood attacks about this, but has allowed the owner to seek out what is best for The Big Dipper. Beating the Dipper's owner over the head and attacking CF, its officials and their decision is not going to make any of this easier. If your family were attacked like this, I think it is safe to say you would fight for what you love. Please, give the Dipper's owner the same consideration. And no, I do not, nor have I ever worked for Cedar Fair ( as some have suggested ). Oh yea, same for the owner.

coasterowner wrote:

This is here and now, just like June 2008 was. One bid was made for The Big Dipper. Cedar Fair has no idea who the owner is. She is still standing because the owner wants her to. Cedar Fair has withstood attacks about this, but has allowed the owner to seek out what is best for The Big Dipper. Beating the Dipper's owner over the head and attacking CF, its officials and their decision is not going to make any of this easier. If your family were attacked like this, I think it is safe to say you would fight for what you love. Please, give the Dipper's owner the same consideration. And no, I do not, nor have I ever worked for Cedar Fair ( as some have suggested ). Oh yea, same for the owner.

This make alot of sense! Think about it a little. At the auction the auction guy said that they could have a year to remove Dipper from the property. Things have changed and cedar fair has stepped up and not demanded that Dipper be moved. This is a good thing. So, to sit back and think about it. We have a person who bought Dipper and has stated several times that they want her to live and we have had cedar fair let her stay where she is without a fuss of anykind. people with good intentions are working on making this thing work out!! The way things are going I believe that one day in the near future we will be able to say

"Remember when they re-opened the Big Dipper and the line over a hour long?"

I can't wait to remember that!!

coasterowner wrote:

BigDipperLover wrote:

I agree. No matter what, please don't tell people to let it go. To me, that equals "Get over it", and we have been told that over and over again, so please give it a rest.

Nobody was beating Cedar Fair over the head in this thread. And people have been almost uniformly positive about the Big Dipper owner for some time now.

In fact, things are much more calm than they were two years ago. Your post is going to have the opposite effect than what you intended, it is going to stir things up more.

With all due respect, why do you care so much about what is said about Cedar Fair?

What Cedar Fair did and how they closed Geauga Lake will echo for years to come. Here is an example completely unrelated to anything on this site:

Just this month, a member of the general public who has never posted here (or even looked at this site) goes into a store about 20 miles from Geauga Lake. Strikes up a conversation with someone there about something that happens to touch on Geauga Lake.

The other person says about the closing, completely unprompted,
"They sure did that wrong."

The other person went on to say "My family went there for years. If we knew it was closing we would not have been happy but we would have been sure to go there one last time, to walk around, take pictures."

The other person concluded by saying (just this month mind you) "it was just terrible the way they did that."

Did Cedar Fair have a right to do what they did? Yes.

Do people have the right to still be upset that Geauga Lake was one of the few parks ever closed forever by a solvent owner after the end of the final season without giving advance notice? Yes.

Is that sentiment held by thousands more than those who post on this site? Absolutely.

Will you and Cedar Fair get enormously great press if the Big Dipper is somehow saved? Absolutely.

Should what people say here about the closing affect a truly legitimate plan to save the Big Dipper? I sure can't imagine why it would.

coasterowner wrote:

BigDipperLover wrote:

I agree. No matter what, please don't tell people to let it go. To me, that equals "Get over it", and we have been told that over and over again, so please give it a rest.

You make my job so difficult.

How?

I want to take you at your word, but posts like this have led people I respect to ask this question:

Is your job to save the Big Dipper or is it to attempt to control what people say on this site about Cedar Fair?
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"It's a very special ride. We want to make sure it has a proper home." Cedar Fair Spokesman Innes on Big Dipper, 12th oldest roller coaster on Earth.

Ffejie, you know I don’t have any bad things to say about you… but I do have to ask coasterowner this.

Why the constant idle threats? Anytime someone says even the slightest negative thing about the closure of GL in general, you come on here and tell people that they’d better stop ridiculing the coaster’s owner. You stated that we should all just “let it go”. Someone else validly and in my opinion, non-threateningly stated that it was similar to being told “get over it”. You then chimed in with how anger just makes the situation worse. I didn’t see any true anger. I’ve written FAR angrier posts than that. And to add to that, who ever said the anger was directed at the Mysterious Owner? In this particular instance, it didn’t sound like that was the case at all, yet the owner still thought he had to tell you to tell us to watch what we say or else.

I guess I don’t understand how a message board of about 20 GL Fans who are upset that their home park closed are causing so much strife and harm to one person. Has Mysterious Owner been to other message forums? Has he read the anger and negativity at places like the sites owned by Pop World, LLC? Heck, even TPR has negative GL comments. So why is this forum being singled out?

Oh, if these comments are construed as ridicule and a personal attack, that was certainly not the intent. But somehow I have a feeling it will get twisted around and I am just “adding to the problem”.

Edit: This was originally posted after Skyglider added his great post above. I agree 100% with what he said. Smile

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http://rayp.smugmug.com

I believe the reason no one else bid on Dipper is that a formal bid was already placed on Dipper and that a developer already had a legitimate plan that involved the incorporation of Dipper. Dipper was initially left off the items that were up for auction but at the last minute was added on.

Cedar Fair's agent Colliers International said in the media that a bid had been submitted involving land and the Big Dipper.

No one was ever told who the developer was but I have seen enough to convince me that the plan and bid was legitimate. That plan was widely discussed in the media in the months leading up to the auction.

I understand and respect the current owner of Dippers point of view on the auction and I don't want to rehash all of that. Perhaps from the developer's point of view the Big Dipper was not like a table or chair in a restaurant on some land they wanted to buy. It was like the restaurant, a fixture attached to the land. Going back thousands of years, when you buy land you also buy what is attached to it.

But more importantly, the developer took the auction of the Big Dipper as a sign that Cedar Fair would not consider their bid on the land. It did not matter if they had $5,000 or $500,000 to bid on the Big Dipper if Cedar Fair would not sell them the land. Again, I can only speculate on what exactly happened, but I know enough to believe it was a legitimate bid from a developer with a legitimate plan. For better or for worse, people who were interested in seeing the Big Dipper saved deferred to that plan. That was why no other groups organized to bid at the auction, not because people did not care.

Fortunately the owner bid at the ride auction and now he is working on his own plans. As always we hope to do what we can to support those plans.

This whole time, we have been told the story that the owner of the Big Dipper loved the ride and Geauga Lake like the rest of us. I have been suspicious of the "owner" since we heard about and from "him", whether I was correct or incorrect for me to do so. My suspicion is and has always been that the "owner" has or had something to do with Cedar Fair the whole time. The way the "owner" always has Coasterowner stick up for him and CF everytime ANYONE says a bad word about either of them.

Our feelings about Cedar Fair should have NO impact on the "owner" at all... IF he has nothing to do with Cedar Fair that is. I try not to be negative about this whole thing but I don't feel comfortable in kissing up to a person that I have no idea of their true intentions, especially when they are getting upset that we still hate what happened to our park. My words of advice to them... if you don't like most of us hating or strongly disliking what CF did to our park, GET OVER IT, LET IT GO, or whatever else you say.
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Jerry

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