Who’s ready to take a trip down memory lane?
If you grew in Ohio, there’s a good chance that you spent some time at Geauga Lake in Aurora. The amusement park first opened in 1887 and by the 1920s, it housed the largest wooden roller coaster of its time, an Olympic sized pool, and dozens of other attractions.
The park continued its growth through the 1960s and 1970s, eventually becoming an across-the-lake neighbor to Sea World Ohio. The park saw several owners through the years and briefly became Six Flags Ohio. But it’s real decline started in 2004 after it was purchased by Cedar Fair. Across the lake, SeaWorld became the Geauga Lake Wildwater Kingdom and the two parks operated as one for a handful of years. By 2007, the century-old amusement park announced its closure and only the water park remained.
But this sad story doesn’t stop there. Over the next decade, the amusement park would be left to rot while attendance at the water park steadily declined. By 2016, Cedar Fair announced that the entire park would close.
For the past four years, the massive park has sat in ruins, slowly being taken over by nature. There are some structures remaining, but most of the larger rides have been demolished and the land sits almost entirely abandoned.
It’s a sad legacy for a place that had such a huge impact, not only on Ohio but on the world of Amusement Parks in general. We took a look at the abandoned SeaWorld a few years ago, but it’s in an even sorrier state now.
This video from Bright Sun Films explores the dilapidated park in all of its (former) glory. The tagline for the video hit me straight in the feels, and I’m sure anyone else who enjoyed going here as a kid probably feels the same.
“After all this time, you’d think that the Geauga Lake amusement parks would have been cleaned up… Well not quite. Join me today as I take a look at what has happened to the legendary and now infamous, Geauga Lake as well as the formerly open water park across the lake. This is what has happened in 2020. “
It’s probably silly to hope that something wonderful will come out of the Geauga Lake property, but the potential is there. The land is beautiful and it will be interesting to see what the next years have in store for the property.
