Joyland Books

At $65,000 this is now a steal. It would be an amazing addition to Dreamland along with the Scenic. Its a killer ride, much better than Blackpool's big dipper

Ohio - (3/29/10) Screamscape has some great news about the famous and fabled Big Dipper at Geauga Lake. While the coaster, built in 1925, was purchased at the Geauga Lake auction when the park was closed for good, it was hoped that there was some kind of plan to save it , move it, and reopen it some day. While the Big Dipper is one of the few structures still standing at the former amusement park, no formal plans have ever been announced to actually save it.
I’m told that the new owner has been trying to find someone to buy it from them for around $150,000 but has now dropped the asking price down to just $65,000 for this piece of history. Anyone with a serious inquiry and purchase offer for the Big Dipper can send it to ffejkat@yahoo.com or contact “Jeff” as the admin of the Geauga Lake Funtimes page on Facebook.[b]

I have had the chance to ride the Geauga Lake dipper a good few times. Its a great ride, has plenty of airtime and is a real fast coaster for its age. If I get the chance will upload a POV, but have managed to find one on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cd_zey2d7E

I have a few snippets of off ride footage on my Geauga Lake tribute vid. There is not much, but a couple of clips starting at 2:09 and 3:06:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro5RkWSQCAI

I did not realise there was such a lack of footage of this ride in motion. Will have to rake through my footage to see what I have. I always went to GL when I visit Cedar Point as both parks were owned by the same company and were only around an hour apart, so do have a couple of hours of footage of GL. Will see what I can dig up.

Its a shame it closed actually as it was a great park. But I guess no park could compete close to Cedar Point

Hi all

Sadly, I never got to go to this park; my closest Ohio park visit was only to Kings Island about five years ago.

With the Big Dipper's similar build decade to Dreamland's Scenic Railway, this addition could truly be quite a heavenly nostalgic match, with contrasting technologies for the period. I guess we might just need a little more space though....

Martin

Surprisingly little space, actually. They're very narrow along the center.

It is (was) a great ride, along with Conneaut's Blue Streak.

Asking price is reasonnable but there's so much effort and money to put on top of that in order to re-erect the ride that chances are slim. Remember that you can only salvage the trains, brakes, motor and blueprints (if any). Track and most of the structure need to be entirely rebuilt from scratch.

I don't know. Knobles managed to relocate a classic coaster without blueprints, and the coaster was purchased and re-built within a year

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_%2 ... coaster%29

I would have thought that Dreamland would have been the ideal location for the ride. Is the saving and re-locating of classic one off rides like this not the whole point of the heritage park ? At the current exchange rate, the coaster would cost around £45,000 to purchase. Yeah, there would be further investment needed to ship the ride and then the rebuild it, but for a coaster of this heritage and quality, the investment would be well worth it. Not to mention how awesome the park would look with 2 classic wooden coasters dominating the skyline.

Not to mention the huge impact that adding this coaster could have. There are groups all over the USA rallying to save this coaster. This would put the Dreamland heritage park firmly on the worldwide map

It would be a lovely ride to have at Dreamland, but the cost of dismantling and shipping it from the USA would far exceed the cost of re-creating it from virgin European wood, which is pretty much as Jean-Marc said.

Roller coasters have been re-located in the past, the ill-fated Battersea Big Dipper had operated in two other locations before, but the economics of the time were different.

Hopefully this fantastic ride will find a new location in its homeland.

Dreamland could have been an ideal location but there are already two coasters in the project (Scenic and Mouse) and considering the smaller available plot, the money needs to be used on improving the general park experience.

Yes, coasters can be moved. When I was working on the Dania Beach Hurricane and the Pigeon Forge Thunder Eagle (that one has been dismantled...) we had with us some of the people who had helped moving the Comet to Great Escape. But this was then. Even if you can move some of the structure, the actual running track needs to be entirely rebuilt, and this is the hardest part.

Hi all

I can also, maybe naively, see the potential appeal of having such a classic coaster at the relaunched Dreamland park, however, I also consider the realistic options the new park will encounter. Space, sadly, being the operative word as JMT suggested.

That said, if someone out there becomes the lucky recipient of tonight's Euro Millions lottery then they might well consider investing some of their winnings into this imaginative project. It is Dreamland we're talking about here after all. I think that we all have the right to let our visions fantasise somewhat.

Martin [i]

JMT wrote: the money needs to be used on improving the general park experience.

This is something which hasn't really been discussed on here, but I completely agree.

Many of us can remember when Dreamland was a park, or at least had many aspects of a park. Mr Godden had the trees ripped out, presumably in anticipation of future preservation orders on them, the entire site was also block-paved and Dreamland lost much of its character overnight. This set alarm bells ringing in Margate at the time.

All of Dreamland's problems were caused by poor management decisions, primarily because of Mr Godden's ambition to be a property developer, rather than operating a potentially lucrative seaside attraction as Philip Miller does at Adventure Island, a very successful attraction on a far smaller site.

I simply cannot understand how someone who was a successful businessman for so long could have got it so badly wrong at the last hurdle. Mr Godden has seen his worth depleted by millions in the latter part of the last decade. Even I read the market correctly in 2007 (and posted here about what was about to happen to property and land values) and I'm a lorry driver FFS.

Hopefully, we will see the new Dreamland looking far more appealing than it was during Mr Godden's tenure.[/i]

is this the woodie that up for sale on one of the fairground ride sale sites as if it was it says it was erected in 2007 if it meant reerected then it possibly may move quite easily

Not sure what was listed for sale, but the woodie being referred to closed in 2007...it was erected in 1925! Sure, the wood would have been replaced many times over, but moving it doesn't look feasible with existing timber.

David.

Can I also point out to those who seem to think Dreamland has unlimited pots of cash to spend, that the reality is at the moment there is very little?

All that has been achieved so far has cost in the main minimal amounts, most of it raised by ourselves as a campaign with appeals, and kind donors and supporters helping.

The Scenic itself, since the fire, is going to require a large amount spending; track, trains, workshop, station, all went. Possibly we should focus on what should, after all, be the main attraction for the park, the listed and unique ride that is the Scenic? And yes, there is the Wild Mouse also in store, and if another coaster was to be built from scratch (assuming the space and cash ever made it possible; remember, Dreamland won't be the size it was before closure, plans are only for part of the site) then maybe we should consider re-creating the Cyclone! A classic seaside ride from a historic English park. Grrr etc, eh Ms Thompson?!

Then of course there is the II* listed cinema, with its organ, to be repaired and (oh how I hate the phrase, but...) 'restored to former glory'? That won't be cheap!

if dreamland was to recreate the cyclone then it would just be lining amandas pockets as bpb has the blueprints.The wooden coaster ride i was talking about was the starliner from cypress gardens and is down as built in 2007 and looks in pretty good nick.Dreamland will not be built overnight and even if it has the bones of a park then at least the other areas can have tennented rides to help bring in extra cash to the park

She's now up for sale on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/World-Famous-Big-Di ... 4aa42e492d

$10,000 is a very good price if someone wins it for that !

No kidding.
Be better is someone who could spell would write up a little more about it.