Sunday, March 28, 2010

Big Dipper Update



If you're a park or interest group with, well, interest in the Big Dipper at the former Geauga Lake Amusement Park, now's a great time to act. I've been informed that the parties who are selling the famous ride have recently lowered the asking price, from $150,000 to $65,000 (contact individual). Really, a steal for such a large wooden roller coaster.

With the possibilities of using the land around the ride as part of a new development opening further each day, perhaps one day the Dipper will ride again, after all.

And you never know, with rides like the Little Dipper being snapped up so quickly there just may be hope!


1 comments:

Chris said...

Good news for the Dipper, for sure. Still, if my memory serves right, Astroworld at one point offered their wood coaster for free to anyone who would haul it away (before that I think it was listed at $8,000). The reason why it's so much more risky/expensive for a theme park operator to move the ride is that 1) the original blueprints for the ride are often lost due to the ride's advanced age, 2) the cost to physically transport all of the wood is much higher than the actual purchase price, and 3) much of the wood can't actually be reused, either due to deteriorating conditions or subtle differences in terrain. Factor all of these things together and it's in some cases cheaper to actually buy a new coaster. Look at the Miracle Strip Starliner which was acquired cheap but sat in their parking lot for a year before the park had the finances necessary to set it up. Granted, the Dipper is more of an asset than the other two (arguably), but it's still a very expensive proposition.