montezooma

But Miles, this is my life; to bring joy and share my historical knowledge and information with the coaster community... You'll find that when you step out of yourself and give to others, that is when life truly begins.

It looks like the folks at Cedar Fair have been reading the posts about the renaming of the Top Gun Coasters and have decided against the name "Flight Deck. Here is the new name So much Better!

GEAUGA LAKE 1979

Elitch Gardens (the original one) 1979

WOW!!! I love that website. There is alot of good old, and I mean really old, stuff on there! Thanks for that link, I love seeing all that nostalgic stuff.

Here are some Ads from Disney. Big new attractions opening are Fantasmic, Toon Town and Indiana Jones. Also there are a couple of ads for the Disneyland Hotel.

CEDAR POINT 1979 New: Wave Swinger Is that Richard Munch????? I don't remember there being trams in the parking lot. Boy those characters look an awful lot like the Banana Splits characters.

CAROWINDS 1979 While this is one of my favorites parks today, it had some strange things going on back in its early days... - CLOSED FRIDAYS????? - Religious services held every Sunday morning in the Paladium. - Gypsies????

Busch Gardens The Old Country 1979

Why did they get rid of the skyway???? I am in the dark

I am loving this post. Great to see other peoples theme park memories! Keep it up.

Busch Gardens The Dark Continent 1979 Remember the Swinging Vines, Monstrous Mamba & the African Queen Cruise? New Attractions: Carousel, Trabant & Dolphins.

AstroWorld 1979 In believe that these are actually doctored pictures of the Tidal Wave at Marriott's Great America. The blue is a much lighter blue than Greezed Lightnin' was.

1979 Park Brochures Now back to some retro park stuff. the year is 1979, the year that I started my collection of all this stuff. In 1978 I was quite young and I didn’t really know that there were any other parks outside of the state of California (well except for DisneyWorld). Since my Dad was in the amusement business and he saw my fascination with rides he thought it would be fun for me to attend the IAAPA convention with him. While at the convention I got a hold of a membership directory and discovered a whole new world of parks. I sent away for brochures and information from all these parks around the country and almost everyday, for a couple of weeks, I would get something in the mail about each one of them. So for the next couple of weeks I am going to post one brochure a day from each of these parks as they were in the year 1979. It is really interesting so see the new attractions that were introduced that year as well as to see how different the parks were back then. Click on the links below to see the brochures. AstroWorld Busch Gardens The Dark Continent Busch Gardens The Old Country Carowinds Cedar Point Elitch Gardens Geauga Lake Hersheypark Kennywood Kings Dominion Kings Island Libertyland Magic Mountain Marriott's Great America, Gurnee Marriott's Great America, Santa Clara Opryland Six Flags Great Adventure Six Flags over Georgia Six Flags over Mid-America Six Flags over Texas Valleyfair! Worlds of Fun

How funny, I hadn't even noticed their frequent use of that word. Anyways, now back to some park stuff.....1979

CHANCE MANUFACTURING Well I want to post one more update from a ride manufacturer, Chance Manufacturing (maker of some fun flat rides), before I do another in depth look at some parks. This catalog comes from 1977 and lists a lot of their quirky rides that are no longer around; Radar, Turbo, Twister, Zumer, Toboggan and the Sky Wheel. Most of their product line was for carnivals and fairs but they did feature several of their rides in a park model. Some of these became quite popular in theme parks such as the Trabant (Casino) and Yo-Yo. Chance has always made beautiful Merry-Go-Rounds and their CP Huntington train was also very popular in amusement parks, city parks and zoos. So for all of you that love flat rides, enjoy this look back at Chance, I have also included the price list from 1977 so you can see how much a Zipper cost back then. Boy you gotta love the name "Pixie Plaza" those two words, "pixie" and "plaza", just scream 1970.

Yes Scott, I am sure our collections pretty much mirror each others. We seem to have started collecting about the same time (of course you are MUCH OLDER than me...lol) Where are collections probably differ is your collection being more "wood" heavy and mine more "steel" heavy. I have nothing on NAD and was surprised I even had anything on IAD. My collection doesn't go back much further than 1978. I did get a chance to Ride Montana Russa before CCI tamed it and have to admit it was a great ride!!!!

A pair of Demons does not beat a Gemini. Not even three of a kind (ShockWave, GASM & Viper) beat a Gemini!!! INTERNATIONAL AMUSEMENT DEVICES OK, so you want more? I got more, while we are on the subject of coaster suppliers, how about this company that has gone under but was the mastermind behind the 1st Colossus...International Amusement Devices. According to an interview with Bill Cobb, famous designer behind the Texas Cyclone, this company was not well versed in the physics of coaster design. He mentions in the interview that they would take elements from other coaster designs and blend them together to create a new design. This was the reason for the rough design of the first Colossus. It was a "cut and paste" if you will, of other coaster designs that did not work with the laws of nature to create a smooth ride. The coaster fought the laws of gravity and was tearing itself apart. Needless to say Colossus was the last coaster that IAD designed and the company wasn't around to see the Grand Re-Opening of the newly improved Colossus. I find it strange that this company was headquartered in Sandusky, OH. I am not sure if there were connections to Cedar Point from an earlier time and that is why they were there. Just seems kind of strange, kind of in the same way that Arrow is in Salt Lake, but doesn't have any of their coasters at Lagoon. Just added this video of Montana Rusa, the coaster that inspired Colossus The Rainbow was another model that was at the IAAPA convention for several years but never made it into a park. I always thought it would have been cool, but the capacity and staffing issues probably wasn't very efficient. After the Colossus fiasco it seems they tried to offer more than just wooden coasters. I remember seeing models of the Z coaster several years at the conventions. It obviously never made it out of the development stage. This brochure comes from the 1980 IAAPA convention. I think it might have been the last year they were around. A marketing brochure I picked up from the 1979 IAAPA convention. At this point their focus was on wooden coasters... what the hell is a Telex? Is that before faxes? even I am not old enough to remember those.

Here's an ad from the 1970's from Taft Broadcasting, owners of Kings Island, Kings Dominion, Carowinds, Marineland and others. You gotta love those vintage logos!!!

A couple more things I found from Geauga Lakes more successful years.

Here are a couple more old ads I found for Arrow, Geauga Lake (this kind of rubs salt in the wounds as they mention several times what great success the park is enjoying) and from Taft, owners of Kings Island, Kings Dominion, Carowings, Marineland and a few others. I sure love those old logos, so much better than what CedarFair has come up with recently.

ARROW DYNAMICS This is the last bit of information I have from Arrow. In the mid 80's Arrow Huss was forced into bankruptcy which provided an opportunity for Arrow's key employees to take the company back. The new company was named Arrow Dynamics and was headed up by Ron Toomer. This is the time the company had much success with their Hyper Coasters and Mega-Loopers. But this is also around the time that B&M showed up on the scene and slowly started taking coaster orders away from Arrow. It wasn't long before Arrow started to fade away. They had a brief comeback with their version of the Wild Mouse, but Arrow Dynamics could not compete with the brilliance that is B&M. After the "X" situation Arrow was again on the selling block and was picked up by S&S power. Here is the last bit of marketing material I have from Arrow Dynamics. UPDATED 3/6/08: Added this special from PBS Nova. It contains an interview with Ron Toomer and it features the designing, building and grand opening celebration of Busch Garden's "Drachen Fire"

Those are some great pictures. That is just how I remember Disneyland as a kid. I really miss the Skull Rock and also the Fantasy Fountains from the Hotel. We used to always go over to the Hotel after a full day at Disneyland and watch the Fountain show before we loaded up the station wagon and headed back home to San Diego. Those pictures are great quality!!! Thanks for sharing

While googleing Japanese Village I also looked up Marineland and came across these old postcards. Boy this park had probably one of the best locations of any park I have ever been too, Ocean Park in Hong Kong being the once exception. Seems like these Sky Towers were all the rage back in the 1960's. PETA would not like this. That is quite a small tank for two Killer Whales to be in.

Well I did a google search and came across some cool stuff. I had completely forgot that it was also a Deer Park. Well when I saw some of the pictures of the place it sparked my memories of going there as a kid. They sure had some funky amusement attractions back in the 70's