montezooma

I don't remember anything about that park except for the name. I know I went there, just don't remember much about it. It must have not been too exciting. I would love to see some pictures of it. I will try to google it and see what I can find.

Isn't that true for most of the major theme parks today? (and by theme parks I do not include Cedar Point, it was and always will be an Amusement Park) They are all a sad shell of what they used to be. Once they strayed from the "theme formula" they kind of lost their magic. Busch Parks (and of course Disney) are the exceptions. Both of the Busch Gardens theme parks have stayed true to their themes and to this day have exceeded my expectations! I doubt there will ever be a Ninja ride built in the Italy or Congo section of either park. They have come up with very creative and original names that are very marketable and tie in nicely with the theme areas that reside in.

Found some pics today of what the area used to look like before all the construction (I'd never seen it) and thought these would underscore how different everything is. I found this old Brochure from the park, Knott's Camp Snoopy, before it even opened. Also a map of the park in it's early days. Even though I think Camp Snoopy was cool in its day and time, the change to Nickelodeon is much needed. My kids are much more familiar and interested in Sponge Bob (as am I) compared to Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

Here are a couple from two parks on the others side of the country. They don't date back to the 70's but still are fun. Of course WaterMania is no longer around and if you notice, Cypress Gardens is a Anheuser Busch Theme Park.

The stand up trains were put on the Screamroller (EXT) at Worlds of Fun and also on the River King Mine Train at Six Flags over Mid-America. I believe a rider passed out and was thrown from one of those rides. The stand up vehicles were then removed from both rides and Arrow never made another attempt at the stand up genre.

Hey Guy T. Koepp and EBL- We all grew up around the same time and it sounds like in the same area...do either of you remember a place called "Japanese Village"? I remember going there as a kid, but that is about all I remember. I think it was somewhere near Knott's.

Does anyone know if Marineland was bought by Hanna Barbera (which would have been Taft at the time) or were the characters just licensed to the park?

How funny that it skipped like that, I guess they didn't keep real good records back then. I think it is even funnier that they actually had "Mormon" nights, I think Knott's did they same thing back then, boy the 70's was a fun decade, especially if you were mormon...lol Eric, I had completely forgotten about Baja Reef at Marineland, the year that we visited Marineland I really wanted to do it, but when my mom found out about the bathing suit situation, she wouldn't let us do it.

I came across a few more ads for Universal Studios and Marineland, a park that was located in Palos Verdes. For awhile it was owned by Hanna Barbera. It later closed. Also there are two flyers for "Mormon" night at Disneyland. Boy can you imagine the chaos that might have ensued had they scheduled gay night and mormon night on the same date??? lol I had to throw this one in just for laughs. You can't get more "1970's" than this!

In 1981 Huss, European makers of flat rides, had the opportunity to buy Arrow Development. The two companies merged and formed Arrow Huss. Here is their ride catalog. With the two companies merged they had quite an extensive product line. A couple of rides are mentioned in the Arrow Huss History that never saw the light of day...the Space Chase and the Virginia Reel. I think they had an actual test section of track for the Virginia Reel. Unfortunately the Space Chase never made it further than the drawing board...it actually looks like it would have been a really cool ride.

Coming up next Arrow is bought out by Huss....

Those came from the Intamin 20th anniversary catalog, I am not sure what year that was but if anyone knows what year Intamin started business then add 20 years and you will have the date. Here is the rest of the catalog.

Here is how the rides were listed in the Intamin Ride Catalog both as the Boat and the Space Shuttle.

I hope that they sell big swirls of pink cotton candy, just like Jan's hair!

Riding on the success of the Corkscrew and the Launched Loop, Arrow started promoting custom designed coasters, the first of which where the Loch Ness Monster, Orient Express and Gemini. Here is their updated product line brochure. From this ride packed it seems that the suspended coaster had just been sold to Kings Island. They have the track layout on the back side of the flyer but are still using photos from the test track at their plant. Nice hair ladies! In the caption it says "For double the thrills, and double the visual impact, a number of parks have opted to install interlocked launched loops." I wonder if there were others besides Great Adventure who were planning on this???

Arrow's plant was located in Clearfield, Utah which is about 20 minutes north of Salt Lake City. When it was bought out by S&S everything that was in Clearfield was relocated to S&S's factory in Logan, Utah, which is about 80 miles north of Salt Lake.

WOW, good eye. I didn't catch that picture of him.

Here is another Marketing Brochure that Arrow Development put out in the late 70's. In this brochure they focus more on the engineering, fabrication and installation capabilities rather than the product line. You can see construction of the Loch Ness Monster from start to finish. Also an interesting find, if you look at the photo, left side middle, that shows an overview of the plant in Mountain View, CA you can see the prototype of the Suspended Coaster. And right below it you can see the footings for the station where the prototype of the Launched Loop was set up.

I love that picture of the Turn of the Century. It was such a good ride before the Demon modification. I wonder if it was always Marriott's intent to put the loops in but Arrow had not perfected the 360 degree loop in 1975 so Marriott went with the simple design with the intent to modify once Arrow perfected the loop???? It seems that the loops fit in so perfectly once they were added. I mean the lift and drop where the perfect height for the train to make it thru two loops and then to make it up to the MCBR and then complete the course. Just a thought.

Whoa, although I'm not sure if you're allowed to answer, wasn't Top Gun at Carowinds originally going to be themed after the 1998 Godzilla remake that tanked at the box office? Yes there was a design intent program that would have allowed the ride to be themed after the Godzilla movie. Corporate was really pushing for it but the park never really bought into it. I always felt that Carowinds knew all along that the ride was going to be named Top Gun, but they kind of went thru the motions to satisfy the movie studio. After the movie was a box office bomb, Top Gun was a shoe in....Here is another interesting fact, Invertigo at PGA (CGA) was supposed to be themed after the movie "the Hunt For Red Oktober with a naval submarine theme.

I just posted an Arrow Ride Catalog on the previous page. Check it out near the bottom after Australia's Wonderland.

Does anyone know why this park closed? They advertise as being Australia's biggest theme park, that would be like Kings Island closing over here in the states. What is left of it now? Is it still there or has it been redeveloped?

This thread got me thinking. In 1999 I was the creative director over Paramount's Carowinds and the Top Gun project. I knew I had somewhere in my endless files a list of names that the Marketing department and the design team put together before the TOP GUN name was decided on. I don't know how we could've overlooked such a great name like FLIGHT DECK Anyways here is the list....

ARROW DEVELOPMENT Now this stuff goes way back...I think this may be the earliest that I started to collect stuff. I received this marketing packet from Arrow back in 1977. It shows the Knott's Corkscrew when it was set up for testing at the plant in Mountain View, CA. Also there is a some great stuff on the Steeplechase, Log Flumes and other rides that Arrow manufactured at that time. This was also when they had just began to market their latest development, the Suspended Coaster. You can see an early layout of what the ride could have been along with a diagram of the suspended coach. If you are an Arrow fan, read up, there is a lot of interesting information that is included in this post, amazing that it took six years to develop the Corkscrew. I also have more brochures coming from when Arrow went through its many transitions from Arrow Development to Arrow Huss to Arrow Dynamics. click here to see another Arrow Development marketing brochure that focuses on engineering, fabrication, and installation of coasters, particularly the Loch Ness Monster. click here to see the second ride packet Arrow released in 1980. click here to see the 1981 brochure from Arrow Huss. click here to see stuff from Arrow Dynamics. By 1979 Arrow already had an impressive amount of installations in parks around the World. an early layout of what Arrow invisioned for their suspended coaster. Obviously Arrow was licensed by Mack for some rides. Sorry, I got a little creative with some colors on this one...hey I was 11 at the time. Before coasters most of Arrows business came from log flumes and car rides as you can see from the following brochures. The Steeplechase test track set up at the factory. Here is the first Corkscrew, the prototype from the factory, installed at Knott's Berry Farm. This is Knott's Corkscrew as it was installed at the Arrow plant in Mountain View, CA. The Flying Turns prototype as it was set up at the Mountain View, CA factory. Six Flags ordered a couple of these rides and actually removed the Big Bend at SFOT to make way for it. But when Arrow could not deliver a smooth reliable ride Six Flags canceled the orders and the ride was scrapped. The prototype corkscrew track section for the suspended coaster

AUSTRALIA'S WONDERLAND Well I don't know too much about this park, maybe our friends down under can shed some light and history about this park that is now gone. I know it was designed and managed by KECO (the company that Paramount bought out) but the park always remained under a private owner, it never became part of the Paramount Parks. It seems to have alot of similarities to Canada's Wonderland as far as the theme areas go. The Medieval Faire section of the park changes names several times to: Old Bounty Bay & International Plaza. I am not sure what happened to the Intamin Drop Ride but the Boomerang was sold to Alabama Adventures