Holy shit you guys this post is 13 years old. Is that a record?
Anyway, when Canada’s Wonderland first opened in 1981 there was an attraction in Hanna-Barbera Land called “Yogi’s Cave.” It was Yogi Bear themed and one part was super cool - it was “The Ranger’s House” and it was some kind of illusion where the room looks normal but when you step into it gravity is all screwed up and you fall against the far wall and have to pull yourself up and out. Then you walked through the rest of his “house” and the furniture was on the ceiling, that sort of thing. I remember my dad and I laughing our asses off trying to get out of that weird-gravity room.
Do any other Canadians remember that? I think it became Scooby-Doo or Smurfs themed later, not sure what it is now.
Your question is addressed to someone who hasn’t signed in for over 7 years, so I wouldn’t suggest holding your breath for a response. Although the target post suggests you should maybe hold your breath for other reasons.
Knoebels had those until last year – I don’t miss them much. Especially since the real bumper cars there are the Lusse models where you can actually damage people.
I miss a lot of defunct parks and their equally gone rides. Hanson’s, Rocky Glen, San Souchi, Nay Aug, West View, Rainbow Gardens, White Swan and dozens of others I got to visit. And some I never got to see in operation like Old Indiana in Thorntown Indiana and Joyland in Wichita. But the biggie, the one I hope someone invents time travel so I can visit in its grand days would be Saltair Pavilion in Salt Lake City.
Another fan of this attraction. It used to freak me out seeing the Omnimover enter the microscope on one end and being shrunk inside. “How did they do that?” I always thought.
Nitpicks:
The ride was called “Adventure Thru Inner Space” and it was replaced by “Star Tours”.
If I miss them, they were from times when there was no such thing as an Amusement Park. They were itinerant carnivals booked to set up at county fairs. Bumper cars, a horsie merry-go-round and a ferris wheel.
Thank you to whomever bumped this thread because when I was a kid and went to Disney for the first time, I remember a ride that let me pick between space or under the sea. I swore up and down that it was the giant ball in EPCOT that let me do that.
Turns out I was half right and it was Horizons. That’s honestly been bugging me for, like, 15 years.
Cedar Point had a couple-and-a-half that I miss. One was a toboggan-style coaster (the track was a half-cylinder and the cars had tires instead of train wheels, so they wouldn’t always follow precisely the same path), that I think was called Avalanche Run, and it was good.
Then, some years later, they took that same basic ride, and enclosed most of it and added decorations and special effects to turn it into Disaster Transport, a science-fictiony ride that was even better (plus, there were animatronic robots to keep you entertained while you were waiting in line). But it got taken down a couple of years ago to make room for Gatekeeper. Which is also decent, but I still miss the old one.
The other was a small-footprint coaster called the Wildcat. It folded in on itself so much that it took up less space than the waiting line for most coasters. Each “train” was a single car. I think it must have been mass-produced, because I’ve seen the same design at other parks. I’m not sure why it was taken out, or precisely what they put in that space, but I’d have thought they would have kept it, since it had such a great ratio of fun to land used.
We used to go to Geauga Lake a lot more often than Cedar Point when I was a kid, because it was cheaper and a bit closer, and all of those rides are shut down now. But none of them stood out quite as much as the Cedar Point rides did: The Big Dipper was about the same as the Bluestreak, the Cedar Point Corkscrew was like the Geauga Lake Corkscrew and Double Loop combined, and so on.
Folks not too much older than me have fond memories of Euclid Beach Park, but it closed before I was born, so I miss those rides only vicariously through them.
If you have read any of my other amusement park posts you aren’t going to be surprised by this but ----- ya gotta go to Knoebels. Their Flying Turns is a copy of the original rides Avalanche Run was patterned on. The wood track gives a very different feel than the fiberglass versions; different enough to almost make them a different class of ride altogether.
The removal of THAT struck me as pointless, and a crime against humanity.
But then I think back to the time I went to Disney World, in 1981, and I found out that they have no Matterhorn Ride at all for a Skyway to even go through. That puts things into perspective.
So now the removal of the Skyway at Disneyland only rates as a crime against humanity’s cultural heritage.
America Sings was an inadequate substitute for the Carousel of Progress, Innoventions was a step down from that, and the Star Wars meet-and-greet where you can come face-to-face with Darth Vader and his grandson Kylo Ren, is proof that evolution works in both directions.
King’s Dominion in Virginia had a Hanna-Barbera license too, and it had a Yogi’s Cave. It was a brown Flintstones-looking cave with a little pond out front and a Yogi animated statue with a fishing pole. Inside I remember twisty little cave passages with glass “gems” in the walls and yes there was a house/cabin towards the end. Not sure I remember upside down room, but the last “secret passages” before you exited had tilted floors and weird wall/furniture geometry or so which made walking amusing and challenging. Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrR60lGGpwU
Wonder if there were other rides in common? King’s Dominion had things the Scooby Doo Roller Coaster, a fun kids coaster and the Rebel Yell, a big wooden coaster. Both are still around but Yogi’s Cave is gone.
When I was 12 (1986) Centre Island in Toronto had a Scrambler that was enclosed in a building. It was dark except for disco lights - picture being on the Scrambler with a dance floor. The ride would go for one song and I rode that thing like 5 times. Every time I hear The Thompson Twin’s “Doctor Doctor” I remember that ride because it was one of the songs. I think I read somewhere that the ride is gone now.
I just remembered that Skyrider and JetScream are gone from Canada’s Wonderland too. Skyrider was the stand-up roller coaster where the little “seat” jammed right into your crotch and JetScream was the one similar to the Viking Ship (back and forth) but it went right upside down. One time I was in line for it and it paused at the top of the loop and all you could hear was the “clinkclinkclink” of people’s change falling out of their pockets.
Funtown also had another unique ride. IIRC it was called the Hydrofighter. It was three back to back seats hanging from a tall center pillar. Each seat had the nozzle of a fire hose that the rider could control and aim. Just hanging down, the water wouldn’t reach the other seats, but if you worked in tandem with your partner, you could get the chair swinging high enough to soak the people waiting in line, as well as the other riders.
Aah, Cedar point. Been going there for over fifty years, it’s less than an hour away.
The scrambler was fun, I remember one very hot sticky summer night in about 1967 when there were so few people around that they let us stay on the thing for about ten rounds.
The San Francisco earthquake was fun to ride looking back, seeing all the buildings pop back up and the cracks close for the next car.
Do they still have the monorail at Disneyland? That was neat as a refuge from heat and humidity. Cedar point also used to have a large tower, (I forget what it was called) you rode in an enclosed ring with outward-facing seats corkscrewing your way up a central tower, sat at the top for a few rotations, the spiralled back down. Nice and relaxing. I fell asleep on it once.
for their firework show: