Published October 08, 2006 07:23 am - GENEVA-ON-THE-LAKE - - Creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky, the Fright Zone dark ride at Erieview Park is altogether ooky. It is also the last of it's kind, evoking the kind of nostalgia reserved for ca ...
Scary times over in GOTL, but...
Star Beacon
Fright Zone will live on at Conneaut Lake Park
By MARGIE TRAX PAGE
Staff Writer
mtrax@starbeacon.com
GENEVA-ON-THE-LAKE - - Creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky, the Fright Zone dark ride at Erieview Park is altogether ooky.
It is also the last of it's kind, evoking the kind of nostalgia reserved for carousels and vintage Ferris wheels.
After a dramatic week fraught with peril, the vintage dark ride will be fully restored and relocated to Conneaut Lake Park, Erieview owner Don "Woody" Woodward said.
The future of Fright Zone was looking grim as the ride faced the auction block. Would bidders take just one spooky scene or would the ride sell as a lot? Would the vintage ride be reconstructed for more screams and laughs?
Fright Zone came to Geneva-on-the-Lake by default as an unwanted ride at a great price, Woodward said.
Woodward went to the sale at the defunct Westview Amusement Park in Pennsylvania to purchase some equipment. Woodward wasn't in the market for a dark ride, but bought the cars and track for another ride.
A few weeks later, Woodward bought the other pieces of the ride and eventually purchased the portable building.
"It was like I bought the whole thing as an afterthought. I gave them a lowball offer and they took it, Woodward said. "In the end we got a real kick out of it and it became a staple at Erieview," he said.
Fright Zone is a piece of history and the work of the famous Allen Herschel Co. This amusement ride manufacturer was at the height of business in the 1950s when it branched off into the scary dark ride niche. Just a few years later and with only three dark rides sold, the company closed the dark ride division. Fright Zone would be a third of this sordid history and Erieview's version is the last one left.
It sold as one piece at auction last week for $8,000 to Toledo antique dealer and collector Matt Jasin, but Woodward was afraid it would be broken up and sold to modern haunted houses.
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