Fantastic old coaster footage/pics

Found some new (to me) photos of the Jack Rabbit, which operated at the now defunct Idora Park in Youngstown, Ohio. This was the "second fiddle" roller coaster at the park, with Wild Cat (my avatar and signature) being the E-ticket thrill ride. The park and it's rides operated until 1984, when a park-shuttering fire broke out, destroying structures and rides. It would have cost millions of dollars to repair; dollars that Idora Park did not have. The property was sold in 1985 to new developers, who had plans for a religious complex to be built, but no development ever happened. Coasters remained standing for years, until the entire site was demolished in the 2000s. Ownership remains in the hands of the religious group, undesiring to relinquish ownership.

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A fun aside - I saw Conneaut Lake giving a call for parks looking to pass off attraction (http://www.screamscape.com/html/canobie_lake_park.htm). Conneaut Lake did approach the new Idora Park ownership in the late 80s on purchasing the Jack Rabbit and Wildcat roller coasters; a good fit for Conneaut's eternal preservation of Golden Age roller coasters. Blueprints were even preserved from the 1984 fire, making reconstruction all the more possible. The deal never materialized however.
 
Hyde said:
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Holy ejector!
 
And only one of those is gone now (2 others moved, including the one at the park the sign is from)
My parents used to date at Paragon growing up in Boston. They took me once, long after everything was gone but I'm pretty sure we did the Carousel.Next time I go home I should check it out again. - http://www.paragoncarousel.com/
 
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This is pretty cool and something I was unaware of on the Crystal Beach Cyclone, a very aggressively banked turn (I assume at the bottom of the second hill?). Especially with as much celebration we gave Hades back in the day for being so forward thinking in having a 90 degree turn. (From Defunct Wooden Roller Coaster Archive FB Group - FB tag doesn't seem to work)

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A set of 3 pics from my collection which are media images from when Giant Coaster at Fuji-Q in Japan opened in 1966.

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Theres an interesting issue with this ride though. If this ride opened in 1966 and its 40m stats are correct it means Colossus at SFMM was not the tallest ride in the world when it opened as the park advertised.
This ride would have been a whole (huge
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) 1.9m taller. I feel this is an issue that has been lost in the depths of time though.
 
roomraider said:
Theres an interesting issue with this ride though. If this ride opened in 1966 and its 40m stats are correct it means Colossus at SFMM was not the tallest ride in the world when it opened as the park advertised.
This ride would have been a whole (huge
1f61b.png
) 1.9m taller. I feel this is an issue that has been lost in the depths of time though.
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What's even odder about this ride is that it was (at least according to rcdb) even listed in Guiness Book of Records as the longest coaster. It would seem weird if they didn't pursue the 'tallest record' if that was also the case.

EDIT: I've dug up an old Slovenian version of the book from 1976 (or 1977, it's not very clear) that has no mention of the Japanese coaster and lists Crystal Beach's Comet as the world's longest at 1,46km and Montana Rusa in Mexico and Screamin Eagle in SFStL as the world's tallest at 33,5m.

Another interesting bit of info is that they listed this coaster (https://rcdb.com/2581.htm) as the tallest/fastest coaster in history with the speed of 91,7km/h and height of 36,5m.
 
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Neat blog post from Kings Island on their old sky ride attraction: https://www.visitkingsisland.com/bl...ers-gondolas-and-other-parts-from-the-skyride

Also included a great photo giving different perspective from the kid's area (now Planet Snoopy), where one of the stations was located, now a Snoopy Boutique gift shop. The other station stood in the Octoberfest area by Adventure Express. Usual photos of the sky ride are from the main entrance, where the Sky Ride stood over the fountain feature.
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To give some additional perspective of the ride, here's a vantage near the other station in Octoberfest - the restaurant you see in the middle is the park's current Beer Garden (Oh sorry, that's "Bier Garten", because German):

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Oliver.D said:
Can please RMC rebuild that Ride?!!!!
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I was litterally just thinking this! would love to see a modern version of this. It was just too ambitious back in the day for such a tight layout. But it'd be doable now, with abit more air.
 
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