Loop 033 printable

Volume 2, No. 9. May 24, 2002

Dark works
Having highlighted coaster enthusiasts’ help in repainting Blue Streak at Conneaut Lake Park in Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania, (THE LOOP, April 26, 2002), we now shed a little dark on another restoration effort among enthusiasts. DAFE, the Darkride and Funhouse Enthusiasts, helped restore the Fright Zone dark ride at Erieview Park in Geneva on-the-Lake, Ohio.

“One of the goals of the group, in addition to supporting and promoting dark rides, is to lend a hand somehow, whether to work up money to save a ride or, ideally, to do what we did, which is go in and do hands-on work,” said DAFE Director Rick Davis. The group set its sites on Fright Zone, originally constructed in 1963 by Bill Tracey for the since-shuttered Westview Park near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Erieview owner Don “Woody” Woodward bought the ride, restored it and installed it at his little lake-side amusement park in 1978. It has not received a major overhaul. “It needed to be done,” Woodward said. “Like with everything else there’s priorities. The ride was doing well and working, but they wanted to restore it to its original grandeur.”

“We knew that was a ride that needed attention, and especially with a small park, detail work is the last thing on their minds,” Davis said. “They are more worried about safety and operations.”

Through the month of April a half dozen DAFE members converged on Fright Zone, first cleaning the scenes, then doing touch-up work on the plaster-of-Paris figures and repairing clothes and fabric. Though the labor was volunteer, Woodward paid for supplies. The group used a small portable blacklight when repainting the figures. “You can tell it’s a real labor of love because they did a heck of a nice job,” Woodward said. It’s a labor of love he relates to. “When I was a kid, 11, 12, 13 years old, we had an old pretzel dark ride here and one of the things I tried to do was fix it up. It’s pretty neat that somebody else has that same interest.”