A 14-year-old girl has died after a roller coaster car came off the track at an amusement park in Denmark. I remember riding the Virginia Reel 7 times one night! I did not know that, thanks Larry! Great times and wonderful memories of a time long gone by. Contents. With the economy still climbing out of a recession, they faced stark reality years of deferred maintenance and the rising popularity of larger theme parks meant that significant investment would be required to modernize Paragon and make it competitive as a destination. On Saturday, a 57-year-old woman died following an accident on a roller coaster called "The Hot Ride." The woman, identified as a German national, slipped from her seat while the coaster was. It was known as Disneyland of the East. Wild Mouse was a B. First, patriarch David Stone died during the off season in Miami; three years later, his oldest son, Joseph, died in the middle of parks 1949 season. That park put $1 million into renovating the coaster, and it has been refitted and redesigned multiple times over the decades. Newton High Schools Senior Prom was held there until, I think, the very early 60s..a special ending to your school years. I recall going to Storytown in Lake George area now a Six Flags. I got to Paragon Park just once, the year before it closed; I was amused that the condo development the park was torn down for was one of the first to go bust when the economic bubble burst. The historic "Fascination" game room closed in 2019 due to storm damage. Now 67 Grew up close to Canobie Lake Park and Bensons Wild Animal Park and spent so much time at both. While my mother caught up with her pal Betty, whom she hadnt seen in years, and my sisters made new friends with Bettys daughters I roamed around and snapped random photos with my new 35mm camera. My Dad was. So sad that it is gone. If anyone has a picture of this ride please let me know. The carousel was always a favorite ride no matter how young or old I was. And in the early 1960s, there was Pleasure Island in Wakefield, MA, with a pirate theme. Our graduating class of 1950 went there after our senior banquet for a fun evening. Theyve got a Facebook page too a great place for everyone to gather and share their memories of the park and fun times there. Most of the time, news of an injury or death at a theme park involves a roller coaster. On that trip my Dad and I and the oldest boy from the other family went to Mystic Seaport. Maybe 5 +. One day in June 1911 while the roller coaster company's owner was standing up in a roller coaster car delivering a speech to other passengers about safety, he ironically fell to his death. Norumbegapark as a kid, Whalom park 8th grade class trip, nantasket beach high school end of year trips. 2022 Dennis Connors Photography. Ive ridden the roller coaster that was moved from Paragon to Six Flags America, in both of its locations; Six Flags restored a (horizontal) loop at the end that burned and was removed at Paragon. I wonder if anyone remembers the Pine Island Park in NH. Roller coasters Past This list is incomplete, please expand it if you can. We used to go there every year for my birthday which is in June! It will be interesting to see if in time enough energy is generated that can bring this park back. Neither one mentioned. So many wonderful memories. What a great story. Waves are just as likely to come from local windswells as distant groundswells, and the best swell direction comes from the northeast. He grew up on Lake Quinsigamond, so Im familiar with White City as well , as the wild animal farm, Nantasket, ( I eventually settled in nearby Cohasset, the carousel is still there. At the center of the park was a lagoon that served as the splashdown point for the popular Shoot the Chute gondola ride. New England offers plenty of memorable amusement park experiences, from Six Flags New England and Canobie Lake Park to Story Land and Lake Compounce. Such wonderful memories of a different time!???? The rest of the site is devoted to condominiumdevelopment. Loved Whalom park took several girlfriends there. At about this time, a movement within the town of Hull to legalize casino gambling complicated Paragons status within the town vision for the future. Who lived where the park was. Also, we often went to Jolly Chollys in North Attleboro as well. The coaster itself was shortened in order to be ready by the Fourth of July holiday, with its final circular turns left off the drawing board in the interest of time. My parents brought me and I brought my kids. Even met my husband. Dawn R. Jankovic, from Brunswick, Ohio, fell unconscious while riding The Voyage roller coaster at Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana . Six Flags America in Maryland purchased the coaster and relocated it in 1985. Perhaps the most famous attraction at Whalom Park was its 1940 Flying Comet wooden roller coaster, built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, the same outfit responsible for the wooden coasters at Coney Island. The Great Blizzard of 1978 put the park under six feet of water as the Atlantic Ocean and Hull Bay converged on the Hull peninsula and left a wake of destruction. Built in 1917, the wooden roller-coaster stood 98 feet high at its peak and was the tallest roller coaster in the world for eight years until the Cyclone roller coaster was built at Revere Beach. we went on the Congo Cruise, which I think briefly had a The Summer of 1985 seemed like the longest ever, as day by day more and more of Paragon disappeared. In 1931, David and Rose Stone created the Paragon Park Operating Company to hold their ownership interest and shield it from creditors. Also visited Crescent Park, Rocky Point ,Bensons ,Pleasure Island,Kings Castle land Whitman,Ma Whalom and Canobie Lake. This was perfect! The park opened to rave reviews. Within five years, the rail line was abandoned forever. It was in Killingly, many miles north and east, and my parents had a cranky little boy on their hands. We were just in Hull last week and reliving fond memories of Paragon- totally remember the Himalaya! The park's Ferris wheel was moved to the New Bedford waterfront and the Comet roller coaster was torn down on July 11, 2012. and I will never forget the day July 2, 1952 when we (my brother and I and cousins) were getting ready to go on the kiddie roller coaster when we suddenly had to leave. They married in 1935. Ill always remember my trips to Whalom Park with my family and especially the rides on the Whip and Tilt-O-Whirl with my grandfather. Here's a list of 13 of the deadliest roller coaster accidents in the last two decades. My grandparents lived in Nantasket so I had the pleasure of going to Paragon Park many times during the summer months. I have vague memories of Savin Rock in West Haven, CT. External links Paragon Park on the Roller Coaster DataBase. According to the latest fatalities report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2005, 52 . http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Paragon-Park-Memories/103289636409972. It was a historic park. A rider suffered head, wrist and ankle injuries on Monday after being ejected from a roller coaster in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. White City on the shores of Lake Quinsigamond between the Worcester and Shrewsbury linesa wonderful memory. How Id love to take one more slide ride. they actually replaced a section that burned in the 1960s so the coaster is the way it was originally designed. DeNoto, who now lives in New York, states in the suit that he took his boy to the park on June 26, 2018 because the lad was finally tall enough to ride the coasters. Kings Castle, Whitman, great amusements for kids to age 10 maybe 12. It opened in 1917, closed in 1984. In addition to the amusement parks there were shows (I remember seeing Loretta Lynn and others) and they also had auto races on Saturday nights. Paragon Park was great, noise, lights, smells(mostly good) the ocean, good times. It still is the best! About a dozen years later I . Growing up, Paragon Park, a small amusement park in Hull MA just across from Nantasket Beach was my idea of the ultimate place to go, and wed hopefully go there once a summer if we were lucky. My cousin owned the pizza shop across the street from the parking lot and lived there. . Shore dinners especially the clamcakes. All I was left with besides a footprint on my backside for not taking more, better photos, when I did have the time, were my memories of having an all day pass discounted by collecting match book covers stapled to my shirt hem and spending the day riding the kiddie cars, the Congo Cruise, the merry go round and more, playing skee ball in the arcade and eating ice cream on a hot summer day. mod i remeber the blizzard of 78 that was freezing and 27ft snow drift i know i shoveled them to make money as a kid froze my butt of lmao, and delivering newspapers in the winter took its toll on me as well , i agree i foze my arse off. It was a fun, reasonably priced park and like other parks in New England was probably not profitable enough to keep running. Riverside was also my favorite. My dad worked there. EDMONTON - It's been 30 years since Rod Chayko was flung from a flying roller-coaster at West Edmonton Mall, and it bothers him still that there is no memorial at the site to honour the three. As each season ended, friends and family recall the Stones saying privately that it would be the last; they no longer had the energy to devote to such a draining enterprise. They also hosted many concerts and special shows! Great park. Its layout and format modeled those of Luna and Dreamland at Coney Island, with an ornate front entrance and exhibitions from foreign lands surrounding the lagoon and electric tower. Googling Pleasure Island Massachusetts will yield many fan sites as well as old and new information, not the least of which is a Friends of Pleasure Island website. Great memories growing up there with the park, the bowling alley and the roller skating rink! Its amazing how fast people forget. Now folks who have never been there will get an inkling of how important the park was to so many people! Unfortunately Im to old these days. Its assets were sold off in 1979, with the land being cleared for a housing development. They rehearsed in our barn further down Northampton Street. I remember watching Bea Lillie and Robert Emhardt among others. But if you are feeling nostalgic, all is not lost: Scenes from Whalom Park were preserved for posterity in the 1982 music video for Touch and Go by the Cars. It was dismantled and completely rebuilt down in Maryland. The $6 million roller coaster replaced the Inverter, a ride that was discontinued in 2017 off the main boulevard. Did you hold on tight or tempt fate and ride with your hands stretched toward the sky? Took my kids to Kings Castle Land, Whitman, Ma, I miss Riverside Park, Agawam, Ma-not the same since Six Flags took it over. the wonderful carousel at nearby Lake Quassapaug! congrats on 57 yrs. The park featured wild-animal shows, shooting galleries, performances by natives of far-away lands, a foolish house, the dragons den, the haunted swing, the laughing show, an arcade and man smaller buildings, according to the opening-day press. I can remember Whalom as it were yesterday, spent lots of hrs at the park, stayed with my aunt a lot, lived on Chase ave, down by the play house cabins for the stars. Too bad theyre all just sweet memories now. Great memories and was able to take my kids to a couple of these growing up. Also Lincoln Park in North Dartmouth, MA, where I remember riding the roller coaster 13 times in a row with a friend! What about Pine Island Park, In Manchester, NH? About This Item; Obtaining Copies; Access to Original; . Great memories going back at least 50 years! Loved going to Rocky Point sometimes just for the chowder and clam cakes but always ended up in the amusement park. One witness who was in line at the time of the crash reported, "I felt a huge vibration and crash, people were screaming, and people running out of line.". Most definitely Riverside in Agawam. But the ride was plagued with many problems that remained with it until it was . Thanks so much for sharing your memories here! No Paragon Park??? The first, termed a roaring inferno by the Hull fire chief, ripped through the Arcade Bazaar and Funland, a toy store and group of attractions just up Nantasket Avenue from Paragon. Park. He was the manager and operator of the Green Streak roller coaster in Paragon Park located in Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts. Fun fact: a couple of fires over the years changed the configuration of The Giant Coasters track, but it was a fire at another park in St. Louis that allowed Paragon Parks owner to buy a couple of cars from a coaster named The Comet, which is why some of the cars on The Giant Coaster had Comet on them. Thanks for the article which sent me many, many years back in time. A trip to Rocky Point was the highlight of our summers in the 1950s. I recall a Western theme park in Northeast CT, named Cowboy Village. When I drive around that corner approaching Paragon park I am still a little startled when I see a bunch of condos instead of the roller coaster. A park worker's fatal joyride Raymond Boyd/Getty Images Us and some of our neighbors would take advantage of $5 after 5 nights to take the kids to Whalom Park a few times a summer. There are over 297 million people in the United States alone that have had the opportunity to ride 1.7 billion different amusement park rides, most of which being roller coasters. It features a 450 spiral helix and a series of bunny hills that produce a significant amount of air time. It is called the Wild One now. Jankovic was riding "The Voyage" roller coaster on June 4 when she became "unresponsive," the theme park said in a Facebook post. Of the parks you describe, I visited Rocky Point and Bensons Wild Animal Farm as a child. Good memories! Where is the Paragon Park roller coaster now, given this? . Pleasure Island & Bensons were family favorites. Loved the elephant ride at Benson Animal Farm. Boston Public Library/Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection, Visitors walking the grounds of Rocky Point State Park today may not realize that they are treading on entertainment history, but the reminders are there if you know where to look. Mountain Park in Holyoke MA. We used to park before we got to the park, because there were so many pretty girls we couldnt keep our eyes on the road. I had so many old photos of me so young with families and cousins srbthede park, Canobie is still open, far as I could tell, Canobie Lake Park is definitely not closed. By then, the Stone family found itself in an unfamiliar position: unsure of how long the park could survive. It was a complicated transaction, as Dodge still was leasing the property from the railroad, and subleased the operation to Stone and Golden. Grew up going to Lincoln Park many times,roller rink, bowling alley , battle of the bands on weekends as a teenager and the rides,Kiddieland and famous for wooden rollercoaster then went to McCrays for fried clams on RT 6 . In the photo at right, from June 2, 1942, mechanics who had just finished the annual inspection and repairs to the Paragon Park roller coaster gave it the first ride of the 1942 season. My parents had season tickets on Tuesday nights for years. 19T E 347058 N 4681323. Games manager Myron Klayman, the brother-in-law of owner Phyllis Stone, was a selectman in Hull at the time of the storm, and recalled serving dual roles in helping the town clean up from the disaster while also directing crews at his employer. It was located off route 5 on Mt Tom in western Massachusetts. I also remember the racing cars on whalom lake, my Aunt Beverly used to race and was the only woman at the time racing (1960s) So fun so many awesome memories! At the time, the park was called Wild World; hence its new name. Nothing like Paragon Park has ever before been seen near than Luna Park at New York, The Boston Globe enthused, referencing the world-famous amusement center at Coney Island.George A. Till I was a teenager lived in Naugatuck CT and lived to ride the wonderful carousel at nearby Lake Quassapaug! http://themeparks.about.com/library/coasters/blwildone.htm I loved the Giant Coaster and the Congo Cruise. Paragon had its own saltwater lagoon, which surrounded a central electric tower that rose 110 feet into the sky, by far the largest structure at Nantasket Beach. Of a different time!??????????. Haven, CT was great, noise, lights, smells ( mostly good the! Death at a paragon park roller coaster death park in Denmark you can remember my trips to Whalom with. 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