Cheerful calliope music blared as the merry-go-round spun at Lakeside Amusement Park, harkening back to the sounds of an old-time carnival at this 116-year-old theme park just off the northwest side of Denver.
Screams from teenage thrill-seekers riding the Spider, the Scrambler and the Wild Chipmunk punctuated the music as they whirled, flipped and raced on the same rides their parents and grandparents enjoyed when they were young.
On this breezy late-June night, though, the park’s most famous attraction — the landmark wooden Cyclone roller coaster — sat idle. Its art deco entry was dark even as the merry-go-round’s neon shone against the setting sun. No one screamed ahead of the sharp turn where it feels like you just might be launched into Lake Rhoda. No one felt their stomach drop as the coaster skipped over a series of bunny hops.
State amusement park regulators ordered the Cyclone to close two summers ago after a woman was injured on the ride, and the coaster has been shuttered ever since as Lakeside’s owners try to determine out how to retain the ride’s historic charm while making it safer for passengers, who often ignore warnings to keep their arms and hands inside the cars.
The park’s most visible ride is missed by its fans.
“My favorite part, too, is at nighttime and you come back into the platform and it makes this sound like steam is releasing and the neon lights are everywhere and you’re dumped back into society,” Bree Davies, host of the CityCast Denver podcast and a Lakeside superfan said of the Cyclone. “It’s one of my things that is quintessentially summer and quintessentially Denver.”
The Cyclone’s extended shutdown raises concerns for some fans about the future of one of the oldest operating theme parks in Colorado and whether its owners can maintain a piece of Denver’s history as other parts of the city rapidly gentrify. The coaster’s closure is symbolic of the difficulty of managing an aging theme park — one the owners are determined to keep as a time capsule from a bygone era, where families can bring picnics and ride a slow-moving train around a lake. They’re so determined to preserve its historic character that they routinely turn down help and offers to sell the land to developers.
“I worry that one day it will just close and be derelict forever,” said Davies, who even has a Lakeside tattoo. “It freaks me out.”
Park managers, though, have no plans to sell out. And they hope to get The Cylcone running before the summer season ends as they try to figure out the best way to meet the state’s safety requirements, said Brenda Fishman, the park’s operations manager who runs Lakeside with her mother, Rhoda Krasner. The two keep their decisions close to the vest, rarely granting interviews and frequently rejecting proposals to host festivals and other major events inside the gates.
“In terms of repair, we are not going to change the whole structure because I feel it would destroy the ride,” Fishman said in a lengthy interview with The Denver Post. “There has to be somewhere in between that is safe and still maintains the quality and caliber of the ride.”
Finding that in-between is a test for an amusement park that opened in 1908 and whose owners tightly control its operations so that it maintains its family-friendly legacy of historic rides, cheap admission, free parking and low-priced concessions. People pay just $5 to walk through the gates even as the cost of running a theme park rises.
They also face the challenge of finding people who have the skills to operate and repair vintage rides and scouring the globe for parts when something breaks, Fishman said.
Still, the park is a beloved Denver attraction and one that its fans hope survives the city’s booming growth and the increasing expense of maintaining property in metro Denver.
“Obviously, we would love to be more polished than we are,” Fishman said. “We know we have rough edges. Some of them are more conquerable if we have good people.”
The Cyclone’s conundrum
For many, the future of the Cyclone is an indicator of the future of Lakeside Amusement Park.
Historic theme parks like Lakeside are vanishing, as are the rides that were created nearly a century ago.
The 85-foot-tall, 2,800-feet-foot-long Cyclone was built in 1940 by Edward Vettel, who designed amusement rides in the early 1900s, and it’s the last remaining Vettel roller coaster in the United States. It’s listed as one of 48 landmark rides by the American Coaster Enthusiasts.
“It’s got banking and G-forces and you get a little air time on the bunny hills. The station itself is like a work of art,” said Amber Lightbody, the American Coaster Enthusiasts’ Rocky Mountain representative. “It’s a fun ride. It’s a beautiful ride. There aren’t a whole lot of pre-World War II roller coasters left.”
During the two-and-a-half seasons the Cyclone has been closed, Lakeside’s fans have speculated the shutdown was the result of a 2022 lawsuit filed by a Florida man who hurt his wrist and arm while raising his hands in the air on the ride the previous year.
The rider’s left arm hit the coaster’s wooden track when he tilted farther left than he should have on his fourth trip on the coaster that night in July 2021, not long after the park finally reopened after weathering its pandemic shutdown. Lakeside’s owners never commented on the lawsuit.
But that’s not why the Cyclone isn’t running.
While the ride temporarily closed in 2021, the state didn’t open an investigation after that rider’s injury. The Cyclone reopened at the start of the 2022 season, but the coaster only ran a few weeks before another person was injured on June 14, 2022.
In that incident, a young woman raised her arms while riding the coaster and struck the palm of her left hand on something, according to an injury report filed with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Division of Oil and Public Safety, which regulates amusement rides in the state.
The woman went to a hospital to treat a cut on her palm. That accident triggered a state investigation, and regulators ordered the ride closed until repairs were made, said Jacquee Wilson, public safety manager at the labor department.
However, Lakeside had undergone a third-party inspection a month before that accident, in May 2022, and the report submitted to the state showed the Cyclone needed 16 repairs, but only six had been made, according to a copy obtained by The Post through the Colorado Open Records Act.
The ride opened at the start of that summer even though not all of the repairs had been marked as “completed” on the certificate. The Cyclone was already permitted to run through July 2022, and the inspection certificate submitted by Lakeside in May 2022 was for the renewal of the coaster’s operating permit for the following year.
It’s not clear, though, whether state officials looked at that May 2022 inspection report prior to the accident. Jessica Smith, a labor department spokeswoman, did not answer that question when asked by The Post. She said it was Lakeside’s responsibility to address any identified problems, and that inspectors should not sign off on inspection certificates if there are “critical safety issues.”
“When we were made aware of a reportable injury, we addressed it, and the ride will remain closed until they resolve the issues,” Smith said.
Amusement park operators in Colorado hire third-party companies to inspect their rides and certify they are safe. Those inspection certificates do not have to be sent to the labor department, but ride operators must make them available if inspectors conduct an on-site audit, said Cher Haavind, a labor department spokeswoman.
The state does not have the manpower to inspect every ride at every park during the year, Haavind said. So it relies on on those third-party inspections to determine whether rides are safe.
“Turns out there may have been some additional issues that appeared that may have been related to the injury that occurred,” Wilson said.
Lakeside did not put the Cyclone on the list of rides it plans to open during the 2024 season, Wilson said. No inspection reports have been filed during the last two years.
However, Fishman hopes the historic coaster can zoom across its track before the park closes for the season, which is typically after Labor Day weekend.
Fishman told The Post that all of the repairs recommended in the 2022 inspection report are finished. However, she continues to negotiate with the state and inspectors on how to prevent further injuries.
The conundrum is the ride’s historic construction, she said.
Roller coasters constructed in the 1940s did not have the same safety standards as those built in more modern times. The Cyclone’s track is narrow and its cars pass within inches of the wooden rails and fencing, making it more dangerous to those who stick out their arms or raise their hands.
“There was some concern the structure was too close to the cars,” Fishman said. “That doesn’t make any sense. It’s too close everywhere. That’s the ride. That’s the way it was built.”
Signs are posted on the ride’s platform advising people to keep their arms tucked inside the cars. And the ride’s operators give verbal instructions. Still, people raise their hands, risking injury, on the narrow coaster.
“For some reason, the modern person doesn’t seem to understand that,” Fishman said.
So the ride will remain closed until that problem is solved, especially since Lakeside cannot afford another lawsuit, Fishman said. The park settled the 2022 lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.
“That’s part of our concern, that if people have the freedom to access the structure, then we will continue to have problems,” Fishman said. “Obviously, we don’t want anyone injured. We want people to come have a carefree time.”
Lakeside’s owners refuse to tear down the wooden structure and rebuild it so the cars pass through a wider path.
“That’s been the impasse,” Fishman said. “We’re trying to negotiate what is a reasonable adjustment.”
Fishman has consulted with multiple experts to figure out whether there’s a way to better restrain passengers or change the cars so people cannot touch the wooden structure as they zip along the tracks. She hopes to have a plan before summer’s end.
Meanwhile, ride operators periodically run empty cars on the Cyclone’s tracks to keep the ride from deteriorating, she said.
As for overall safety, that is the park’s priority, Fishman said.
She performs test rides herself. Her children spend time at the park and she would never jeopardize their safety, she said.
Wilson and Haavind, of the Colorado Department of Labor, said most injuries at theme parks, including those at Lakeside, happen because people disobey the rules, not because the rides are dangerous. The state considered the 2022 incident in which the woman cut her palm to be both rider and operator error: The woman raised her arms and struck a part that likely was out of place.
The 2021 death of a 6-year-old girl at Glenwood Caverns in Glenwood Springs is the exception, Haavind said. In that case, workers neglected to check the girl’s restraints and ignored an alarm that was warning there was a problem.
“Mostly what we see are rider-caused, unfortunately,” she said.
Old thrill rides get a new life
When the Cyclone shut down in 2022 and Fishman realized the time it would take to satisfy the state’s safety requirements, she turned her attention to getting attractions up and running.
Last year, Lakeside opened a new — at least to the park — roller coaster that had been constructed on the grounds five years earlier.
The park bought an Italian-designed Pinfari Zyklon Z64 in 2018 from a theme park in Nebraska and set it up on the southwest corner of the property. But the coaster didn’t start running until September, near the end of the 2023 season. Lakeside still hasn’t given the coaster a catchy name and just refers to it as the Pinfari.
The coaster features a steep drop that a teen operator on a recent visit said “will get you,” and multiple banking twists before it rolls into the station.
The Pinfari was built in 1973, and although its early history is unknown it has operated in Missouri, Michigan and Nebraska, according to the Historic Coaster Foundation. Roller coaster enthusiasts were eagerly awaiting its debut in Colorado.
But the ride needed a new control system and new brakes before it could run again, Fishman said. Lakeside’s crew also had challenges with the coaster’s programming, something the old Cyclone doesn’t need because its entire operation is manual.
The Heart Flip, a ride on which passengers can control heart-shaped cars while being spun in a circle, and the balloon Ferris wheel — a smaller Ferris wheel that has imitation hot air balloons as the cars — also reopened this summer after lengthy closures.
Meanwhile, Fishman is waiting on wheels to arrive from Italy before the park’s Dragon roller coaster can run again. She spent months tracking down a new motor for the Roll-O-Plane, and it’s on the way. And the big Ferris wheel’s cars have been re-attached, but Fishman cannot find someone qualified to operate the ride.
With a stable of vintage rides, maintenance is a near-constant.
“People think we never paint or we never fix things, but we are constantly doing all of that,” Fishman said.
Older theme parks with vintage rides take time to fix when something breaks. Parts often are custom-made and sometimes it takes years for the person with the expertise to fix a ride to have an opening on their schedule.
“I tell people it’s like your car,” Fishman said. “You drove it home last night and it doesn’t start in the morning. Except you have a dealership and we don’t have that option.”
People who can work with neon also are becoming rarer, so it takes time for the park’s lights to be fixed when they burn out.
Lakeside has worked with the same neon company since the 1940s, but that company’s expert died a few years ago and no one has replaced him.
“It’s a dying art,” said David Forsyth, a Colorado historian who wrote “Denver’s Lakeside Amusement Park: From the White City Beautiful to a Century of Fun.”
Offers of help not accepted
Over the years, Lakeside has received offers of help, whether through financial grants or volunteer labor.
But Fishman and her mother have declined.
Last year, the American Coaster Enthusiasts brought their preservation director to Colorado to meet with Fishman to talk about the Cyclone’s future and offer help, either financially or by putting her in touch with experts who can help track down parts.
“She never really got back to us,” said Lightbody, the organization’s Rocky Mountain representative. “I’ve reached out a couple of times to let her know the door is open and that we are willing to help.”
In 2021, Historic Denver included Lakeside in its “50 Actions for 50 Places,” a list of locations that deserve preservation in the city even though the park is not actually within Denver’s city limits. (It’s located in the Jefferson County town of Lakeside, population 17.) Westword reported that Historic Denver tried to contact Krasner about the listing and never received a response.
Fishman said she has considered applying for preservation grants, but after researching how programs work she decided they were not an option for Lakeside. She said she doesn’t want to be encumbered by restrictions that grant recipients must follow. And the finances wouldn’t really work, she added.
While some grants could provide hundreds of thousands of dollars for renovations, the park owners would have to come up with matching money that they don’t have.
“The actual monetary gain was significant, but not enough to make the actual project work,” she said.
Managing large projects is also time-consuming, and once the summer season starts, Fishman said she is consumed by running day-to-day operations. She has not found the right person to hand over responsibility to.
“Money is part of a barrier to things,” she said. “But even if you have funds, it’s finding the right people to manage them properly that is challenging.”
Fishman also said she regularly receives offers from the general public to volunteer their time to work in the park’s gardens or paint buildings. But she just is not equipped to run a volunteer program.
“It’s a lovely sentiment,” she said.
“A huge part of Denver’s history”
The 57 acres that Lakeside occupies are a valuable piece of property.
Visitors can sit on the edge of the park’s Lake Rhoda and enjoy a clear view of Rocky Mountain sunsets. It’s located on Sheridan Boulevard near an Interstate 70 interchange, and it’s not too far from Tennyson Street’s hip dining and shopping scene in Denver’s Berkeley neighborhood.
Lakeside Amusement Park is a privately held company and there are other shareholders besides Krasner, whose father bought the park in 1935. But Krasner appears to be the decision-maker, according to those familiar with the park and the family.
Forsyth, the historian, said any closure of Lakeside would be a significant loss for Denver, but, “As long Rhoda Krasner is around, that’s not going to happen.”
The owners receive “proposals all the time,” Fishman said. “They’re all the same and mundane. Another shopping center. Another set of apartments. But nothing is a public use.”
So they’ve rejected the offers, even as the park’s former speedway, shut down in 1988, stands unused on the southern end of the property.
The family takes pride in keeping Lakeside’s mountain views open. And they fiercely protect the park’s $5 admission, which doesn’t include rides, and $1 popcorn so anyone can come stroll the grounds and enjoy the views, Fishman said.
“Grandma should be able to come and see the kids have fun,” she said. “To have to pay a steep price for a non-rider makes you think twice. So much today is so fast-paced and so digital and is truly removed from being a shared experience. We still have the ability to provide that for people.”
Fans like Davies look past Lakeside’s rough edges and see the potential for a park that could attract visitors from all over the world.
“You have the architecture, lighting, foliage and it all builds into this other time and fantasy. It does look run down, but if you look past that, it’s magical,” Davies said. “I feel so deeply about how that place feels since I was a kid and that feeling has never worn off.”
For now, there’s one way for Denver to support the park — and that’s for people to visit it, Forsyth said. Buy a ticket and some snacks and enjoy the atmosphere.
“It’s a huge part of Denver’s history and people need to go and support it,” he said. “And have fun.”
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Originally Published: June 30, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
