Did You Know? Cedar Point Once Had a Boeing 747-Theme Roller Coaster

September 11, 2012 at 11:02 AM | by JetSetCD | Comments (2)

Fun fact: fun facts are awesome. Whether you're trying to chat up a flight attendant or simply love learning something cool, we've got some tidbits to share. So all this week, we'll be squeezing our mindgrapes to bring you some awesome, random travel factoids.

Fact: Cedar Point Amusement Park used to have a Boeing 747-themed roller coaster named "Jumbo Jet."

It's the late 1970s at a theme park in Ohio, but this isn't just any theme park; it's Cedar Point. This park, on a peninsula sticking out into Lake Erie, celebrates over 100 years of fun, with five roller coasters at the time: Blue Streak, Wildcat, Cedar Creek Mine Ride, Corkscrew and Jumbo Jet. Three of those five still exist and the losers are—you guessed it—Wildcat and the very similar Jumbo Jet.

We now know Cedar Point as the "roller coaster capital of the world," with its 15 coasters (16th in 2013) and over 3.1 million visitors every year (and it even closes for the winter!) and it's difficult to imagine only five tracks towering over the fairway and funnel cakes. And yet, one of them managed to be airplane-themed. Awesome.

Coasters in those days were still pretty rudimentary, so no fancy 747-shaped cars for this ride. Still, the Jumbo Jet steel coaster did exist and it even topped off with a rotating, ATC-style radar prop. Check out a photo of people riding it here. It only stuck around at Cedar Point from 1972-1978, debuting a mere two years after the jumbo jet itself first took off with Pan Am in 1970.

Wikipedia claims that the Jumbo Jet ride still exists within Dreamland Park in Minsk, Belarus, but the Lost Coaster blog recently found it at Amigoland in Le Grau du Roi, France.

Godspeed, Jumbo Jet.

[Images: Facebook for Cedar Point & themeparkreview.com]

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