When Old Chicago opened in Bolingbrook, Illinois back in 1975, it was billed as the country’s first indoor amusement park. Thousands of visitors showed up on opening day to see what the 345,000 square foot building had to offer.
Inside, Old Chicago featured turn of the century architecture and hundreds of stores and restaurants. At the center were dozens of rides and attractions, including three roller coasters. Perhaps the most notable was “The Chicago Loop,” one of the first coasters designed and manufactured by Arrow Dynamics. It was just the second coaster in history to turn riders upside down twice.
Unfortunately, Old Chicago ran into financial difficulty soon after opening and ended up closing just five years later. “The Chicago Loop” wasn’t thrown to the scrap heap, it found a long life at Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire where it opened in 1987. It operated at that park as the Canobie Corkscrew until it was shut down in 2021.
Canobie Lake has donated the ride’s second corkscrew inversion to the National Roller Coaster Museum in Plainview, Texas. The museum sent us video of the ride’s track arriving on property, and the construction process of putting the inversion back together. The non-profit plans to have visitors to the museum drive under the corkscrew before entering the parking lot.
“This is an incredible opportunity to have an important piece of roller coaster history represented at the museum,” NRCMA Historian Richard Munch said in a statement. “As one of the first four models manufactured at Arrow’s Utah plant in 1975, it went to Illinois, then was moved to Alabama and later to New Hampshire. This last piece will have its final home at the museum and is expected to be a major calling card for the facility on State Highway 194, just northwest of Plainview.”…