";s:4:"text";s:13319:" The outdoor Six Flags Great America (then known as Marriott's Great America) theme park opened in 1976, drawing visitors away from Old Chicago. The rest of the complex closed in 1981. Of course watching IMAX movies and the guys at Ringling Brothers Circus going around and around in a steel ball on motorcycles makes me spew as well. A group of investors purchased the enormous building shortly afterward with plans to convert it into a casino. Old Chicago was a combination shopping mall and indoor amusement park, located in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook. It opened to great fanfare and over 15,000 visitors on June 17, 1975, with an enormous building that housed major rides, such as three roller coasters and a Ferris wheel, as well as a turn-of-the-century-themed shopping mall with design reminiscent of the architecture of Louis Sullivan, such as his work for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It was billed as "The world's first indoor amusement park", and it was intended to draw visitors all year round, rain or shine. 1982 The Bolingbrook Aquatic Center, the first indoor wave pool in the United States opened. A trapeze artist performing in the amusement park fell to his death. This article is about a defunct shopping mall and amusement park. Visit our Souvenir Shop on your way out. A series of management changes occurred, but the shops continued closing one by one. The plan didn't attract investors and the mall closed in August 1981. Paul ***@Negative-g.com In 1982, Fun Town, the last amusement park within Chicago’s city limits, ended its 32-year run of thrilling South Side children. Director Brian De Palma filmed scenes from his 1978 supernatural thriller film The Fury at Old Chicago. AP Photo/Charles Knoblock Amazon has paid $50 million for the 116-acre site of Old Chicago, a once-beloved amusement park and megamall in Chicago, The Chicago … Only six months after opening, the complex ran into financial troubles due to construction cost overruns. By 1978, the mall began closing on Mondays and Tuesdays, and in early 1980 the entire amusement park shut down and the rides were sold, only five years after opening. 17. old Chicago amusement park (bolingbrook IL). A Fourth of July fireworks display also ignited prematurely, causing minor injuries to two people. The last remaining stores left soon afterward, as management pitched the idea of recreating the mall as a discount outlet. Later that year, a small fire in a trash compactor forced an evacuation of the mall. Old Chicago Shopping Mall & Amusement Park / 555 S.Bolingbrook Dr. Bolingbrook, IL. Finally, in March 1980, the entire amusement park shut down and the rides were sold. Designer Robert Brindle conceived of the idea behind Old Chicago after a visit to Knott's Berry Farm amusement park in Buena Park, California, and wished to put an entire park - complete with roller coaster, Ferris wheel, and log flumes - indoors so that it could be open year-round. Construction crews worked around the clock to complete the project, and after a last-minute inspection, the mall opened on time to another crowd of over 15,000. The concept of an amusement park inside a mall emerged years later at two famous malls—West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (Galaxyland), and Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota (Nickelodeon Universe), as well as Adventuredome at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, and Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi. I had just worked with Jimmy Troy, the performer who fell to his death in Old Chicago, a few weeks earlier at a shopping mall outside of Milwaukee. 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