• Located: Oceanview Park, Norfolk, Virginia, USA
• Built:1929
• Type: Wooden
• Defunct

I think this is a postcard that has the Rocket on it. Source

I really sat on this one for a couple days now, a beloved coaster of its community and many people miss it now that it's gone.

The coaster's name was changed when it starred in movies, going from being called "Skyrocket" to just "Rocket". It operated with this name for two seasons before the park shut down.

This was Rocket's first appearance in a movie!

The movie Rollercoaster is a suspense/thriller about a mysterious man trying to extort a million dollars out of different theme park owners and the insurance adjuster that is roped into helping the FBI catch the man. It follows our characters to three different parks, the first being Oceanview Park in Norfolk, Virginia.

The films opening sequence takes place in the park, particularly the roller coaster Rocket. The infamous scene shows a ride on the coaster, which offers a pretty cool POV, interspersed with cuts of our antagonist walking around the park, when the trains reach a certain point he pulls out a remote and detonates a small charge on the tracks which causes the trains to derail as they hit the section of track. The initial stunt hurt several actors as the trains didn't hit the intended spot and the actors hit the beach instead of the padding that had been laid out. This was also toned down in the movie's release using some footage of that accident and the rest was some very obvious dummies being thrown from the cars.

Two years later Rocket makes its second and final movie appearance.

Death of Oceanview Park is a direct to TV disaster movie produced by Playboy Productions of all things. Let me also apologize for the quality of the screenshots, it being direct to TV and being from 1979 means this movie is nearly lost media.

Rocket is truly center stage here, the disaster of the movie revolves around the destruction of the coaster itself. The movie follows three separate pairs of characters, the owner of the park who wants to shut it down after a bizarre hurricane blows through the area but doesn't seem to damage anything and the a navy weather woman who took note of just how bizarre the storm was, the second pair is a young newlywed couple with a baby on the way the wife stars having strange visions of a terrible disaster happening at the park during the 4th of July party, and finally a young navy man on shore leave who meets a cotton candy maker at the park. The last couple is literally the worst part of the movie, it's nearly unbearable to sit through their segments.

The movie meanders around and tries to establish that something possibly paranormal is happening around the park, between rides starting up by themselves to.... a sandcastle bizarrely melting into the beach. (I thought they were going to go for a sinkhole sort of thing for a minute but... nope.) The only thing that truly was paranormal was the psychic pregnant woman who got visions of the disaster, but they didn't really have anything interesting happen with that either.

Finally the disaster happens at the very end of the movie, which ended up being a support beam on the coaster finally breaking free and caused part of the coaster to collapse and sent an empty train careening into the gas shed which was right under the coaster and it explodes starting a chain reaction of explosions around the park.

They really did blow up the coaster, this is how Rocket went out, but not without a fight. The coaster was built so strong that even after three attempts to use dynamite to bring it down, Rocket was still standing. Finally they brought in a bulldozer and hooked cables up to Rocket and pulled it down as they set off a gasoline charge for a big effect and finally brought it down.

Usually this is where I close out, but when I was doing research for this page I just found so MUCH about this coaster that I would feel remiss if I didn't talk about it.

This coaster and Oceanview Park was LOVED by its community, everywhere I looked I could find comments from locals of Norfolk who remember this park and this coaster, some of them telling stories from when they visited and others simply venting that it's gone now. The community of Oceanview has done a wonderful job at preserving the history of the park though, and you can even visit a museum that has TONS of stuff from the park. Personally I'm trying to find time to head down and see it for myself.

Since I'm not sure when I'll be able to make it down there, here's some other really cool stuff I found while researching.

From the last week of operation of Oceanview Park, a year before Death of Oceanview Park was filmed

Behind the scenes footage of Death of Oceanview Park from a local in Norfolk!

News cast from the filming of Death of Oceanview Park

Also a much longer video that takes you inside the museum!

Frank Wood's website with more photos of the Rocket

From kids who grew up in the area, to navy men who as a test of courage would stand up on the ride, this coaster was an incredibly important figure in the community and many miss it to this day. I can't find a concrete reason that the park shut down, but the most likely case that I've seen is simply roads that bypassed the area were built along with a new premiere theme park Busch Gardens moving in it simply wasn't affordable or worth it to keep the park around, and instead it was more profitable to sell off the land to developers for more condominiums. In the end, I think having the movie deals actually saved the park for a few more seasons, as the park was already planning to shut down before the movie deals came through. Rollercoaster was filmed in 1977 and the park operated as normal in 1978. Then of course in 1979 the inevitable happened and the park was destroyed but at least it went out leaving its own mark in not only theme park history but film history as well.