By Pete Chiodo

and Keith Gushard

CONNEAUT LAKE PARK — Karen Clinton was right where one would expect a grandmother to be after running around Conneaut Lake Park with her two young granddaughters for the last five hours or so — on a bench, catching her breath.

“I’m taking a rest,” Clinton said, stationed only briefly at a picnic table beside the park’s carousel. She and her family made the hour-long trip from Cranberry Township to spend the day at the park on Sunday.

“I saw it on the Internet that they were going to reopen and I thought we’d come up and see what it was like,” Clinton said.

Her assessment?

“It’s really nice,” she said. “It’s too bad they’re not able to restore it enough, but it’s nice. The kids are really enjoying themselves. They loved Kiddieland; it looks really nice.”

Although not all of it looks quite the way Clinton remembers it.

“The midway, I mean, it’s a mess,” she said. “We walked down to the beach, and there’s a lot of people down there. But all the way down, it’s all run down and falling apart.

“Are they going to try to bring it back, you think? It needs a lot of work.”

Park officials agree the 117-year-old Conneaut Lake Park still needs a lot of work, but they are hailing the Memorial Day opening weekend as a success, with an estimated 25,000 people attending the park from Friday evening through Monday afternoon.

“It was very successful. It’s encouraging,” Jack Moyers, chairman of Trustees of Conneaut Lake Park, the park’s public trust ownership group, said of the weekend’s attendance figures. “The weather was a big help.”

While the park doesn’t charge admission, the attendance estimate was based on ride tickets sold and the number of cars in the parking lot, he said

This was the first weekend the amusement park’s rides had been in operation since the 2006 season. The amusement park, which has debts of more than $2 million, was unable to get its rides operating in 2007 and 2008 because of financial problems. The park’s Beach Club tavern and eatery and Hotel Conneaut were open part of the 2007 season and again in 2008, which was run by a separate operating group.

Lisko & Sons Amusements of Lowellville, Ohio, which recently signed a multi-year lease with the trustees to operate the rides, was happy with the turnout as well.