Random Amusements

Today is GDB friend DW's birthday! Happy Birthday, DW. As usual, Sue B. has provided a fun vintage photo for the occasion - an undated picture of a young boy posing with his Mickey Mouse balloon thingy. I thought maybe that was one of those punching toys... you know, "bop the clown" or something. But Sue didn't think so, and now I think she's right. On the table is a delicious cake - or is there more than one cake? Hard to tell. Having an al fresco birthday party is the height of elegance, especially if you get a nice glass of ice-cold lemonade, and get to play "pin the tail on the donkey".

And now, on to the regularly-scheduled blog post! I love me some random (and vintage) amusement parks. Hopefully you do too.

First up is this fun portrait of a happy family posing in front of an impressive dark ride façade, GOLD NUGGET. It has a great, classic look to it, and you can't go wrong with a giant steer skull. I was unsure of  the exact location; there were a number of different attractions that went by the same name, including one at the Atlantic City Pier, and another somewhere in New Mexico. But luckily, I happened upon THIS PAGE, which had tons of helpful information. This is Roseland Park, at Canandaigua Lake (in the Finger Lakes region) in New York.

While I recommend that you read the linked article, Roseland Park opened in 1925. From Wikipedia: Over the years, as the park changed and grew, it saw many rides come and go. Some of the additional attractions included a Ferris wheel, bumper cars, a miniature train ride, a sky ride that went out over part of Canandaigua Lake before returning to the station, and the park's Carousel, which was purchased for the park in 1941 from the defunct Long Branch amusement park. For a period of time there was even a live circus act. Additional attractions have been added and changed over the years, including the addition of the park's major wooden roller coaster, the Skyliner, which was built in 1960.

 So, what was the Gold Nugget ride? From laffinthedark.com: In 1961, Roseland regulars would welcome a new dark ride to replace the older “Crazy House”, and they added one of the best: A Bill Tracy design called “The Gold Nugget”. Bill Tracy was a former artist for the great dark ride Company called Pretzel Rides, in Bridgeton NJ, who went on to form his own company “Amusement Display Creators” and later “This Is, Inc.” after his death. Tracy was known for revamping existing rides or designing them from bottom up. His most famous attractions included his “Pirates Den” walkthroughs and his dark rides called “Wacky Shack”.

Tracy would bring his “Best of The Best” to Roseland's own custom version. Tracy was a master using UV black lighting, day glo paints and warping reality and space by using red/yellow striped painted rooms with strobe light effects. The outside facade had a large mechanical skull mounted with an exposed speed hill and roller coaster style drop, complete with warped and bent Western ghost town buildings and Indian tee-pees drawn in for good looks.

Roseland Park closed in 1985

Founder and original owner William Muar... collected commissions from the park's few rides that were

brought in by concessionaires each summer. This would allow him to eventually buy his own equipment starting in 1935. The big and most famous purchase was a large carousel bought to Roseland in 1942. Mr. Muar partnered up with George Long of nearby Seabreeze Park to bring the carousel to Roseland that was built in 1909 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company - PTC No. 18. This is STILL the ride that fans remember the most.

Next is a fun little flying saucer "spin around" ride, location unknown. In fact I couldn't find out much about this ride at all - who built it, what it was called, nothin'. It might just be the Flying Saucer ride. But I'll bet at least one of you knows a thing or two! A YouTube video shows kids on one of these, and while they don't give the info that I mentioned, they do say that ...it features a 3-phase motor with a hydro-sheave for a soft start on the motor shaft and a belt-driven gearbox which turns a chain final drive.