Besides the Dippers Big and Lil' there were many things we hoped to see at Camden Park. We also felt good about seeing them at all. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger had left the hotel room without contact lenses and a search of the car found the backup lenses left us discovering a lot of empty contact lens containers. Finally she found one of a current prescription for each eye and ... something went wrong, putting one in. This led to a scene funny if it isn't part of your experience of me failing to see it in her eye, but also not being able to find it anywhere in the cabin of a car that needed cleaning out. Even more searching found one more, surely the last possible, contact lens and she dropped that on the car floor, somehow not badly enough for floor dirt to attach and make it sandpaper for her pupil.
If any good has come of it it's that I've cleaned out my car's cabin, and thrown out every actually-empty contact lens container I can find. There's at least one pair in the lower glove compartment, and it is my understanding bunnyhugger has spares in both the fanny packs she has for amusement park trips. Spares in the carrying case for Big Points, her serious digital camera, would be good too but she rarely takes that to amusement parks because where do you put it on rides?
But the thing besides roller coasters we wanted to see was Camden Park's carousel. Wikipedia claims the ride dates to 1907, only four years after the park opened. The National Carousel Association census dates it to 1925, but does say it's still in the original location, which is a nice streak to have. (I'm inclined to believe the National Carousel Association in such matters. Wikipedia also claims the carousel was made by Philadelphia Toboggan Company, and PTC has kept track of where their carousels are and Camden Park is not on the list.) In any event the park sold the original horses in the early 90s, replacing them with aluminum Allan Herschell horses. The mechanism is the same as from 1907-or-1925 so that this seems like it should be the same ride, but it doesn't feel like that exactly, somehow. The chariots are still original, the National Carousel Association says, and we did take a ride on those to have the experience of not just riding the carousel but the most historically significant seats.
We may not know the exact reasons for Camden Park selling their horses, but we know the exact reasons. It's a small park, carousel horses were incredibly valuable back then (they still are, they've just gotten less ridiculously salable), and the park surely needed the money. The remarkable thing is that, as with Waldameer, they survived the sale of the horses for more than one or two seasons.
Also of great interest was the Haunted House ride, constructed 1919 if Wikipedia is to be believed for some reason. It's a ride much like the Devil's Den at the lamented Conneaut Lake Park, with just a small lift hill and one prominent hill before going inside for a bunch of haunted house props and stunts to go past. The Roller Coaster Database doesn't credit this as a roller coaster, although it points it out as an item of interest. Coaster-Count.com does, as it counts the Devil's Den, and we do too. It may have only the one drop, but the motion is so much like that of a Wild Mouse, only with props, that it feels unfair to exclude it.
The ride also has a quite good paint job, done by ``Chuck the Dark Ride Artist'' according to the text beside a large witch stirring a cauldron of souls at the entrance door. We're a bit sorry not to see the vintage old art but the work Chuck did is so good --- fresh and vibrant and a little spooky without being too gruesome or too childish --- that the ride's worth several trips on the visit. Which is just as we did do.
There's more, of course. I'll share some more experience on old rides including one bunnyhugger refused to go on tomorrow, all going well.
Some more walking around, in pictures today, on a gorgeous Friday afternoon last October. The place: Cedar Point. The time: another Halloweekends.
Peering up at towers: Power Tower's four towers, Top Thrill 2's coming tower, and the big crane being used to build Top Thrill 2's Second Tower.
The construction fences encourage us to be ready for a new force, not mentioning quite how much downtime the coaster would have its first year (so far).
But here's a lovely look back at Corkscrew, which runs over the midway, and which is like never down. It was staggering when we saw one day that it actually wasn't running.
Oh hey! What's this outside the Sky Ride t-shirt shop, a chipmunk? Let's get a better look at you, little critter.
Or not. Don't have to see you if you don't want to be seen, all right. I guess we didn't have anything for you anyway.
Up at the Midway Carousel there's ... a line spilling out into the midway. This never happens but you'll notice people dressed like it's August out there. For a week and a half before Halloween. Bit of a busy day.
Trivia: On receiving the Institution of Electrical Engineers' inaugural Faraday Medal in 1921, the mathematical physicist Oliver Heaviside criticized the wasteful expenditure on the leather-covered vellum document accompanying the medal, but felt consoled that the medal was at least bronze and not made of gold. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Volume 30: Popeye and The Evil Echo, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
