We Meet by the Tower of True Love

[austin_dern]

Besides pieces of Dorney Park's 1901 carousel and Band Organ Guy the Merry-Go-Round Museum had something else new this year: another museum tucked inside it, spilling out over the space that used to be the event room. I don't know where they hold events now. The museum is labelled as a second one that you get into with admission to the Merry-Go-Round Museum, and maybe someday it will have its own space, but for now it is also the Cedar Point Historical Museum.

This has no official connection to Cedar Point, which sold off nearly everything it used to have in its actual historical museum, the Town Hall Museum in the park itself, back around 2019. This is something the Cedar Point Historical Museum docent was a bit testy about; he agrees, you'd think the park would support them, or at least be interested in having some of this stuff on its own. (The rumor I hear from bunnyhugger is that the Town Hall Museum was found to require too much renovation to be worth it, scotching the circa-2019 plans to remake it. But that's hard to square with the building being used, this year, for a walk-through haunted house attraction. In fairness, I suppose it is plausible that a building might be okay to use [parts of?] for a couple weeks in the year and not okay for the long-term museum-grade storage of historical items. Especially if they figure the building is okay for five years but not twenty, or something.)

But what they do have is a collection. Just a staggering amount of mostly small memorabilia from the park, going back to an 1893 ribbon from a company's picnic day at the park. Buttons, shot glasses, postcards, souvenir photos, so many little dust-collecting memories for the park. And maps, including ones for every couple of years going back to the early 60s. Some are even listed for sale, I imagine New Old Stock since if anyone were reprinting 1960s Cedar Point souvenir maps for sale, it'd be Cedar Point. But also banners, pennants, promotional materials. They have a nice little display of stuff for the roller coaster Cedar Point was going to call the Banshee, along with The Memo that explains someone looked up what a Banshee was and decided that was maybe inappropriate for an amusement so please destroy all buttons and signs and stuff that you have that says that. (The ride that would have been Banshee became Mantis, later Rougarou. In an unrelated move sister park Kings Island later installed a roller coaster named Banshee, despite this experience. It's the one that an unfortunate person got killed by back in 2024.)

They also have what appear to be two horses from the Town Hall Museum. They're not; they're replicas of the ``Ghost Horse'' of the Frontier Carousel (formerly Lake Lansing Park's carousel, since Dorney Park's replacement carousel) and the King Armored horse of the Kiddie Kingdom Carousel. (Frontier Carousel and Kiddie Kingdom Carousel have other replicas.) And in a corner especially precious items --- spilling out of the event room, into space just curtained off from the main Merry-Go-Round Museum walls --- they have some stuff like old employee newsletters and memory books, hand fans, and some hefty-sized book called 'Experience '74' that looks like a particularly thick souvenir guide to the park.

And then there's delightful little things. The wood carving guy at Cedar Point has been making miniature replicas of old cartoon ride signs and the many varieties of trash bin the park has had with different logos and also the old parking lot signs, from when the rows were marked with ride names rather than just numbers like '33E'. bunnyhugger pointed out how you could see a bit of park history in the signs. Most of them --- Wave Swinger, Blue Streak, Wild Cat --- have monochrome photos of their named ride on them, while Iron Dragon has just the ride's logo in full color. Iron Dragon was built in 1987 so we can conclude the parking lot ride signs got reassigned some around then.

The museum is small, and it could use more labelling and contextualizing of what things are. But it was just the sort of thing bunnyhugger and I could spend almost forever in, given a chance.

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Now back to Motor City Furry Con and Saturday night or Sunday morning depending on your point of view.

Bird left out all alone, looking for the action.

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This is after midnight already --- I'm really hustling through the event --- so the charity's area has only the tables and shelving still set up overnight.

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Stickers for whatever the charity was. I think something wolf-supporting.

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Some folks in the hallway posting for wizard fights.

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Purple bunny wandering off in the general direction of the dance. You know what that means.

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Yes, it's time for Velveteen to come in and set this all in order!

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Trivia: Benjamin Franklin was the second almanac-maker in his family; his older brother James Franklin published Poor Robin's Almanack from 1728, five years before Poor Richard appeared. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel.

Currently Reading: The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, Kevin Baker.

Comments

[moonhare]

On the subject of almanacs, The Farmers' Almanac is discontinuing in 2026; The Old Farmer's Almanac will still be published (different company) for us old farmers ;o)