It wasn't a park. It was a carnival,Craft's United Shows, I believe. It was a fairly large west coast operation at the time of the filming.The scene with carousel flying apart was done with a miniature for the long shot, and a mock up row of horses on a sound stage for the close ups.
Of course any self respecting ride mechanic will tell you that what happened was impossible. When the old man pulled on the brake that hard he would have stripped out all the teeth on the gears. It would have then coasted to a stop.
Quite frankly I have seen that happen when an operator was seeing how fast he could stop a M-G-R. He didn't have a job at the end of the evening.
*** This post was edited by Dutchman on 8/14/2001. ***