Cedar Point carousel restoration

The new PR/social media rep at CP did a nice story on the restoration of the Kiddie Kingdom carousel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbd67e7C6I

Kudos to the park for filling Tony's position, and for spending what is clearly a lot of time and money on the carousel.

I'll also be interested to see how the old Geauga Lake carousel looks at WoF.

For some reason I always love hearing about old carousels getting restored.

I was just at WoF this weekend. They don't have the carousel up yet, but the pavilion that it's going to be put under does look nice.

This popped up on my blog list this morning (WoF carousel update).

http://unwof.blogspot.com/2011/04/around-and-around-we-go.html

Considering WoF's previous carousel, GL's is a trmendous upgrade... :)

They're keeping the old plastic one too.

I wonder if they ever do anything in conjunction with the carousel museum in Sandusky? Not that they would need to, or anything...

The artists who paint/restore these things do some amazing work.

^Very true - we stopped by the carousel museum near lake Compounce a couple years ago - it was truly amazing. The one antique ride every major park should have is a carousel (any others are pure gravy).

They should have an antique carousel WITH a fully functional band organ. In the big picture what it costs to keep an organ playing isn't all that much, especially when compared to what the operational expenses of the high rides.

Does it cost more to maintain that a MP3 player? :)

Yes it does, but that's not the point (no pun intended). If you are going to restore an antique machine , then it should be all inclusive including the source of music that the original builder used. For the record, at one time CP owned four fully operational band organs that played twelve hours a day seven days a week for the entire season with little more than some simple routine servicing that was accomplished in house.

Dutchman said:
In the big picture what it costs to keep an organ playing isn't all that much, especially when compared to what the operational expenses of the high rides.

I respectfully disagree.

How often do carousel animals need to be restored like this?

Back in the late 1970's CP did a down to the wood on up every four years on the figures. A whole machine refurbishment (scenery) is a lot less frequent. That meant one machine per year and the cycle began over again. Now the Midway, Kiddeland machines and Cedar Downs got far more riders than the Frontier machine, so sometimes the rotational order was altered to accomadate. Otherwise spot repairs were done until the scheduled work was done.

Regardless of expense, the atmosphere enhancement alone must be worth it. The kids who ride it with the band organ will be more likely to bring thier kids for a little nostalgia.

When I was a kid we used to go to a pizza place called Pizza and Pipes that had a huge wurlitzer. I loved that place even though the pizza was bad. Chuck-E-Cheese kind of put an end to it.

The Main Midway Carousel looked amazing after its restore last season. I can't wait to see the Kiddie Kingdom one. Having little ones forces you to experience the park from a different perspective. Oh and the PointCast was great! Glad to see this continuing on!

~Rob