Old Roller Coaster Videos.

I have several old roller coaster videos. I have Worlds Greatest Roller Coaster Thrills, and America's Roller Coaster Thrills. But, the oldest I have, (Now broken darn!) America Screams with Vincent Price as the host. I sat there watching it, and can't believe that some of the coasters in the videos either no longer exist, or are pretty much crap.At any rate, in America Screams, there is a brief demonstration of the new Arrow Suspended coaster, which contained a partial working model, and the model featured a corkscrew type inversion. So, I am wondering, did Arrow plan to build an inverted suspended coaster before B&M came out with theirs? And, if so, why didn't they ever build one? In reality, the only decent arrow suspended coaster I have been on is Vortex at Canada's wonderland. Another Arrow mystery is the pipe-line.I do have a complaint about the videos. In America's Greatest roller coaster thrills, you can tell that the screaming on the coasters was added to the video, and nobody was actually on those rides. If you look around the parks, you quickly notice that there is nobody there. Take the footage of Raptor, look at the midway around raptor, not a person in sight. That, and the footage of Mean Streak has been used on other programs, and the same footage keeps getting spit out year after year.It would be nice to see a non altered coaster video. Does anyone know of any that has actual new footage, and is not filled with coaster footage from the 90's?

I went through another box of videos and found one that I actually recorded off the discovery channel called "Wild Rides." Once again, a lot of it was footage we have already seen. But, it included POV rides on Mean Streak, Raptor, The Beast, Desperado, Cyclone, and the Big Dipper in San Diego at Belmont park. But, the most interesting to me was the old Coney Island footage.One coaster that I did not catch the first time around, was a kind of tower coaster at Coney Island. It kind of reminded me of a carnival toboggan, only on this coaster there was a large single car, suspended on the outside of the track. I'm wondering how that coaster would have worked. There was also another suspended coaster with little airplane cars. So, that would suggest that Ron Toomer's suspended coaster was not the first. But the one that looked the weirdest is the coaster that moved. It has been shown before, but how it worked wold be interesting to find out.If you don't know what I'm talking about, the coaster looks like a bowl of noodles, and the whole structure rocks back and forth sort of like a trabant, while the trains move along inside the ride.There was also a crazy platform ride, where the seats spun. Kind of reminded me of an antique version of a crazy dance. There sure were some crazy rides at Coney Island. I wish I could have been there to actually see it.

Yeah, Coney Island had some crazy stuff back in earlier times. I agree...it would really have been something to see...of course, I've never been there at ALL, so I would just like to go in general.

(Timber-Rider, If I may I would like to give you a suggestion. Try to use paragraphs in your posts or at least break up the big post into a few smaller ones. It would make it easier for others to read and would probably result in more replies and hopefully more insight/discussion.)

I remember those old VHS tapes you could order though coaster publications way back! Fun times. I wore many of those tapes out!

Here is a great youtube channel with plenty of great old video footage:

https://www.youtube.com/user/shanehuish/videos?view=0

Thank god for youtube - so many hours of fun.

There is an old movie that I just love, featuring Coney Island of the 1950s, called Little Fugitive. I just thought that I would give that movie a plug again, because it depicts such a wonderful era of history. Half the movie is just this little kid silently walking around experiencing the park with very little money. Times were so different back then, simpler, less stressful, and friendlier.

Their was a remake of the movie made, which is almost nothing like the original. It's okay, I suppose, but doesn't have the awesome historical perspective the first one does. You can see both films on Netflix Instant.

I've seen the small clip of the coaster that travels throughout a tilting bowl before. That ride interests me as well as other classic lost attractions. I'd absolutely love to go back in time and experience these parks they way they were.

I've had a vhs of "America's Greatest Coaster Thrills" since I was a little kid, circa 1994 or 1995. The hosts were weird, but it had good music in some places. A good amount of the coasters they talk about are gone now too, like Drachen Fire and Big Bad Wolf so it's nice to get a chance to experience what those rides might have been like. The video also came with a pair of those blue and red 3-d glasses and you were instructed to put them on when the pov recordings started....but I don't think they ever worked lol.

GayCoasterGuy said:

Here is a great youtube channel with plenty of great old video footage:

https://www.youtube.com/user/shanehuish/videos?view=0

I also MUST recommend swampfoxer for the old park/coaster videos...some nearly-impossible to find footage on his channel (swampfoxer, you still here?)....

Hey gaycoasterguy. I do type my comments in a paragraph, but, I used the mobile view when I comment, and I think it may be re-formatting when it goes to the site. I try to post using the desktop view, but the text box never loads. Using the mobile view certainly loads faster. That's why I use it.And, for bjames. My "America's Greatest Roller Coaster Thrills" is also in 3D. They sucker you in, thinking the whole thing is in 3D, but only the coaster logos are in 3D, the ride footage is not. I also have "World's Greastest Roller Coaster Thrills." In 3D, and it is the same. Kind of disappointing. I also had one with some weird ice cream guy and a little kid, where the kid was supposedly dreaming about riding the coasters because he was too little to ride. That one got destroyed in my vcr years ago. This was back when Magic Mountain had the first stand up B&M stand up coaster called Shock Wave, which was built the year before Iron Wolf at Great America. Before Six Flags owned either park.
This was written in paragraphs, and re-organised in mobile view.

^Gotcha.

I do still have that VHS in a box somewhere with the 2(?) pair of 3D glasses it came with. Wasn't it "part 3 in 3D" like Friday the 13th (and Jaws!)?

^^Yes, Gator, swampfoxer has some great old videos. I've spent many hours watching all that stuff over and over; the original Mr. Twister is the only shot I've ever seen of that ride in it's original form.

Timber-Rider said:

I also had one with some weird ice cream guy and a little kid, where the kid was supposedly dreaming about riding the coasters because he was too little to ride. That one got destroyed in my vcr years ago.

I'm pretty sure I have that one! lol

I also had a VHS simply entitled "Cyclone," about the Coney Island Cyclone. I remember being so disappointed, but laughing so hard at that video with my Dad. We were expecting some rich history about the ride and a story to be told. However, the video consisted of a dozen or so loops of Cyclone POV footage with different "special" effects. For example, 1 loop was as is, the next loop the colors were inverted, the next loop they put a red tint, the next loop a blue tint, then a mirrored loop, then slow motion, then fast motion, backwards, etc.

We were in disbelief that there was nothing more to it after quite some hype on the box. But, that video kept on giving...every time my Dad and I thought they wouldn't possibly do another loop of POV footage, it started right back up with a new terrible effect...right to the scroll of credits (which should have consisted of 1 person with a special thanks to some 80's video editing software, but apparently plenty of people were proud of the work and needed to be recognized).

There's no such thing as 80's video editing software. We used tape back then.

You didn't have a Video Toaster!?

It didn't come out until 1990, and it still required tape machines. We had one in college.

You know the Video Toaster is still around? Only now they call it a "TriCaster" and it is able to do streaming and digital recording...

Kids these days...it used to be that editing video was an exercise in creative problem solving, pushing the machines well past their limits. Doing multi-layer video effects took significant amounts of effort, technology and coordination. Now you just add another track to the timeline and you are finished.

I don't miss generational loss, hours spent winding tape, and having to deal with control track issues. But I like to think I understood the process better for having to deal with all that stuff.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

It's a similar argument to digital photography. One could argue that using film forced you to understand and respect exposure theory, but digital gets you feedback so quickly that you can learn that way. Same with tape against digital. The problem with both cases is that you have to choose to learn something from the instant feedback.

I found the perfect site for this thread:

http://rollercoastermedialibrary.com/Roller_Coaster_Media_Library_VHSs_A.html

I had 3 of those: Cyclone, Roller Coaster Thrills, and America's Greatest Roller Coaster Thrills in 3D.

Looking at Cyclone, it was indeed from 1986, so I guess I need to appreciate those blazing effects for the time and the effort put into them. :-) I think I received that video as a gift about 10 years after it was released, so it was already quite outdated at the time.