We have the technology. We can rebuild the lost wooden toboggan.

July 8, 2017 6:35 PM

How do you rebuild a childhood memory when no working models or plans for it exist? Piece by piece, and year by year. "Coaster enthusiasts thought the rebirth of the Flying Turns wooden toboggan coaster at Pennsylvania’s Knoebels amusement park might never happen. The family-run park in tiny Elysburg spent eight obsessive years building and rebuilding a faithful replica of the slow, squat and serpentine coaster that disappeared from the amusement park landscape more than four decades ago." Whee!

"As a young boy, Dick Knoebel had ridden the Flying Turns at Cleveland’s Euclid Beach Park. This was the largest and arguably the most successful of the first generation of Norman Bartlett’s rides. And Dick never forgot it." From the Design and Engineering department of The National Roller Coaster Museum's website, Scott Rutherford presents a detailed history of the project. Funworld Magazine has another take on the many technical challenges that the team overcame. The ride is also the subject of a documentary, Flying Turns: Resurrecting a Legend (trailer), which shows the work behind recreating a memory. You can see brief footage of the Flying Turns at Cleveland’s Euclid Beach Park (1929) here.

posted by MonkeyToes (8 comments total)

I have been to Knoebel's a few times and LOVED it. It is a beautiful, rustic, old-timey mom-and-pop woodland park. I've had many great experiences there - it was the only place I've ever seen swing-cages that you pump up and down, using only your body strength, trying to loop the loop. What an amazing post. I wish them well in this venture, and all ventures.
posted by Miko at 6:38 PM on July 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I don't get into rollercoasters (they don't scare me, just make me sick), but that looks fun as hell!
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:44 PM on July 8, 2017

I don't know if they do it anymore, but years ago Himself & I took a ride down part of the old bobsled run at Lake Placid - it was summertime, they used wheeled bobsleds (bobwheels?). Anyway - this coaster reminded me so much of that - it probably looked a little tame from the sidelines, but it was an utter rush to do, it feels like you're going incredibly fast.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 6:59 PM on July 8, 2017

AWESOME. I love all weird coasters, ever since I went to Magic Mountain in high school during the short existence of the Sarajevo Bobsled (which was broken that day, natch).
posted by rhizome at 7:15 PM on July 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Last night I took a walk after dark
To a swingin' place called Pallisades Euclid Beach Park
To have some fun and see what I could see . . .

But there's no surf in Cleveland Yew Ess AYYYYYYY!!

Or is | there?

No surf, no surf, we don't care . . .
No surf, no surf, we don't care . . .
No surf, no surf, we don't care . . .
No surf, no surf, we don't care . . .
No surf, no surf, we don't care . . .
posted by Herodios at 7:31 PM on July 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have some vivid memories of the rides at Euclid Beach as a very young child .. I love that a place like this still exists. I can't ride roller coasters because they give me awful headaches but I'd totally ride this. It looks so fun .. you can't see what's around each bend and it's wooden and seems wonderfully low-tech even though it probably isn't.

Sounds like we'll be taking a road trip this summer!
posted by Kangaroo at 7:44 PM on July 8, 2017

Heh. My main memory of Knoebels was riding a relatively short oval-shaped roller coaster that was like some sort of real life Baby Park, where it just kept going faster and faster and got more and more physically uncomfortable as you jolted up and down the bumps, going around it roughly two or three laps more than it felt like you rightly should.

Presumably the other, bigger-name coasters are more about thrills and less about withstanding physical discomfort.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:06 PM on July 8, 2017

Hmmm. Tempting to bust out Roller Coaster Tycoon- that coaster POV video is really fun, thanks!
posted by freethefeet at 2:05 AM on July 9, 2017