“You know,” I said to my niece, rapping my knuckles against a wooden support beam of Playland’s Dragon Coaster, “they built this thing 100 years ago.”
Her eyes widened. At 10 years old and already wise beyond her years, she smelled a joke at her expense by her constantly wise-cracking uncle. (I once told her and her sister that my cat had a vast collection of Pokémon cards, and that he almost certainly had the ultra-rare cards they coveted. At the time, their young minds didn’t question it and wanted to propose trades with Buddy, but now it comes up every time I tell them something absurd.)
“No it wasn’t!” my niece said as we stood in line to ride the venerable and historic wooden coaster.
My brother chimed in.
“It says it right there,” he said, pointing to a sign above the queue. “This roller coaster was built in 1929, the year the park opened.”
The Dragon Coaster is indeed almost a 100 years old, and to a 10-year-old a century is an incomprehensible amount of time. Mentioning the ride’s age almost backfired on us and we had to assure the kids the ride was safe.
Truth be told, the Dragon Coaster doesn’t look safe. It’s all aging wooden beams, rusting rivets and peeling paint, and the coaster rattles as it allows gravity to do the bulk of the work, with an initial 80-foot drop propelling the cars over 3,400 feet of shuddering track. But it passes inspection every year and it’s a relic of a time when things were built to different standards.
The iconic coaster’s history also extends to pop culture: Tom Hanks rode the Dragon Coaster in the 1988 film, Big, as did Mariah Carey in the video for her 1995 hit Fantasy. In 1987, it was featured prominently in the psychological thriller Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.
My brother and I rode the Dragon Coaster when we were kids, as did my mom and her friends in their youth. If you grew up in Westchester County, the Bronx or Manhattan, chances are that Playland was a big part of your summers.
I have vague memories of the park from early childhood, fond memories of screaming on rides like the Mind Scrambler in my teenage years, fresher memories of taking my little charges there when I was a summer camp counselor, and new memories formed annually as I bring my brother’s kids.
Taking the kids to the amusement park was one of the things I most looked forward to when I became an uncle, and they’re at the age now where they really love it. Visiting the park brought on waves of nostalgia (“Good Vibrations” by Marky Marky and the Funky Bunch blasted from the PA when we first arrived), the happiness of seeing the kids’ eyes light up with joy, and the realization that even though I get dizzy and my stomach doesn’t appreciate rapid changes in gravity and direction anymore, some rides are still a hell of a lot of fun as an adult.
We returned this year to find new rides, refurbished shops and lots of construction. Playland is in the middle of yet another refresh, this time to the tune of $150 million, leaving some rides and areas of the park dark to visitors.
Playland was built on 280 acres of prime waterfront real estate on the Long Island Sound and it’s very much a product of its time. Although it has seen its share of retrofits and refurbishment over almost century of existence, there’s no hiding the fact that it was constructed in the 1920s.
The structures — which include an entrance plaza, an ice casino and arcade, a pool, a beachfront boardwalk and a central tower — were built in an Art Deco style, with a consistent limestone, orange and emerald green color scheme.
As a kid my favorite ride was the Mind Scrambler, a blackout ride variation on the classic Scrambler housed within a dome. I remember waiting on line with my friends, hoping we’d get a good song for the ride, which was adorned with lots of neon and blacklights for maximum funkiness and disorientation.
Alas, messing around on a ride like that doesn’t bring good results. In a sequence of events that’s still difficult to believe, a seven-year-old girl was killed when she was thrown from the Mind Scrambler in 2004.
Three summers later, park management promoted a 21-year-old Playland employee who was working the night the girl was killed, making her the ride’s manager. She died that summer on the same ride. An investigation found she was kneeling backwards in her seat when she was thrown from the Scrambler just 20 seconds in.
The woman’s death prompted the park’s management to shut the ride down, a decision that was later made permanent despite the fact that “user error” was to blame.
A close second favorite was the Music Express, a straightforward moderate speed ride that was also known for pumping out loud pop hits. I have fond memories of riding the Music Express to everything from the Spin Doctors’ Two Princes and Technotronics’ Move This, to Blues Traveler’s Run Around and Snow’s ludicrous summer hit, Informer.
The Music Express was out of commission last summer, but this time it was back in action.
“We’ve gotta ride this!” I told my nieces. Just when I was thinking it was getting a little intense, it slowed down. That wasn’t so bad, I thought. Then it spun up again, faster than before, this time spinning backwards. I felt like I’d downed a six pack of beer in a half hour when I stumbled off the damn thing.
I wisely limited myself to less strenuous rides for the rest of the night, including the bumper cars, Ferris wheel and the Zombie Castle. At seven years old, my younger niece isn’t big enough yet to ride some of the attractions by herself, and that’s when the Funcle steps in. Thankfully she’d had her fill of stomach-churners too.
Above: A classic swing ride at rest, left, and mid-sequence as it twirls riders through the air. Credit: PITB
Playland became a National Historic Landmark in 1987, and is unique among amusement parks in the US — and possibly the world — in that it’s government-owned. That’s because the people who live in the area, a wealthy waterfront enclave, were worried about growing crowds, traffic and “unsavory” people. In the 1920s at the urging of the community, Westchester County purchased the land, folded several smaller waterfront operations into a single park, and began drafting plans for a larger destination in the Art Deco style popular at the time.
While Art Deco is typically associated with structures like the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, as well as the Chicago Board of Trade skyscraper, the jazz-age aesthetic is another feature that makes Playland so unique.
Remarkably, many of the attractions are as old as the park itself, including the aforementioned Dragon Coaster, The Whip, and the original carousel. Several of the older rides were designed and manufactured by engineer W.F. Mengels, the “Wizard of Coney Island” who was famous for designing many of that iconic park’s rides.
Taking the kids to Legoland in New York earlier this summer felt like a soulless experience, like paying to sit through a four-hour commercial for eponymous toys. Every ride was tied to a Lego intellectual property, every note of the piped-in music a corporate composition, every ride forcing you to exit via attached gift shops where $300 play sets beckoned to the children.
Even the “waterpark” had a corporate regimen to it: you’re required to book “appointments” ahead of time and get precisely 20 minutes to cool off under sprinklers on a Lego pirate-themed water playground, complete with Lego palm trees and Lego ships while the next group queues in the afternoon sun and watches, willing time to go faster.
Playland may not be as polished, but the experience feels more honest, and there’s no doubt the kids had more fun here. If I were a betting man, I’d wager Playland will still be there when they have kids of their own, while Legoland will be consigned to the dustbin of themed parks that don’t give you a reason to come back.
Pain In The Bud 