April 7, 2015
If you are looking for parts for an old car, you can look at Auto Zone, NAPA or a lot of specialty dealers online. This is true for a lot of machines of various ages. But, what if you need parts for a carousel? You cannot exactly check out Target’s automotive section in hopes that you will come across a new center bearing and sweeps.
This was the crux of the issue that our Operations Team faced when refurbishing the Forest Park Carousel this winter. They found out last year that the carousel, which dates from 1890 (frame) and 1903 (horses), had several parts that needed updating. But, these parts were hand-cast over a century ago and had to be custom-created for the carousel. They called Todd Goings of Carousels and Carvings, a carousel refurbishment company from Ohio, and worked with him to have the specialty parts made.
One difficulty in repairing a carousel is that the machine is a living, breathing thing. You remember that children’s song, “The leg bone’s connected to the ankle bone,” etc? A carousel is a lot like that. EVERYTHING interconnected and hung off of the center pole. This means that when David, Daeshawn and our team needed to get to pieces at the center of the ride, everything had to come off.
Therefore, our team was charged with taking apart the entire Forest Park Carousel, carefully storing and securing the horses, each a piece of invaluable artwork by themselves, and painstakingly tearing down the ride structure. Once the ride was apart our team got at the guts of the carousel. Parts like the top bearing, cranks, sweeps, and commutator were repaired or replaced in order to give the ride proper TLC. It was one of the single-largest investments that the Forest Park Carousel has seen since it was moved to Queens in 1973, and it has never run better. You can see more of the refurbishment in Ed Wendell’s video, embedded below.
David Galst, the head of the Ride Entertainment Operations Division, said, “By performing this major rehabilitation, this timeless piece of magical art and master craftsmanship should be able to spin for decades to come.” The impressive thing is that our team not only refurbished the carousel this winter, they were also simultaneously working to get all of our other parks and attractions ready to open.
We could not be prouder because this refurbishment really symbolizes where the Ride Entertainment Operations Division has come in only three years. In the spring of 2012 we were readying the Forest Park Carousel to open for the first time in years and the Flushing Meadow’s Carousel to spin once more. In just a few years we have created an amusement park around the Flushing Meadows Carousel, the Forest Park Carousel has received national recognition and become a New York City Historic Landmark, we opened a carousel in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, begun operating the Greenway Carousel in Boston, and opened the first amusement park that Staten Island has seen in decades. All-in-all our operations team is filled with people who have become stars and I certainly expect great things of them in the coming years.
-AFS