Jump to content
  TPR Home | Parks | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram 

Olsor's Amusement Shoebox


Recommended Posts

Following the lead of Shane's Amusement Attic and Scott's Amusement Closet, I bring you the much less impressive Olsor's Amusement Shoebox.

 

To be more precise, it's a banker's box, but that doesn't have the same ring to it. Anyway, I've been gradually going through all my old videotapes and transferring them to DVD. Back in the late '80s and early '90s, when I was just getting interested in coasters, I started taping absolutely anything about coasters that was aired on TV. This was before the days of endless Discovery Channel and Travel Channel shows entirely devoted to coasters, so even getting a two-minute segment on tape was something to be treasured.

 

I'll be posting more clips as I get them transferred. I apologize in advance for the horrible quality of the video. A lot of my videotapes are old enough to vote.

 

Local coverage of Iron Wolf's debut in April of 1990.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 71
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Next up is a segment on roller coasters from Prime Time Live in 1990. Lots of good stuff in this one: Magnum with insanely long lines, the big four at Kings Island, Excalibur at Valleyfair, Hercules, Flashback at SFOT, Viper at SFMM, GASM at SFGAdv, a brief shot of Z-Force at SFOG, and Ron Toomer interview goodness. Plus, you see the obligatory "history of roller coasters" portion of the segment, which became a staple of any of these early '90s segments on coasters.

 

Prime Time Live segment on roller coasters

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Keeping the train rolling with a 1990 segment from the old tabloid show Hard Copy. This one features the usual suspects (Magnum, Beast, Viper), along with some mullets, as well as the first of many cameos from the human quote machine, Paul Ruben.

 

Bonus: ACE convention at Darien Lake, where Predator is breathlessly described as "wonderful." Yes... times have changed.

 

Hard Copy segment from 1990

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm glad everyone's enjoying the videos! Seriously, with the huge size of the TPR community, we must have a veritable museum of coaster history amongst our ranks. It's great to see all this stuff online.

 

Today's clip is from an old Nickelodeon game show called Wild & Crazy Kids. In this challenge, teams of kids compete to see who can keep the most water in their cups after riding Colossus at SFMM. There's excellent stock footage of pre-MCBR Colossus mixed in with newer footage of the kids.

 

Bonus: there's a very short snippet of a travel show segment on Knott's Berry Farm at the end of the video. There's a brief reverse POV of Montezooma's Revenge.

 

Be on the lookout for: 1) flat-top haircuts, 2) annoying kids sitting too close to the microphone, 3) the girl who looks like she's going to hurl halfway through the ride.

 

Colossus on Wild & Crazy Kids

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today, appropriately enough, the shoebox gives us a look back at the debut of a ride that's already been turned into toothpicks. Here we see Wil Shriner yuk it up to the delight of the many housewives in attendance at some lame daytime talk show hosted by Gary Collins. From 1991.

 

I apologize for the poor quality. Of the video and the ride.

 

Psyclone on some lame daytime talk show from 1991:

(and I promise it's not a RickRoll)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^This is great stuff! I have somewhere (maybe, still) buried deep on a dusty un-marked (hmmm...) VHS, a group of kids given fries, burgers and shakes to eat on the REVOLUTION!! Of course, before the OTSRs...

 

One treasure I'd love to dig out sometime is a tv video of 3 kids (yes, 3 in a seat) on a 4-bencher red PTC car riding the Texas Cyclone. I'm lazy, waiting for it to show up on youtube.

 

Even if I did find it, I have no way (yet) of converting it or whatever you do to get em on here...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^ Believe it or not, they're B&Ms! Psyclone ran with three trains built by Bolliger & Mabillard---the only wooden coaster trains ever built by them.

 

Psyclone is gone, but the trains are still at the park and used on Colossus when it runs backwards during Fright Fest in October.

 

Eric

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And why were they on the far side of Psyclone? I noticed that just before they got on.

 

But I've always said, Psyclone was actually nice during its first couple of seasons. I used to get some decent airtime on it.

 

Eric

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's tabloid Thursday! (Shut up... I realize Tuesday would've worked better). First up, we have a segment on roller coaster safety from Entertainment Tonight (WTF?) from 1991, shortly after "Black Sunday" at Kings Island. Lots of good stuff in this one. Be on the lookout for a hilarious Cedar Point training video, a maintenance worker named Udo, and the awesomeness that is John Tesh.

 

Entertainment Tonight segment on roller coasters

 

And because you're special, here's another segment from 1991. This one is from Inside Edition. Paul Ruben brings his "A" material, and we get to see an awkwardly coiffed, pre-Fox News Bill O'Reilly. Yes... he hosted Inside Edition before he became a famous blowhard.

 

Inside Edition segment on roller coasters

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again, Great Stuff to be posting here. I love seeing all this stuff.

 

While on the subject of safety, I have a couple of videos here to share that report on some of the accidents...

 

Rail Blazer

 

Enterprise

 

Great Air Racer

 

Lightnin' Loops

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Awesome stuff, Shane! I'd always hoped to see some coverage on the RailBlazer accident. I had thought that that accident happened on the ride's media day.

 

Secondly, Bill Kurtis for the win. This will not be his last appearance in this thread, by the way.

 

All my prior knowledge of the Lightnin' Loops accident had come from that 1987 Popular Mechanics article on ride safety. It was strange to see how people at the time had so much difficulty articulating what had happened.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And now, for your weekend enjoyment, a lengthy, two-part segment on coasters from National Geographic Explorer from 1990. This one devotes a large amount of time to the first tests of the Arrow pipeline prototype.

 

Be on the lookout for horrible audio editing, Sam Kinison (WTF?), and Mr. Wirebender himself, Ron Toomer.

 

National Geographic Explorer segment on roller coasters, Part 1

 

Part 2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use https://themeparkreview.com/forum/topic/116-terms-of-service-please-read/