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Hurricane Sandy vs. Roller Coasters


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I bet 99% of them have never ridden an SLC. If they had, they would totally be agreeing with that statement. SLC's do look like they'd be great rides, but they really are extremely painful. Also, why do they bring up Kingda Ka? Do they really think that Americans think it's the greatest ride ever?

 

I like how some people treat coasters like they are an endangered animal. As if the coasters in New Jersey just became extinct and can never be rebuilt. Well, if it was such an incredible coaster they will build it exactly the same, but my guess is that they will build something better. It's just a bunch of steel thrown together. There's no steel shortage I'm aware of. I could understand people being bummed that one of their favorite rides was gone, but this ride looked terrible.

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I'm going to burn for this, but...

 

Does anyone have one-hundred matching T-shirts and a giant flag?

 

In all seriousness, I really want to see the cool things that these parks can come up with now that they have a reason to grow again.

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In all seriousness, I really want to see the cool things that these parks can come up with now that they have a reason to grow again.

 

Yes! They have an opportunity to replace their crappy coaster with a good one!

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In other news...

 

http://atlanticcityblog.caesars.com/hurricane-sandy-atlantic-city-steel-pier-update/#.UJhh7k84tYg

 

 

As we all work together in the beginning stages of rebuilding our city, we have some good news to report in regards to one of your (and our) favorite Atlantic City boardwalk attractions. And that good news is that Sandy was no match for the Steel Pier. All of your beloved summertime rides have remained unscathed.

 

“This Pier that we’re on was originally built for a 20-story hotel and it’s not built like any other pier in the country. This thing can withstand just about anything and it was not phased by the storm surge. It’s amazing. We got waves splashed, but waves never came over the Pier because of the way that it’s elevated. It’s built for a very severe storm surge. It’s just solid as a rock and we had no damage,” said Anthony Catanoso, Steel Pier President.

 

So for all of the naysayers out there who are quick to say Atlantic City is now gone forever, this is simply not the case. Your childhood memories of this place will not alter during your next visit to 1000 Boardwalk. All of your old favorites are here to stay and as with any case in life, you’ll also discover some new fun and memories with every trip.

 

“We’re moving full steam ahead right now with eight new rides this year. We’re bringing in four or five new nationally recognized tenants to the front building. We’re gonna continue with our improvements. We’re moving full steam ahead. We’re very excited for the upcoming season,” said Catanoso.

 

The Steel Pier even plans to have offers available on their website for the upcoming Christmas season, so keep checking back there.

 

We hope this news brightens your day a little bit. It did ours. Steel Pier has been entertaining you for 114 years. Here’s to another 114. Nice try, Sandy.

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A couple of stories out of Jenkinson's which seems to have fared well. One story details how the some of the owners rode out the storm in the parks office. One thing I learned from the article is that this family bought Casino Pier in 2002.

 

Foxnews

 

My 17-year-old cousin, Vincent Storino, was one of the 11 people who were trapped at Jenkinson’s Boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. during the worst of superstorm Sandy.

 

Vincent, a junior at Point Pleasant Beach High School and volunteer fireman, waited out the storm with his father (my uncle) and Chris Stewart, the human resources director of our family-run amusement park Jenkinson’s. Vincent said that he arrived at the boardwalk at 4:30 a.m. on Monday.

 

“I wanted to help my dad, and I spend so much time at the boardwalk that I had to try to protect it,” Vincent said.

 

First you have to try get an idea of the layout. The main parking lot for the amusement park section of Jenkinson’s has a ramp that leads to the boardwalk. If you face the ocean, to the left is a building with an arcade, the offices, and a roof-top mini golf course. To the right sits the carousel and the rest of the rides. Keep walking straight and you will hit the main drag of the boardwalk and the beach. Below the arcade is another ramp that goes down to the basement, which home base for the maintenance crew.

 

Around 6 p.m. that night, they went down to the basement of the main office building to man the backup gas-powered pumps, which failed because they were filled with sand. The power had already gone out, so this is all happening in the dark.

“High tide was at about 8 p.m., and that’s when the water really started rushing in,” Vincent said.

 

Vincent described a hole in the basement where the water was rushing in. They started using large garbage cans on hand trucks to try to keep up with the water. They would push the heavy cans, which filled in about a minute, up the ramp to ground level, dump over the sandbags stacked three-high surrounding the ramp, and then repeat. After about 45 minutes, Vincent (who is about 5’3) said the water had reached his knees, and they were not keeping up.

 

“We had already determined that, if the sandbags were breeched, we would go up to the office,” Vincent explained.

 

The flooding was steadily getting worse, so they decided at about 9 p.m. to head up the stairs in the back to the office on the second floor.

 

However, they took a detour out onto the boardwalk instead of heading to the safety of the office.

 

“We shouldn’t have gone out there,” Vincent admits. But they did. And at this point the water was up to the boardwalk. They saw a wave come and buckled the boards in front of them. Thankfully, this was enough to drive them to get back to the office.

 

Another one of my uncles tried to rescue them at one point with a truck from the fire station, but the streets were already too flooded for him to get through.

 

Vincent says actually slept—I know I wouldn’t have been able to. All but one of the windows in the office were hurricane-proof, and they had boarded up the one that was not. They slept on two couches and an air mattress.

 

“I wasn’t terrified, but I was nervous about something hitting the windows we sleepy by,” he said. “It felt like we were cut off from people because our building was surrounded by water.”

 

The next morning, it had stopped raining and they ventured onto the boardwalk again. They saw that the end of Martell’s pier had broken off and was now lying behind Risden’s beach house, some 1,500 feet away. Vincent said that they knew it was a piece of Martell’s because the trunk of a couple of the Tiki Bar’s famous neon orange palm trees were still attached.

 

Foxnews

Like so many, the Jersey Shore defined my childhood, and it still impacts my life every single day. But after superstorm Sandy, the future of life there has hit home—literally.

 

My family owns two amusement parks on the Jersey Shore. My grandfather and his brother, my great uncle, have run Jenkinson’s Boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach for almost three decades, although the next generation, including my father, has taken over the day-to-day operations. My family bought Casino Pier in Seaside Heights back in 2002, years before show “Jersey Shore” made the town famous.

 

The iconic image of the roller coaster in the Atlantic Ocean: that’s Casino Pier –at least it was until Sandy.

 

Luckily only the park was destroyed. My family made it through.

 

I wasn’t with them that day. I waited out the storm in Brooklyn, N.Y. where I live, and I was stuck in my virtually unaffected section of Williamsburg as I watched image after image come in of both boardwalks in ruins. I cannot stress enough how lucky I am that my family and friends are all safe and did not suffer incredible loss of personal property. Amusement piers and boardwalks can be repaired.

 

Parts of Jenkinson’s have been in the family since the late ‘70s (they kept the name of the previous owners), and the majority of my immediate family works there. Over the years, I have done everything from file papers in the office to scoop ice cream. My dad sometimes refers to himself as the “chief financial officer” because he handles many of the financial aspects of running two small amusement parks, but the roles in a family business aren’t as clear-cut as those in a major corporation.

 

Governor Chris Christie has said he was committed to rebuilding the Jersey Shore and to get the state back on its feet.

 

Ken Taylor, my father, said that there was never a question that they would rebuild.

 

“This isn't the first hurricane to ever hit the Jersey Shore,” he said. “Everyone before us rebuilt. It's bigger than just one family business.

 

The boardwalks have provided people with entertainment for generations. It’s important to rebuild for future generations.”

 

Every Easter weekend, Jenkinson’s has a two-for-one sale on the ticket books for the ride park. My dad said that the goal is to get open by Easter weekend (March 29), and be fully operating by Memorial Day, just like every other year.

 

But Casino Pier is another story. My dad said that they can’t put on timeline on its reopening until they can actually go into Seaside Heights and assess the damage,

 

“I can't say we are going to rebuild it exactly as it was, but there are definitely plans to rebuild,” he said.

 

Toby Wolf , the spokesperson for Jenkinson’s who's not a relative, but someone our family has known for years, told me that it is way too early to tell the total cost of the damage in Point Pleasant Beach.

 

She said that the reconstruction of Jenkinson’s is going to be a lot easier than that of Seaside Heights’ Casino Pier. That’s not to say that it is going to be easy, she explained, but there is easily millions of dollars worth of damage to Seaside.

 

My mom’s youngest brother runs Casino Pier, and, as of Monday morning, he has only been able to make it there twice since Sandy hit.

 

Restore the shore

 

Where, and how, do you even start to rebuild? By the time I made it from New York to Point Pleasant, it was Saturday morning. Sand was piled high like mounds of snow in a parking lot. Sections of the boardwalk were pushed off of their foundations. A mini golf course and snack stand known as Putt Putt were gone. Part of Stillwalk Manor, Casino Pier’s haunted house that was washed way during the storm, had crashed into the metal door of an arcade building some nine miles away. Sections of the pier of Martell’s Tiki Bar had broken off and smashed into different parts of the boardwalk.

 

Still, my mom kept telling me how much better things looked. Seasonal employees, who really don't have to be there, have been in Point Pleasant Beach picking up the pieces since it was safe for them to make it to the boardwalk. Arcade managers were wearing with a facemasks to cleaning out the storage from one of the restaurants. Ruined inventory has been sorted and carted away, sand has been swept away, and the 1,800 animals in Jenkinson’s Aquarium are now swimming, swinging and waddling around safely.

 

Jenkinson’s has private insurance to deal with, and absolutely everything is going to have to be inspected. The town of Point Pleasant Beach is responsible for fixing the main pedestrian parts of the physical boardwalk. Safety precautions had been taken in preparation, but Mother Nature proved a lot stronger than sandbags and metal barriers.

 

Luckily, the majority of the amusement park rides at Jenkinson’s had already been put in storage after the end of the season, and almost all of the remaining ones were moved inside before the storm.

 

Watching NBC’s benefit concert on TV from my aunt’s house in Point Pleasant Beach which, believe it or not, had power, was surreal. They showed sandbags being placed on the roof of Little Macs, a pizza place at Jenkinson’s where I have eaten more times than I can count.

 

My aunt, who lives in Point Pleasant Beach, saw people she knows be interviewed about the destruction of the town and their homes. One summer during college, I interned at “The Ocean Star,” a weekly newspaper that covers five Jersey Shore towns that saw some of Sandy’s worst: Point Pleasant, Point Pleasant Beach, Bay Head, Lavallette and Mantoloking. Many of the mansions, bungalows and beach houses on the barrier islands are gone.

 

Something that wasn’t washed away is hope. As cheesy as it sounds, hope is what is going to get us through this. The Jersey Shore I know and love will bounce back.

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New photos coming out of keansburg amusment park shows park in ruins.

 

Keansburg Amusement Park sustained much damage but is not in "ruins". The owner originally said he would be open for next season in 5 months.

April 8th, 2013 opening date confirmed by owners.

Edited by larrygator
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I didn't see this posted anywhere but Luna Park is offering a 4 hour ride wristband to use next season (2013) in exchange for helping with clean up in Coney Island this weekend.

 

Help Coney Island Recover from Hurricane Sandy

 

GIVE 4 hours of your time and GET 4 hours of free rides!

 

Volunteer to help us clean-up Coney Island, and we’ll reward you with an unlimited ride, four-hour wristband to Luna Park in 2013.

 

 

Hurricane Sandy hit Coney Island very hard. Flood waters reached 6 feet, and many residents are still without power and water. Coney Island needs YOUR support to get back on its feet! This weekend, supporters of Coney Island are gathering on the boardwalk and we would appreciate YOU joining the effort.

 

So, if you’ve ever screamed on the Cyclone Roller Coaster, laughed on The Tickler or enjoyed the view from Boardwalk Flight, now is your time to give back to Coney Island. Staff from Luna Park, Scream Zone and the Cyclone Roller Coaster will join you as we give back to a community that has weathered a devastating hurricane and will weather a Nor’easter this week. Volunteers will help clear the boardwalk and streets of sand and debris. Please bring a shovel or broom, garbage bags and work gloves.

 

 

Who: You and your friends

What: Coney Island Clean-Up

Where: Check in at Luna Park – Surf Ave. & W.10th St, across from the Cyclone

When: Sat and Sun, Nov 10th and 11th starting at 9AM – 5PM

Why: Doing good feels good

 

 

RSVP required - social@caiparks.com

 

THANK YOU!

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/295623187215580

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I didn't see this posted anywhere but Luna Park is offering a 4 hour ride wristband to use next season (2013) in exchange for helping with clean up in Coney Island this weekend.

 

Help Coney Island Recover from Hurricane Sandy

 

GIVE 4 hours of your time and GET 4 hours of free rides!

 

Volunteer to help us clean-up Coney Island, and we’ll reward you with an unlimited ride, four-hour wristband to Luna Park in 2013.

 

 

Hurricane Sandy hit Coney Island very hard. Flood waters reached 6 feet, and many residents are still without power and water. Coney Island needs YOUR support to get back on its feet! This weekend, supporters of Coney Island are gathering on the boardwalk and we would appreciate YOU joining the effort.

 

So, if you’ve ever screamed on the Cyclone Roller Coaster, laughed on The Tickler or enjoyed the view from Boardwalk Flight, now is your time to give back to Coney Island. Staff from Luna Park, Scream Zone and the Cyclone Roller Coaster will join you as we give back to a community that has weathered a devastating hurricane and will weather a Nor’easter this week. Volunteers will help clear the boardwalk and streets of sand and debris. Please bring a shovel or broom, garbage bags and work gloves.

 

 

Who: You and your friends

What: Coney Island Clean-Up

Where: Check in at Luna Park – Surf Ave. & W.10th St, across from the Cyclone

When: Sat and Sun, Nov 10th and 11th starting at 9AM – 5PM

Why: Doing good feels good

 

RSVP required - social@caiparks.com

 

THANK YOU!

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/295623187215580

 

Thanks for posting this. I'll be there tomorrow helping out, after doing some local help on Staten Island today. The volunteers are needed to clean up the neighborhood, not the parks. The owners of Luna Park are enticing volunteers with the amusement park wristband for helping out.

 

Luna Park, Scream Zone and The Cyclone have already been cleared by park employees. In fact, The Cyclone just ran a test cycle today.

Edited by larrygator
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^From a park standpoint it sounds good.

 

However, lest we forget many in the neighborhood are still without power, houses are damaged and many stores are not close to re-openeding. I'll try to take some photos tomorrow but my focus will be on getting some work done.

 

I took some pictures today of damaged property and houses on Staten Island including plots of land where houses used to stand. The amount of destroyed property that is being hauled away as garbage is enormous. I'm hesitant to even post the pictures as I felt like I was prying into people's lives. In some cases I was, when houses had big holes in their sides.

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Based on the pictures it doesnt look like the pier itself held up too well. Out of curiosity, does anyone know if it was built up to code? I know that they re-structured the entire pier when they built the Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier, and i've visited the pier. If Galveston gets another hurricane it's not going anywhere. There is steel and concrete everywhere. Its pretty solid. But the Casino and Funtown Piers looked to be made of wood. Was this up to code, especially being on the coast? They may have not had a hurricane in a good while but they had to have known they were fair game for a disaster like this eventually.

 

Another question, where the piers owned by the same person/company? I had no clue they were literally right next to eachother until I saw the piers on Google Earth.

 

 

Yes, the piers were built and were maintained up to code. Unless regulations change, rebuilding with wood should be up to code. I'm sure the owners will consider concrete and steel pilings when rebuilding.

 

The last actual hurricane to cause significant damage to the Jersey Shore was in September 1944. But the benchmarch for devastation prior to Sandy was the "Ash Wednesday" nor'easter in March 1962. No doubt the owners, as well as most people who live at the Jersey Shore, knew it was just a matter of time before another disaster occurred.

 

Casino Pier and Funtown are owned by separate entities. They're not literally right next to each other, but rather about 1/2 mile apart from each other.

 

Jim

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I just saw this thread - woot for stopping by this site for the first time in like three years over the last few days - and I wanted to glance at the pics in this thread since the coaster seems to have become the poster child for the storm, and in a lot of ways encapsulates the damage in a way that other pics or just hearing the death tole doesn't. It's surreal.

 

I'll also toss in this two cents about the rebuilding process / insurance stuff - The issue that the piers may have in rebuilding is that insurance is usually not for the full cost to rebuild, it's usually for something like the depreciated value. That was a big part of Six Flags not rebuilding SFNO after the storm - they got the 'current value' of a lot of the assets, not the 'cost to rebuild' back. And, since the park wasn't doing so hot, it made more sense for them to take the lease lawsuit hit and send off the parts they could then it was to invest more money in rebuilding.

 

I expect the same thing will happen here, but without the lawsuits thanks to the land lease. The piers that were doing great business and were run right will be back up and running surprisingly quickly, and the ones that weren't doing so hot will have the owners take the money and do something else with it instead. On a positive note, that picture of the coaster in the water I think will drive a TON of media attention to these piers if they re-open. They replace that Star Jet with the Zyklon from Fun Spot in Indiana and I'm sure they could get national coverage for the "new roller coaster opening for the one that fell in the ocean."

 

If they are smart, just like the rest of the businesses and stuff like that, it's a temporary set back that will hopefully give them a great basis to build something even better for the future. I am much more saddened by the loss of life then the loss of any amusement ride.

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Deno's posted a link to an article in the NY Daily News on their FaceBook. Spook-A-Rama is lost and will have to be rebuilt with all new props, according to the park.

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/horror-show-magical-site-tide-article-1.1207467?pgno=1

 

Sandy even messed with my childhood.

 

Walking through the wounded streets of Coney Island a couple of weeks after the hurricane was to re-edit my highlight reel of memory. The way the tornado turned Dorothy’s Kansas into Oz, Sandy distorted the Coney Island of my mind into a living horror.

 

Gazing around at the last stop on the subway by the sea, something wasn’t just wrong with the picture. The picture was of a different place, as if Sandy had literally washed pieces of my youth into the sea.

 

The hurdy-gurdy music of the arcades was replaced by the deafening cacophony of banging sledgehammers, scraping shovels and whining power tools as demolition crews fed the insatiable crunching hunger of sanitation trucks.

 

Meandering along Surf Ave., the Coney air smelled of moldy plaster, dirty cellars and dried sewage instead of the hypnotic aroma of boiling corn, frying onions and that alluring Coney Island scent of sizzling Nathan’s hot dogs that has wafted through the decades on the salty sea air since 1916.

 

At the corner of Stillwell Ave., my feet just stopped moving when I saw that Nathan’s was shuttered.

HAMILL25N_1_WEB

Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

Sandy cooked Nathan’s goose. The famous eatery needs extensive repairs to reopen.

 

All the sliding doors of this pacemaker of the Poor Man’s Paradise that has fed everyone from Presidents to sports legends to working stiffs to the housing projects’ poor were closed and locked.

 

“We gotta replace all the electric and plumbing and sewer lines,” a worker inside explained. “Big, big job.”

 

And so in the wake of infamous Sandy, Nathan’s Famous sat there on Surf Ave. like a yellow-and-green crypt, sealed for the first time in my Brooklyn memory. Oh, I’m sure it has closed many times over the decades, but for me Nathan’s was always open, a symbol of the city that never sleeps. Always open for business in the Coney mornings when we would arrive early with blankets and coolers to get a good spot on the hot sand on July 4.

 

It was still serving Brooklyn’s hungry when we made the dash for the subway home — long after the sun went down and the last firework fizzled. Open when the Cyclone froze on the rails for the season and the Wonder Wheel stood still like time itself and the carnies migrated south with the ducks for winter.

 

Nathan’s was open all night in my beery college years when we would rumble down from the Park Slope saloons after last call and order gangs of hot dogs, fries and raw clams at 4:30 a.m. when our stomachs were still made from the secret alloy steel of youth.

 

Now seeing it shuttered in the middle of Sandy-ravaged Surf Ave. was like a Londoner seeing the hands of Big Ben frozen in time. Like seeing the leaning Tower of Pisa topple, the bulls of Pamplona go lame. Like seeing our 24-hour subways stop and our blinding Manhattan skyline go dark.

 

Wait. Sandy made those last two things happen, too.

 

And so my heart continued to sink as I passed the Coney Island Museum, where Dick Zigun lost his gift shop, restrooms, his entire bar area and part of the stage where the freak show performs.

 

It sank lowest when I drifted into Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, where forlorn owner Dennis Vourderis showed me the 5-foot floodwater mark Sandy had left in his magical machine shop where he and his brother Steve and nephew DJ service all the heart-stopping summer rides.

HAMILL25N_6_WEB

Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

Dennis Vourderis of Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park stands inside the trashed Spook-A-Rama attraction.

 

“All our specialized tools were ruined,” he says. “Spare parts — irreplaceable. We’ve been power-washing with fresh water everything that was contaminated with the corrosive saltwater that came down from the Coney Island creek, not up from the ocean.”

 

Then he led me like a funeral director into Brooklyn’s heart of darkness, into the demolished Spook-A-Rama that has scared kids like me spitless since it opened in 1955.

 

“In all the years my father and my brother Steve and I ran Deno’s, we never had a drop of water in Spook-A-Rama,” says Vourderis. “Or in the machine shop. We didn’t have flood insurance. Never needed it. Now look: Sandy even dragged Spook-A-Rama to hell.”

HAMILL25N_8_WEB

Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

Storm damage inside Coney Island's Spook-A-Rama

 

This was the very first spook house I ever rode through, a tunnel of unexpected horrors — monsters leaping from doorways, zombies springing from crypts, ax murderers attacking from the shadows — that prepared me at age 5 for real life in New York City.

 

Vourderis picked up a once-terrifying Devil, now spongy and salt-bloated, all its mechanics short-circuited, and said, “Sandy even drowned the Devil himself. The cylinder that controls its movements is shot. Same with this werewolf. Even the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t safe from Sandy.”

 

A sinister-looking, piano-playing puppet salvaged from defunct Rockaway Playland, a true carnival antique, was now a waterlogged hunk of junk.

 

“All these creatures had a real life,” Vourderis said. “They lived inside everybody that ever screamed and shrieked at them as they rode through Spook-A-Rama as a kid or a teenager. Now they’re dead. Even the undead zombies are really dead. Sandy killed them all.”

 

Outside the flapping exit doors, a fortune-telling machine housing a mystical character named Zoltar is flooded, the soothsayer’s severed head now resting near his hands.

 

“Even old Zoltar didn’t predict this one coming,” says Vourderis, fighting for humor amid the sadness.

 

Walking through ruined Spook-A-Rama was like attending a wake for childhood memories that had been drowned and sucked out to sea.

 

“It’s not just the money,” Vourderis said. “We took a good hit. But we’ll rebuild a new spook house, state-of-the-art, all computerized. It’ll be great. But the Spook-A-Rama that we all knew as kids and our kids and grandkids knew as kids is gone. Dead. Forever. Irreplaceable Coney Island history died here during Sandy. That’s sad. That hurts. That’s a real shame.”

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