Parks Creating Rides In-house

[Garet]

I read a year or two ago about how Adventure Island in Southend were designing and making their own flat ride, I was bored so I decided to look it up and see what they made and was quite surprised by what they made, for a small non-chain park, it looks like a really fun big flat ride.

 

I realize a lot of the bigger companies out there will design and patent rides but I can't think of many smaller parks out there that have made their own, are there many? And what are the best ones people have ridden?

 

This is Adventure Island's ride, called the Time Machine:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyFhaJTAhqc

[ViperLover]

The only in-house ride I hade ridden was Bobsleds at Seabreeze in Rochester, NY. Its more of a kiddie or family coaster, but a nice one nonetheless.

Photo courtesy of RCDB

[Mater]

Forgive me if I'm ignorant of something, but do the Disney rides like Radiator Springs Racers count?

[robbalvey]

Forgive me if I'm ignorant of something, but do the Disney rides like Radiator Springs Racers count?

Not really because Disney is also technically a ride manufacturer. I think the original poster sort of means "Parks that have made their own rides, when that's not normally part of their core business."

[larrygator]

The word "creating" entails various stages from concept, engineering design, fabrication to building. I'm not sure many parks have the in house resources for engineering design and part fabrication when it comes to most types of rides.

[RideofSteel]

Bombora at Lagoon was designed and manufactured in-house by Dal Freeman.

[B&MBoy1982]

While B&M was contracted to produce The Incredible Hulk Coaster, Universal produced the launch mechanism in house.

 

I believe The Beast was designed and built by Kings Island.

[ernierocker]

Wouldn't Twister and Flying Turns qualify as In-House? I know they were both designed by Knoebels inspired by defunct coasters.

[matteocrepaldi]

Does Blue Fire count? It was designed and built by Mack which is also the owner of Europa Park!

[rollin_n_coastin]

All the Kings Entertainment/ KECO coasters at Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland, etc. The Beast, Wild Beast/ Grizzly and Minebuster were in-house I think.

 

^^For sure....definitely something that adds a touch of awesome to Knoebels, fully so when Flying Turns finally opens

[robbalvey]

Does Blue Fire count? It was designed and built by Mack which is also the owner of Europa Park!

Again, I don't think it really counts when a park can list "attraction design and manufacture" as one of their core businesses. It's more about when a park that doesn't specialize in this sort of thing, builds a ride from a scratch.

[azza29]

Australia seems to have a history of building water rides in-house:

- the Rocky Hollow Log Ride at Dreamworld was an in-house creation, and even after 30 years it's still one of the better ones out there.

- Movie World's Looney Tunes River Ride was developed by the park, and the same ride system was used for Sea World's Bermuda Triangle.

- In the late 70s Sea World decided to build Viking's Revenge in-house after a quote from Arrow came in too high. They built it for something like $350k rather than the $1.5m Arrow wanted.

 

Who built Knoebels' Flyer? The exposed tractor engine made me think it might have been an in-house job, or at least a prototype.

[deathbydinn]

Viper at SF Great America was manufactured in house.

[cfc]

What about the Dutch Wonder House at Dutch Wonderland?

 

 

That always looked "homemade" to me.

[Nrthwnd]

^ I just those things!

 

The simplest of the Mad House / Haunted Swing design.

I want one of these in my back yard, LOL!

 

I think this is my all-time favorite flat -

next to all that is Tokyo Disney Resort.

 

[dropzonefan]

All the Kings Entertainment/ KECO coasters at Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland, etc. The Beast, Wild Beast/ Grizzly and Minebuster were in-house I think.

 

^^For sure....definitely something that adds a touch of awesome to Knoebels, fully so when Flying Turns finally opens

I'm pretty sure the Minebuster and Wild Beast were made by PTC, but I could be wrong.

 

But yes, a lot of woodies (at least older ones) seem to be made in house.

[Spideyfreak]

Blazing Fury/Fire in the Hole were in house projects.

[Jer]

Bobselds at Seabreeze is inhouse, and i've ridden it, it's good fun

 

 

Also technically speaking, Flying turns at Knoebels is in house. The wood, contractors, and engineers.

 

 

[Jew]

Enchanted Forest in Oregon built their coasters.

[bonsaiisuperstar]

From Wikipedia. I knew this living next door to KI, but they summarize it better.

 

While Kings Island was owned by Taft Broadcasting, the design and engineering was largely subcontracted to Curtis D. Summers Engineering, which was a structural engineering and architecture firm located in Cincinnati. Summers' team worked with Taft staff designers Al Collins and Jeffrey Gramke to design the Beast with John Allen providing profiling and dynamics specifications; Taft was unique in having constructed most of their wood coasters at Kings Island, Kings Dominion, Carowinds, and Canada's Wonderland during the 1970s and into the 1980s. Following KECO's sale of their theme parks to Paramount in 1992, Summers continued to partner with Charlie Dinn's firm on several coasters at parks around North America. The two firms continued to work together on coasters up until Summer's death in 1992.

[simon8899]

The Mississippi Paddle Boats at Heide-Park were made by the park themselves - but are now defunct.

 

www.freizeitpark-welt.de

[cfc]

The Boat Chute at Lake Winnie was designed by the park's founder.

 

[Garet]

Wow I was surprised by how many responses were of parks in-house manufacturing or designing roller-coasters, I think in my mind making a flat from scratch seemed easier and cheaper but now I think about it I can see where making a roller-coaster could just as well be achieved so thanks for all your responses, it gives me home that sometime down the line, the rct wooden reverser may be recreated by a park somewhere (although yes I realize turntables can do the same purpose and achieve the same results but I just always wanted to see a real life version)

[robbalvey]

Viper at SF Great America was manufactured in house.

See, here is one of the biggest misconception about "in house" coasters. Many people think it's just the parks own design and maintenance staff, but really what an "in-house" ride means is that a park decided they wanted a ride, probably went out and got bids from many difference "turn key" companies, but couldn't find one that would be a good fit, so they went at it on their own.

 

In Viper's case, while the ride was certainly "produced" by their in-house (meaning Six Flags corporate engineering team), they did outsource most of the ride components. I know they went to Dennis Starkey and his area of expertise to design and hire the builders for the ride. I'm pretty sure PTC had some involvement with it. The design was a modified version of the Cyclone. And they hired several different construction contractors for the actual construction of the ride.

 

"In-House" doesn't always mean it's the park staff out there with hammer and nails, it just means that instead of hiring one company, like B&M, Intamin, GCI, etc, to do all the work to bring the completion of a coaster together, the park handles all of that.

 

--Robb

[Jim S.]

Who built Knoebels' Flyer? The exposed tractor engine made me think it might have been an in-house job, or at least a prototype.

 

The Flyer is from a defunct manufacturer whose name I can't remember. I don't know if the engine is original, although the conversion to propane was probably done by Knoebels.