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Flat ride identification help - figure 8 saucer ride


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Hello,

 

When I was young, my family was on vacation somewhere and while I don't remember the place or when we went, there was one ride that really seared itself in my memory. Unfortunately, my family doesn't remember this ride (or thus the place) and we don't have any pictures of it. This was probably in the late 70s or early 80s.

 

It was a flat ride and was covered and I think just one wall was open to the outside. I'm pretty sure it was a permanent ride somewhere. There were maybe 8 or so saucers/bowls that you'd sit in, a little similar to a tilt-a-whirl but I don't recall if they had really high backs or even any back at all. Each saucer maybe held 3 or 4 people, not really sure, and they rotated freely. I don't think they had a "wheel" that you could grab on to spin yourself, I don't really remember that detail either. You may ask with such fuzzy memories, how exactly was this ride seared into my memory? The thing that really stood out to me on this ride was the "track". It was like a slot in a platform in a figure 8 configuration. So you would go around one end of the "8" and then approach the intersection. Your saucer would be interleaved with other saucers coming the the other direction. This ride had the centrifugal force like a scrambler on the round parts of the 8 and a fear of crashing into another saucer at the intersection. The track was fairly noisy as the saucers were shuttled about. The round parts of the "8" were actually circles that rotated and the saucers turned in speed with the circles, so I believe the saucers were in a fixed position relative to the spinning circle. My guess is the two circles in the platform were essentially covers for two mechanisms functioning like two big gears and simply exchanged the saucers where they met from one "gear" to the other. So in the course of the ride, you'd have completed a handful of loops around the entire "8". Regardless of the the actual engineering, my mind was very curious to know what lay below the platform that moved the saucers along the slot/track safely.

 

Anyhow, many many years later I was just thinking about that ride again and tried a variety of searches but so far I haven't been able to find what the ride may have been named or where it may have existed.

 

I'm hoping someone in these forums might know.

 

Thanks for any help

--James

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If I'm understanding this correctly, this type of ride still exists today. Here's one at Knoebels in Pennsylvania, it's their tea cups ride.

 

 

The modern-day equivalent of this ride can be found at various Disney parks around the world. No spinning, but it has the switch-off figure-eight track and vehicle design.

 

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Kings Island had one (apparently briefly) in 1972. is it possibly this one?

 

in the images, it looks like it's in a structure that's open only on 1 side like you described

 

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