Re: more playland oddities

05/05/03 - posted by Roy Thomas

Re: Rides at Playland....The "Hey Dey" was a "whip" type ride, (i.e.) a chain of individual cars seating 4 to 6 persons, pulled around an elongated oval by connection through a floor slot to a mechanism underneath..As I remember, the cars looked somewhat like a sleigh and were painted orange. The Horse Derby, (and I'm not sure about the name), was located on the southeast block just off Fulton, where the Safeway is located. It was a large, slightly concave turntable with "merry-go-round" horses in groups of four. Each horse was mounted on a slot several feet long, and while the turntable rotated, the horse would move back & forth along the slot, thus "racing" the other three horses within it's group. The turntable built up to a very fast rotation, so that you had to lean inwards & hang on tightly. Noah's Ark was just that, a large Ark
in a water-filled space directly east of the Chute the Chutes. I never went inside, as it was closed by the time I first saw it. (My first trip to Playland with my Dad was circa 1936)...He described Noah's Ark as a "walk through"
"obstacle course" type concession that sounded to me like a cross between the Fun House & the Crazy House...(always wished I'd had a chance to go there,) Roy Thomas