An evening at Rye Playland

Earlier in my series of reports on my 2006 coaster exploits, I described a coaster wedding.  It was actually the first of three weddings of coaster friends I attended that year.  The second was for two of my friends, Adam and Ellen.  It was a more standard church affair, not held at a park, but after the reception they invited their guests to join them at a special New York park, Rye Playland.  Playland is an old, historic park, built and decorated in an art deco fashion.  It is a fantastic place to visit at night when the lights are on, which is about when we arrived after the wedding and reception to spend a few hours.

Arriving late at a park can make it difficult to find a parking space, and we had to drive around before finally finding ours.  Fortunately this didn't seem to be reflected in particularly heavy crowds inside the park itself.  We did our best to change into more comfortable clothes in our car.  The wedding party might be going in their formal clothes, but we guests certainly didn't feel obliged to.

Rye Playland is one of the few parks for which admission is free--instead you pay by the ride.  We entered next to the back turn of the Dragon coaster with no need to pass through any turnstile.  They used to use old-fashioned paper tickets, but sometime in the past years they've upgraded to an electronic system.  You can buy a "fun card", to be swiped at any ride entrance to deduct the ride's price from your balance.  These cards can be recharged at any time, which is good because they seem to run out pretty quickly.  I find the individual rides rather expensive, though I haven't done a strict comparison against how it would add up to go to a Six Flags park and wait an hour for each ride.  In any case, our cards seemed to run out pretty quickly, but since we were there only for a short time paying by the ride did make sense.  Under other circumstances, were I to spend a full day there, I'd rather pay a single price for unlimited rides.

Once in the park one of the first rides we encountered was the Old Mill, a slow enclosed boat trip through a series of scenes.  Though not thrillers, I have always had a fondness for such rides.  I'd ridden this particular ride some time ago, but in the interim they'd updated it, so I felt I should ride it to find out what the differences were.  My memories of the earlier version of the ride were of taped voices mysteriously saying "you tell them!" throughout the ride.  It was never explained (or at least I never found out) what we were supposed to be told.  The new ride's story had something to do with trolls, but in the end I didn't absorb it very well.  I can't honestly say whether I like the old or the new ride better, but both times I enjoyed the long trip past a variety of scenes on the peaceful waters.

Our next stop was the classic Dragon Coaster, a very unusual wood roller coaster.  Its designer was Fred Church, not well known today, but definitely a designer of historical significance.  Some of his other rides were well known for their ferocity.  Not many of these remain today, and the Dragon Coaster is not the best example of Church's output.  In fact, for its size it's one of the mildest wood coasters around today.  There are no really steep drops, tight turns, or anything else that would really add a strong thrill element.  In spite of this, I enjoy it quite a lot.  At the very least, it is a very long ride and maintains about the most consistent speed I've ever experienced on a coaster.  Successive turns are precisely configured to make up for the lost momentum by being of lower and lower heights.  I don't think I've ever actually ridden this ride in the daylight, hence my memory of it is very much of riding at night, which I'm sure makes it feel faster than it otherwise would be.  Apart from the low thrill level, the Dragon Coaster's main drawback is the retrofitted modern fiberglass train, which feels extremely clunky as it negotiates the course.

Like many classic parks, Rye has several old-fashioned rides, an increasingly rare breed.  At the time due to our limited time at the park, I wasn't all that interested in riding these, thinking our time would be better would be better spent on the coasters.  Fortunately our friend Jim insisted that we ride them anyway.  I say fortunately because we didn't know it at the time, but it turned out that these rides were in serious danger--in 2007, Playland announced that these rides were due to be removed.

We went first to Zombie Castle.  Perhaps it's low ridership that drove Playland's decision, as we didn't have much of a wait at all.  I am embarrassed to say that I barely remember any of it, as is often true for me of dark rides.  My friend Greg proclaimed it nearly as good as the one at Knoebels, which is high praise from an enthusiast.

Jim also insisted that we ride the Whip.  Since we have one of these rides at Kennywood, my local park, I didn't see much need to do so.  But when we got on I found out what he was talking about.  Rye's Whip turned out to be uncharacteristically forceful and violent, much more so than the milder versions of such rides to be found elsewhere.  The operator even had to stop the ride cycle to let one kid off, but then continued the ride cycle for the rest of us.  I had to admit I was impressed.  Whips are a very old-fashioned style of ride, not typically up to the wild standards of more modern rides, but this one acquitted itself very well.

We came to a corner of the park where there was ride called Crazy Mouse, newly installed since I'd last been to Playland.  It's a common name for a variety of coaster ride, but usually it indicates that the cars spin.  Rye's ride is really just a standard Wild Mouse, featuring hairpin turns but cars that always go forward.  Though not the most modern ride, it's a pretty good representative of the older genre.  Many Wild Mouse rides are braked along the course, but as far as I could tell, this one was essentially brakeless, leading to some of its turns being pretty punishing.

Because Playland's rides were fairly expensive, we'd already begun to run out of points on our cards.  We should have been able to add points to our existing cars but had trouble doing so, so we just bought some new ones.  It was just about this time that we learned the wedding party had arrived.  We took a break from the rides to walk toward the boardwalk where they were supposed to be taking pictures, but along the way we spotted them coming toward us.  They'd already finished with the boardwalk picture taking and were on their way to the carousel for some more pictures there.  As we all walked together through the park we heard some people applauding the bride in her dress.

After the pictures we all got a free carousel fired, but this turned out to be about all we saw of the happy couple that evening.  They had other obligations, while we were still working on getting a few other rides.

Our next stop was another dark ride, the Flying Witch, located at the main crossroads of the park.  Somewhat incongruously there was a windmill on the outside of the ride.  Inside I found the timing of some of the effects to be a bit off.  Some came too quickly after each other, while some others were too widely separated.  We did like one line we heard from one of the animated figures:  "Get down with the clown!"  In any case, a cheesy dark ride experience is something I always enjoy.

Our next ride was a rare classic known as the Derby Racer.  It's something like a carousel, but the horses move around very quickly, making a very satisfying rumbling noise.  In fact, it's so fast that they instruct you on how to sit to avoid being thrown by the lateral forces.  On the other hand, while the ride is running the operators will hop on and off the moving platform in a dancing motion.  It's something that you'd be very unlikely to see at a corporate park.

Nearby was another coaster, called "Superflight".  It's yet another riding position variation, in which the riders are suspended face down in a flying position.  Some such rides have large custom layouts, but this particular one is a small stock model generically known as Volare.  Having ridden a couple of these before, I knew that though the ride concept looked elegant and fun, this particular implementation was rough and not very thrilling.  Nobody in my group was disappointed to find this ride not running that night.

There were two other roller coasters at that park, both of them kiddie or family coasters.  We did ride the Family Flyer, a small steel coaster.  We missed riding the extremely rare kiddie wood coaster.  Adults are not allowed on this coaster, though I had managed to get a ride on it in the past through some special arrangements.

Rye's bumper cars, the Auto Scooter, are legendary among enthusiasts of the genre.  I don't know quite what it is about them, perhaps they just run faster than most, but they are among the best bumper cars I've experienced.  The collisions are hard, and the cars will slide around or even move backwards quite a distance upon a collision.

We didn't have much more time, but we'd been there enough to get a good flavor of the park.  We didn't want to take many rides due to the expense anyway, but I enjoyed just walking around and catching the sights.  Many parks as they grow and change lose their original character, but Rye Playland feels much like what I think it must have when it first opened (in 1928).  It has some beautiful art deco architecture, subdued but pretty lighting, and an open uncramped layout that is a pleasure to walk through.  I don't make it to this park often, nor do I get much time there when I do, but always enjoy myself greatly.

As an item of late breaking news, it's been revealed that Flying Witch and the Zombie ride have both been preserved, at least for now.  Outcry by dark ride enthusiasts saved these rides for future generations to enjoy.  This is undoubtedly great news, but it is all a reminder that many classic amusement park attractions are in constant danger.  The best time to ride such rides is always now!