The DoD3

Trip Report: 2012 North Brunswick Youth Sports Festival

Posted by DoD3Brian on July 10, 2012 | 8 comments

I’ve been going to this fair for three years now ever since I found out that Reithoffer Shows‘ orange unit was running the midway. The fair is located next to DeVry University just off of Rt. 1 in North Brunswick, NJ. Being that Route 1 is a pretty major thoroughfare in central Jersey this site gets inundated with Google searches like “what is the fair on route 1”, “route 1 carnival” and “devry carnival” when it comes around.

This year I went to the fair on the final day, Sunday June 24th. I was originally planning to go on Tuesday the 19th for the $10 wristband day but that fell through. I also decided to go to the fair during the day for a change as that Sunday was the Mets vs Yankees, R.A. Dickey vs CC Sabathia matchup that I did not want to miss. I arrived at around 4:15pm, paid the $4 admission and took a stroll around the fair to see what was there. There was…

Tornado (Huss)
Tango
Wild Mouse
Freak Out
Himalaya (Wisdom)
Zipper
Giant Wheel
Yo-Yo
Power Surge
Sizzler
Starship 3000
Orbiter
Cliff Hanger
Pharaoh’s Fury
Tornado (Wisdom)
Bear Affair
Dizzy Dragons
Fun Slide
Merry-go-Round
At least two funhouses
A plethora of kiddie rides
A ton of foodstuffs
Multiple shows (including Sea Lion Splash and Wambalds Amazing Animals)
Many, many games

Man this was a big fair! The youth sports program of North Brunswick must be loaded with how well this fair seems to do each year. I first took a round of photos before buying ten tickets ($11) to ride Tornado and Tango, two rides I might not see again this year.

I went on the Huss Tornado first and was put in a car with two others. Surprisingly, even though most people on the ride had wristbands, we got a pretty lengthy ride that lasted almost three minutes. The car I was in whipped around like crazy during the slower parts; I’d like to say I had a hand in that by shifting my body weight but who knows on this ride. Since I was riding solo in the seat (two can fit in a seat, four per car) I was thrown from side to side on most occasions, but that makes the ride more fun! Good ride overall, one of the my favorites. As far as Tornado’s appearance it was basically impeccable (it was only redone in 2010.) The backwall had been taken down however, most likely pre-sloughing for the jump later on that night.

Next I went over to the KMG Tango for a spin which was located in this little offshoot of the main midway along with Giant Wheel, Yo-yo and Zipper. Unlike Tornado I was treated to a pitifully short cycle, probably less than a minute. Don’t think it was worth $5.50 in tickets for that length but I knew it was going to be a short ride beforehand. Now it seems like all that bike riding I do has paid off as I rode this without holding on at all. I know that sounds like murder for any guy considering the interesting seating arrangement but I was A-ok afterwards. Good ride overall, I got really disoriented as it flipped and pretty much didn’t know what way I was pointing.

As for other rides: Yo-Yo, to the right of Tango, looked really nice with LED lighting and a white, yellow and blue color scheme. As I’ve noted before it’s probably the nicest Chance Yo-Yo rides around. Giant Wheel was a larger Chance wheel, no single riders allowed of course thanks to regulations aimed to protect people from themselves and shows from overzealous lawyers. Zipper seemed to have dark blue and white lighting with some orange and blue lights on the sign. It was like the boom and support had Yankees colors and the sign Mets colors…yeah, I obviously had the game on my mind.

Lining the back of the midway was Himalaya, Power Surge, Orbiter, Pharaoh’s Fury, Skooters. Wild Mouse and Cliffhanger. I noticed that Wild Mouse had lapbars with some grab bars instead of the usual overhead lapbar I’m used to seeing. Apparently Zamperla bought out Reverchon some time ago and kept the same design while modifying the cars…I honestly had no idea. The fact it was called “Wild Mouse” instead of “Crazy Mouse” (Reverchon’s original name for the coaster) should have tipped me off though. Sitting opposite of the rides above was Starship 3000 and Sizzler, the latter being down the day I went.

Next to Tornado on the left side of the midway was Freak Out, a KMG pendulum ride. Usually this fair has Wild Claw, a KMG Fireball model that travels with Reithoffer’s blue unit, but since Freak Out is on the orange unit it only made sense for it to be present at a fair that the orange unit is playing! Aaaanyway, Freak Out was pretty much your stock version with a white color scheme with multi-colored turbo lighting. I actually don’t think I’ve ever seen a Freak Out themed to anything other than the act of freaking out so I guess it works. As I was at the fair the decorative panels under the ride were being put away in preparation for the tear down. I heard this thing racks onto one trailer; that’s hard to beleive considering how big it is.

Looks like this guy won

The entire front and right side of the fair was lined with kiddie rides and family rides including two Sellner spin rides, namely Bear Affair and Dizzy Dragons. You know a fair is big when there’s two different Sellner spin rides! Games and vendors also took up the spaces in the middle of the paths made by the rides. Restrooms (aka a line of Port-a-Johns) were also located near the front. DoD3 Protip: If you need to use a port-a-john on the final day of a fair…just hold it in; I’ll just say that it wasn’t a pleasant sight. Best part is that the portable sinks outside the toilets had no soap left. Luckily I had some hand sanitizer which I poured generously onto my hands to ~~kill off any germs~~…make myself feel better.

When I arrived the crowds were pretty light, but by the time I was ready to leave they were building quickly. I ended up spending nearly three hours at the fair before leaving, picking up a couple of slices of pizza on the way home to prepare for the game. Turns out I could have just went to the fair at night and not miss a thing: Dickey ended up choking, giving up 5 runs to the Yankees. The Mets managed to tie it up but then our wonderful bullpen gave up a run, leading to a 6 – 5 Yankee win. I’ll be honest, I was expecting to see Dickey kill the Yankees lineup so that I could celebrate a win while bathing in schadenfreude, but it just wasn’t to be.

Finally, here’s a video of Tornado:

Trip Report: 2012 Warren Lions Expo

Posted by DoD3Brian on June 29, 2012 | 7 comments

This is one of those fairs that just seems to slip by me. Apparently the last time I went was in 2009 which is insane since it didn’t feel like it was that long at all. Even more insane is that I actually managed to miss this fair two years in a row when it’s an amazingly painless, less that 20 minute back-road drive from my place. Even more insane is that this carnival just marked it’s 46th year; basically it’s been going on since well before I was born and I never knew about it until 2008. Amazing. To make up for all this I went to the fair twice, once on a Thursday and once on Saturday for the fireworks. The fair had…

Screamer
Quasar
Gravitron
Hustler
Octopus
Scrambler
Swinger
Ferris Wheel
Sooper Jet (kiddie coaster)
Helicopters (Herschell)
Merry-go-Round
A load of kiddie rides
Rows of games
A plethora of foodstuffs
Some vendors and military recruiters
Fireworks

McDaniel Brothers Shows was running the midway this year, as were they in past visits. Screamer, an ARM manufactured High Flyer ride, was the only inverting ride at the fair. It was placed right along the road making it obvious that a fair was occurring at that location. The ride had a mostly white color scheme with sequenced lighting on the arm which made it look very nice at night. The riding compartment itself had two floodlights pointed at it and some running lights along the bottom.

Hustler gonna hustle

To the right was Hustler, one of those Watkins teacup/scrambler hybrids; although you wouldn’t have known the name if you didn’t already know the ride as it had no signage at all. The ride did look great though with multi-colored striped tubs along and multi-colored turbos on the outside of the tubs but man, it revolved so slowly. Slow enough to where the tubs wouldn’t even spin when changing direction. I’ve heard that the Watkins Tempest, basically Hustler tilted on an angle, has problems with drive chains breaking when stopped too quickly so perhaps that’s the reason for running this ride slowly. On the first night I went this ride had a couple of speakers set up playing random music, mostly grunge rock and hip-hop. That’s an, uh…interesting selection.

Should really be called Pulsar for scientific accuracy.

An ARM manufactured Quasar sat in the corner of the midway next to Hustler. This ride has been redone since the last time I saw it and it looked simply amazing. It had lavender sweeps with yellow cars and an orange lifting mechanism. Lighting consisted of wildly flashing green, yellow, white and orange turbos. However, like with Hustler, this ride just was not running as fast as it should be. The first night I went it was spinning at like 60% of it’s normal speed, the second it must have been about 40%…it was crawling. Compare with 2008/2009 when this ride was flying with cars swinging totally sideways. Like Hustler this ride also had music, mostly playing what the ride ops wanted to hear it seemed.

Next up was a Watkins Swinger, complete with “Swinger” signage on top of the sweeps. It had yellow and blue turbos on the sweeps with red white and blue on the center. Next to that was an Eli Bridge ground mounted Scrambler. Pretty utilitarian looking with silver cars and sweeps along with blue accents here and there. Lighting consisted of white florescent tubes on the sweeps with some decorative pieces on the ends of the sweeps. Again, this ride featured music with the ride op playing ‘Hells Bells’ by ACDC while I was snapping photos.

Stock Gravitron angle. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

To the right was a Wisdom manufactured Gravitron. The riding compartment had multi-colored turbos with red lights around the edges; the flash on the side had some stock lighting. The flash itself was yellow…and that’s all it was! Kind of looked like a piece of construction equipment with all that yellow. At the end of the midway was an Eyerly Octopus and a Fun Slide. Octopus had an interesting blue and yellow color scheme going on, a departure from the black sweeps Octopus rides typically sport. The trend of making non-music rides into music rides continued as this too played music and was playing ‘Man in the Box’ by Alice in Chains among other things. Now that’s Octopus music! Right? With all these interesting musical choices I was waiting for ‘Killing in the Name’ by Rage Against the Machine to pop up on the Merry-Go-Round.

In the middle of all the kiddie rides was a cable driven Eli Bridge wheel. It had white lights in the center with a red and white color scheme along with multi-colored cars. As far as games it seemed like everything that was at the Corpus Christi carnival showed up at this fair. Also present were a couple balloon dart games, a coin pitch and a shoot out the star game. On the final night of the fair there were fireworks that started at about quarter after 10pm. I was going to watch them from the fairgrounds but decided to leave the actual fair area and watch from the area closest to Mountain Ave.

And here’s a video of Screamer

Trip Report: 2012 Corpus Christi Parish Carnival

Posted by DoD3Brian on June 15, 2012 | 13 comments

The Corpus Christi Parish Carnival is a smaller fair in Chatham, NJ, just up the hill from my town, that took place from June 7th to the 9th. This fair is usually just a “zeppole run” for me, stopping by mostly to get a bag of zeppolies while checking out the festivities. I went over on Friday the 8th and parked a block away. You can actually park right next to the fair in a lot but I, uh…didn’t. The fair was slightly different this year, it had…

Zipper
Round-Up
Swinger
Ferris Wheel (Big Eli Hy-5)
Fun Slide
Samba Balloon
Dragon Wagon
A handful of kiddie rides
A selection of foodstuffs
Game area

Look, it’s this angle again!

Like I said, on the small side; the parking lot it’s held in isn’t exactly large so not that many rides can be piled in there. The rides were brought in by Tommy’s Midway who seemed to have made some upgrades this season. Zipper sat on the right side of the lot, tilted at a 45 degree angle to make room for other rides. It had the standard red/yellow turbo lighting going on with multicolored tubs. Interestingly this Zipper had music via a laptop hooked up to a lone speaker. I think they played mostly hip hop while I was there…not exactly Zipper music but I guess the kids like it (unfortunately.) By the way, this was the third Zipper I’ve seen over the course of four fairs this season, each being owned by different shows. I’m sure to see at least three more Zippers, all owned by different fairs, by the end of the season. Basically Zipper is to the United States as Breakdance is to Europe.

To the right of Zipper and sort of hanging off the side of the midway was Fun Slide…it’s fun, or at least thats what it’s billed as. Maybe they should rename it Cash Slide as the ride seemed to have a constant stream of riders while I was there (don’t think there was a pay-one-price deal that night either.) To the left of Zipper was a Watkins Swinger. Looks like the lighting was sorted out this time around; in 2010 the lights would flicker on and off as the top rotated around a certain point and in 2011 they simply weren’t on at all.

To the left of Swinger and across a parking lot divider was the Ferris Wheel, a rim-driven Eli Bridge Hy-5 II model. This wheel was upgraded with sequenced LED lighting on the sweeps, the first time I’ve seen that done with an Eli Bridge wheel. The lights were set to various patterns and color combinations although I didn’t stick around to see how long the light show was before it started over. Not a bad looking wheel at all, it also had a pretty lengthy line when I was there.

The last major ride was a Hrubetz Round Up which looks like it had something done with the lighting; the outside of the cages had a smattering of green, red and orange turbo lights with red and white lights on the center sweeps. A quick look back at the 2010 photos shows that the Round Up previously had a chaotic mixture of multicolored turbos on the outside with red white and blue lighting on the sweeps, yikes. The ride also raised up much farther than the last time I saw it; the last time it was stuffed in next to a funhouse and if raised to its full height would have come just a bit too close to the funhouse.

Kiddie rides lined the middle of the parking lot including a Zamperla Samba Balloon, a small oval train ride, Dragon Wagon kiddie coaster, at least one Hampton umbrella ride and about the smallest kiddie swing ride I’ve ever seen. Towards the church building were games and food. Games included wheels of chance, knock over the X’s, Frog Bog, balloon darts, watergun game and a ball toss (one of those games where you toss a ball and hope it lands in a spot that you put money on.) Food looked like it was all done by local merchants/church organizations. Needless to say I picked up some zeppolies (6 for $5) before heading out, showering powdered sugar on myself as I attempted to eat them while walking back to my car.

Trip Report: 2012 Feast of St. Anthony Festival

Posted by DoD3Brian on June 9, 2012 | 28 comments

The Feast of St. Anthony Festival is an annual fair held at Our Lady of Czestochowa parish in South Plainfield, NJ. The event lasted five days this year spanning from Tuesday, June 5th to Saturday the 9th. I headed over on Thursday, leaving at about 7:45pm so that I could get some dusk as well as night photos. Despite being a fairly short drive (about 20 minutes) I had to use GPS as it’s almost all side roads to get there. As it ended up, I had to disobey its directions a few times anyway since it tried to send me in dumb ways to get to the place. I arrived just after 8pm and was pleasantly surprised at the setup this year. The fair had…

Zipper
Flying Bobs
Alien Invasion (Gravitron re-theme)
Tornado (Wisdom)
Sizzler
Super Swing
Ferris Wheel (Eli Bridge ‘Eagle 16’ model)
Landslide
Carousel
Mardi Gras funhouse
American Flyer (Miler kiddie coaster)
a myriad of kiddie rides
a selection of games
an array of foodstuffs
vice area (beer ‘garden’ with money chance wheel)

Dreamland Amusements was doing the spot this year and put together a much more cohesive looking midway compared to the past years I’ve visited the festival (2008 and 2010.) Along with the list of operating rides were a few racked rides hanging out behind the scenes, namely a Hrubetz Hurricane, Tilt-a-Whirl and at least one kiddie ride; I’m actually not even sure if Hurricane could work at all on the festival grounds without taking up a load of space that could be used for other rides.

The first ride I saw was an open topped Herschell Flying Bobs. The ride had a blue and white (mostly blue) color scheme with some decorative lighting around the ride and the Flying Bobs sign mounted in the center. It may not be the nicest open top Flying Bobs ride I’ve seen (pic) but it was run the way a Bobs should be, at a brisk speed with loud music and a great mic-man. Even the second ride op seemed to be into it, grooving out to the music and all. One thing about Flying Bobs is that the cars always rock like crazy, and this one was no exception.

Right next door was Zipper, the end all carnival ride. This one had newer model cars with the side panels (as opposed to all mesh sided cars.) Not a bad looking ride, it had turbo lighting instead of the newer LEDs or older florescent tubes (I haven’t seen the latter in a LONG time.) Next up on the midway was American Flyer, an old Miler kiddie coaster. I remember Keansburg Amusement Park used to have one back in the day. A Wisdom manufactured Sizzler sat next to the coaster. This one looked really nice with gold and purple lights on the sweeps and orange and gold lights on the cars. Definitely one of the nicer Sizzlers I’ve seen and it spun pretty fast as well!

Across the midway was Alien Invasion, basically a Starship 2000 re-theme. I sort of got tripped up thinking this was a newer Alien Abduction model by Wisdom considering the similar names but it’s definitely not. The ride had LED lighting on the ship that changed color every so often along with green LEDs on the flash. I like how the little alien on the flash seems to be bouncing Neptune like a basketball. Next up was a Wisdom Tornado that had blue and yellow lighting. Not bad looking, nicer than the stock yellow and orange. Looks like I missed a picture of it though, hmph.

In the middle of the Midway was Super Swing, a medium sized swing ride set on a platform. I have no idea who makes this but it might actually be the same ride that used to come around at the Our Lady of Peace fair back in the early-mid 90s, only now it has some flash panels (it used to just be the bare orange frame.) Man, I used to love riding that thing when I was little! They put the swings in a nice location at this fair, allowing riders to sail over the busy center portion of the midway. Across from the swings was a Mardi Gras funhouse, a nicely flashed one at that.

A line of kiddie rides extended down to the midway ending with an Eli Bridge Eagle 16 wheel and a spiral slide called Landslide. The wheel had white spokes with blue supports with rainbow colored lights in the spokes and white/blue florescent tubes on the arms holding the cars. Very nice looking ride and pretty big as well. Landslide was an interesting slide, more like an old Helter Skelter type ride than one of the Fun Slide type slides.

The fair featured some games; wheels, shoot out the star, knock over the X, typical carnival stuff. There was also a smörgåsbord of food to choose from ranging from pizza and hamburger to pirogi and kebob. Also noted was a beer area with cheap beer on tap along with a chance wheel that awarded betted money to the winner. I debated on getting either a kebab or pirogies and decided on getting the pork kebab for $4.00. I left the fair at around 9:15pm. All in all a nice festival, much better than previous years!

Trip Report: 2012 Our Lady of Peace Country Fair

Posted by DoD3Brian on May 31, 2012 | 2 comments

Every May is my middle school alma mater’s carnival, the Our Lady of Peace country fair. It lasted four days spanning from May 16 to the 19th this year with rides supplied by Blue Sky Amusements. In the days leading up to the fair I stopped by the parking lot to check out the racked rides and buildup.

I ended up heading over there every day in some capacity to either get photos/video (this usually ended up happening regardless as I have an itchy shutter finger), pick up some zeppolies or simply wander around looking for old classmates who are still involved with the school/church (and fair subsequently.) The fair had a couple less rides this year (Round Up and Berry Go Round namely) as Blue Sky Amusements where doing another spot along with this fair, still there was quite a decent lineup. The fair had…

Zipper
Himalaya (Wisdom)
Scooter
Sizzler
Starship Gravitron
Riptide (ARM Ali Baba)
Gondola Wheel
Super Slide
Chair Jet
Carousel
Monkey Maze
Dragon Wagon
A myriad of kiddie rides
Games, games and more games
Vendors and greasy treats

Warning: This picture is massive!

Zipper had been revamped this season with all new…well everything. Visually it had a new paint job consisting of green supports with a white frame along with orange, purple and green cars along with receiving LED lighting. It’s about as sharp as a Zipper can get, almost too nice to ride…ok now that’s a stretch. The ride not only looked great but also was much less rattly sounding than most other Zippers thanks to the refurbishment.

… Trip Report: 2012 Our Lady of Peace Country Fair

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