Conneaut Lake is near where I grew up and they had a Tumblebug. I worked there one summer in ride maintenance. They had a chain drive on each end that intentionally made a robotic insect sound. The housing for the drive is in the foreground of the b&w pic.

The pitch of the insect buzz was tuned by the tightness in the chains. Since I was already playing guitar when I went to work there, I knew about tuning and I would tune those chains about 2 cents from each other. That way they would make a throbbing sound as well, 2 per second. The thing about that though is it took a lot of lubrication to keep those chains that fine tuned for any length of time.

BTW, those rides were HUGE! Much bigger than they appear in the pictures.

Conneaut Lake Park rides on youtube.

The first shown is the Wild Mouse. I first rode that with my father when I was 5 years old. To this day I am amazed that no one was ever (to my knowledge) thrown out of one of those cars.

The Tumble Bug is second, but the ride operator is running it way too fast. It's just too heavy a ride for that size motor. In fact, to start the ride, the operator must first reverse it about five feet so the tail goes up the last hill. Then when it goes forward, it will have the momentum to clear the first hill.

The last is the park's roller coaster. This was a beautiful old wooden frame coaster that was kept in immaculate condition its entire life. The hills and valleys were the usual but the curves on this baby were some of the tightest for its time of construction with only just enough banking to be safe.

You know, while sitting here writing this, I will bet the insurance on this place is keeping it out of business. The park didn't open in 2007 and once they close, these old parks are very difficult to reopen.

Dream big BoPo, dream big. I'm rooting for you. As for me, that looks like something that would make me way too queasy to call fun.

I think this is the YouTube link you meant to post, mischief... wow, that looks like fun! :) I never knew you worked at an amusement park... how cool.

I love small amusement parks. It's a shame this one didn't open this year... you may be right about insurance costs and whatnot being the culprit. I hope they re-open it, though.

Oops, I seem to be forgetting to insert the actual links more and more often lately. Yup, that's the link I meant.

I am surprised that Conneaut Lake Park survived so long. I think the last few years were held together by some amusement park enthusiasts who pumped in some extra money. From some of these videos, it looks like it has been well preserved. (I love how the picnic pavilions all have grass rather than concrete pads.) The problem is its location, it isn't near anything. Maybe someone will buy it up and relocate the rides.

That Toboggan ride wasn't there when I worked there, but it doesn't look like it was installed new either. They must have bought it from another park and rebuilt it.

Working there was a great experience, but the carnies soured it. Half the workers were older carnies who traveled with small shows in the South during the winter. The other half were us local kids. The carnies got the brilliant idea of unionizing, and most of us locals didn't want to mess with that. One night the carnies beat up a couple of the local kids, and the next day I quit. In a roundabout way, that was also when I decided I would join the Marines after my next year at Penn State.