The Lartigue monorail, also known as the Listowel and Ballybunion Railway, was built in Ireland in the 1880s. Recently re-created by Alan Keef, Ltd to run as a tourist attraction.

What a beautiful package. The product inside is not as toothsome as frozen custard, though.

Much worse was the now discontinued Coney Island Flavor Tim's Cascade Style Potato Chip. It was supposed to taste like a hot dog with mustard. It was just plain awful. The only way it could have tasted any worse would have been if it actually tasted like an island.

Tomorrow is Bats Day in the Fun Park, the annual event at which goths descend on Disneyland.

Tomorrow is also Portland's Annual Adult Soap Box Derby.

The story of the Disneyland cast members' parody film Captain Eeyore. It was an inside-joke parody of the Michael Jackson 3-D movie Captain EO made for the annual banquet of the costumed character department. EO cost $17 million; Eeyore was reportedly shot on a budget of about $300, most of which was spent on donuts for the cast.

More here

Stagecoach Crash Kills Horse, Hurts Riders at Knott's Berry Farm

More here.

In 1913, the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce banned the term 'hot dog' for fear people might think they were actually made from dogs.

"People call and they want to know the temperature of the water. I ask them to wait a moment and I'll go down and see. Then I go out and take a wiz and come back and tell them 60 degrees or 70 or 68 or whatever number comes to mind, and they seem to be satisfied and thank me." -- Matt Kennedy, Coney Island Chamber of Commerce

New life for the Bubbleator.

Adventure Thru Inner Space

Thanks to pattywack.com and archive.org.

The Niles Monorail in Freemont, CA, runs in a residential backyard and is the first garden monorail. Standard gauge for garden monorails is 4" X 8" track, so says the builder, and he should know -- he invented the hobby.

The Decline of the Disneyland Monorail: “We are literally keeping these trains together with duct tape now..."

From a buddy in Japan, here are some photos from a spookhouse called the Ge-Ge-Ge-No Kitaro Haunted House.

Dylan poses: monster underpants; eyeball; where the wild things are; Cyclops; molten skulls; dusty hat; Smurfs gone bad.

It's not a huge state, but Pennsylvania has around thirteen amusement parks, depending on how you count them. The land there is very hilly, so in the early days of amusement parks every town, village and hamlet had its own. Here are a few highlights:

The Pennsylvania Amusement Park Association has links to all the parks listed below, and then some.

Del Grosso's Amusement Park is a family-run affair in Tipton. Notable for having its own brand of spaghetti sauce with a carrousel horse on the label.

Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster is where I once watched my father turn green on a haunted swing.

Hershey Park in Hershey is the nicest smelling amusement park in the world.

Idlewild in Ligonier is home to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

Kennywood in Pittsburgh is a grand old park. (Pittsburgh slang: "Kennywood's open" means "Your fly is down.")

Knoebels, located between Elysburg and Catawissa, is home to The Haunted Mansion, a dark ride which consistantly makes fans' top ten lists.

The good percentage of the background music played on Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland and her clones comes from The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra.

Let's go to the funzone
We'll have a whole lot of fun
It's all there at the funzone
It's over when the fun is all done.

Where's the fire? RIGHT HERE, BABY.

Only One Man's Dream could bring Marie Osmond, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Walter Cronkite, Buckminster Fuller and Andy Warhol to work on the same project.

Here is a site dedicated to the history of amusement park trains. Darned ugly, but informative.

Some wooden roller coaster models.

More wooden roller coaster models, with building instructions.

Even more wooden roller coaster models.

Working wooden roller coaster models, with videos.

Someone else, working on an N-Scale roller coaster, points out why the working models don't quite look right.

"I had learned something about gravity that we all kind of intuitively and covertly know, but now the concept was very overt and staring me in the face: In order for a roller coaster to act appropriately in a 1/160th scale (N) model, it would need 1/160th scale speed, and in order to get that it would need 160th scale gravity..."

His final model is really strange looking; way too tall with lots of bunny hops.