The Pretzel Amusement Ride Company was an amusement ride manufacturer that produced a variety of rides, including an early

dark ride A dark ride or ghost train is an indoor amusement ride on which passengers aboard guided vehicles travel through specially lit scenes that typically contain animation, sound, music and special effects. Appearing as early as the 19th century, su ...

known as The Pretzel, the company's namesake. It built over 1400 rides for carnivals and amusement parks.

Name

The company took its name from its trademark dark ride, The Pretzel, so called because of its track's winding, pretzel-like layout. It may also have been influenced by the comment of someone who rode the ride's prototype: "It felt like I was turned and twisted like a pretzel".

History

The company was established in 1928 when founders Marvin Rempfer and Leon Cassidy patented a single-rail dark ride they built in Tumbling Dam Park on the banks of Sunset Lake in

Bridgeton, New Jersey Bridgeton is a city in Cumberland County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is the county seat of Cumberland County

. The company remained in Bridgeton throughout its existence. A large heavy pretzel design was originally affixed to the front of each car to prevent it from flipping backwards. In 1929, a standard Pretzel ride had five cars, 350 feet of track, a riding time of one and a half minutes, and sold for $1,200. Portable pretzel rides for carnivals weighed about 9 tons. They were transported on huge moving vans. For the first three decades, Pretzel rides were single story. Beginning in the 1950s, two-story "double decker" rides were also made whose cars were hoisted to the second story by a lift chain during the ride. Leon Cassidy was not in favor of the double-decker version. The '' Mad Giant'' was 17 tons, 40'x 8' on trailer, and 70'x30' when opened, and took about five hours to set up. Pretzel also made spinning rides, including a famous one for

Coney Island Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, Manhattan Beach to its east, L ...

. Leon's son William Cassidy ran the company after his father. He sold the rights to build the rides in 1979.

List of rides

Pretzel rides were usually themed. They included The Caveman, Haunted House, Lost Mine, Gold Nugget, Thunderbird Jr. Ride,

Toonerville Trolley Toonerville may refer to: * Toonerville Folks ''Toonerville Folks'' ( ''The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains'') was a popular newspaper cartoon feature by Fontaine Fox, which ran from 1908 to 1955. It began in 1908 in the ''Chicago ...

, Whirlo, Kiddie Circus, Devil's Cave/Pirate's Cove/Bucket O' Blood (the same ride rethemed), Devils Inn, Winter Wonderland,

Orient Express The ''Orient Express'' was a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by the Belgian company ''Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits'' (CIWL) that operated until 2009. The train traveled the length of continental Europe and int ...

, Mad Giant, Laff in the Dark, Laff in the Dark with spinning cars, Laffland, Pirates Cave, Pirates Den, Paris After Dark, Arabian Nights Tunnel of Love/Casper's Ghostland, Treasure Island, Spook-A-Rama, Le Cachot/Safari/Zoomerang, and three versions of Dante's Inferno.

References

External links

Send 'Em Out Laffing
The History of the Pretzel Amusement Ride Company {{Amusement rides Amusement ride manufacturers Companies based in New Jersey