April 23, 2024 • 45 mins
If you described the concept of a roller coaster to an alien, they'd probably be baffled: Why on Earth are humans purposely recreated the sensation of falling, flying and -- quite possibly -- feeling close to death? In the first part of this special two-part series, the guys explore the origin story of modern roller coasters, from the old days of "Russian Mountains" to an amusement arms race that continues today: the ongoing quest to build the biggest, highest, fastest rides on the planet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Throw your hands up in the air. I'm been bowling.
Joined as always with the inimical, the imminent mister Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hello have you guys? You guys know that Smashing Pumpkins
song in nineteen seventy nine, No what is music exactly? Who?
What even his music? Well, there's a really great meme
where it's a Billy Corgan writing a roller coaster. That's
the title of the meme and it's from the perspective
of someone writing a roller coast and he goes and
we you know, don't even care where they just extend
(01:07):
the Wii. And last thing, there's another amazing roller coaster
related image of Billy Corgan. This is actually of him
looking really bummed out on a roller coaster, just sitting
there with I guess presumably his manager, looking about as
crestfallen as one could be in the happiest place on earth.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Last of our last of first things shout out to,
of course Red Hot Chili Peppers Roller Coaster of Love.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
People, how do America soundtrack? Uh huh? Excellent version of
that tune.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
So, folks, you're probably wondering what we're talking about in
this week's series, which is an on purpose two parter.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
We did it. We figured it.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Out in advance. This time we are talking about roller
coasters upside down on the dip dip dip A.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Have you ever have you.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Ever been just on your regular feet, on the regular
ground and thought this is disappointing.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Maybe there's more good exactly? Oh man, what if we
what if we put ourselves in this situation where we
were purposely under duress?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
What if it felt like I was dying? And it's
funny because just for a second though, and how how
cool would it be if I waited in line up
to two hours before I had that rush? It's like
what if what if drugs were slower and then emerged
from the whole experience not dead, and we had renewed
lease on life and looking for your phone and your
(02:30):
hat and your parents limb or your kids. Yeah, so
this is this is the great noble dare we say
universal human impetus behind roller coasters, behind seeking thrills, The
modern roller coasters, we know, are pretty much multimillion dollar
(02:51):
operations at this point, and they're they're in an arms
race of hyperbole. What's the what's the tallest, what's the fastest,
what's the longest, et cetera, et cetera. But the idea
of a roller coaster the nuts. I actually know a
guy who works building roller coasters for amusement parks, and
(03:12):
he told me his historical thing. He won't give us tickets.
I checked, sorry, guys, sorry, ridiculous history ask but he said, uh,
he said, you know, been the interesting thing about the
history of roller coasters is I'm pretty sure the first
ones were non consensual. I said, what do you mean,
and he said, I feel like a lot of people
(03:33):
just fell down hills and died, and the ones who
lived were like, let's do it again, right.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It's like the guy who first ate a mushroom and
didn't die. I was like, you know what, that kind
of is a little bit yummy. It's almost as though
it has a fourth flavor, are called mummy, you know,
but yeah, you know, it's funny. It's like, speaking of
you know, non consensual. I mean, the earliest roller coasters
were borderline non consensual and the like. It was just
(04:01):
such an unknown people were kind of stepping consensually somewhat
into an experience that one could argue is non consensually
dangerous without their knowledge.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Right right, and big thanks to Gil Chandler for the
Massachusetts Department of Education, who says the modern day like
the purpose Flee designed thrill ride or gravity ride, goes
back to the sixteen hundreds in Russia wherein these folks
would build big high wooden ramps. They would cover them
(04:34):
with water, knowing this water would freeze and become ice.
So they were making like you know, luge courses almost
and they were about two feet wide, just enough for
a small sled, and you would have to climb a
ladder like you would for a water slide at a
water park. The ladder was pretty high, seventy feet and
(04:54):
then you would sit on the sled and then somebody
would come along at the top of the ladder, they
pushed the sled on into the ramp. You would speed
down to the bottom. You would safely, if everything worked out,
coast to a stop along a six hundred foot sort
of rampway or straight away.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah exactly. And you know, like you said if everything
went well, there certainly were things. Whenever you play with
gravity and don't have a series of kind of contingency
plans in place, there are opportunities for things to go
horribly awry. And this does kind of just remind me
of like it's like almost just controlled sledding in a way,
(05:33):
because even earlier than this, you know, you could argue
that the early roller coasters were hills with people, you know,
in these little slidy crafts known as sleighs or sleds.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah, and this is the part where some where something
like British documentarian or European documentary if they're gonna be
heard all about it is like.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Man has always found great offense in the unfast structures
of gravity. Spit in the face of God one more
time upon the worthy gig.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
May you slip and slide ye way exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I would love to hear more commercials for these kinds
of rides phrased in that in that sort of high
melodrama up Britannica points out that there were mechanical problems
a right, not mechanical problems, but you know, there were
the areas of opportunity, as HR would call them, because
once the sled goes all the way down very quickly,
(06:29):
somebody's got to haul it all.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
The way back up, right, I mean, I guess, I
guess in science y terms, this is what you might
call a simple machine. Right. It's about as simple as
it gets. And maybe they could have employed another simple machine.
The pulley and rope would have really been helpful in
hauling that thing back up. And we're gonna see a
lot of simple machines in modern coasters, like the wire
(06:53):
that literally hauls the coaster, or the chain that hauls
the coaster up that that incline that.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Royce maxically get that noise.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So the chain there, I believe, is what it's called.
We'll get to victims. But to me, guys, I don't
know about y'all. That's the scariest part of the entire
coaster is that it is a slow crawl towards death,
and then once you're in it, it's so fast and
furious part two that you don't even have a chance
to be scared. You're just screaming for out of sheer
(07:23):
joy and excitement.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I argue there's a purposeful psychological aspect to that. In
modern roller coasters because you could mute that sound now,
but the of the slow upward climb gives you just
enough time in a relatively short experience to think, was
this a mistake?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's like the sound of the chamber rotating in a good, old,
wholesome game of Russian Roulette?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Did I know you were going to say that?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Click? Not nearly as scary, right, that's.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Another kind of roller coaster. I did say that on air.
But people, If we go back to Gil Chandler, he
notes that people in big cities and rural villages alike
all dug these things that they would call ice slides.
They were built in public parks. Some really fancy aristocrats
(08:17):
had them, because again this is pre Russian Revolution. And
some of them even had lanterns so you could slide
around at night.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
A good night's slide. Who doesn't love that? Yeah? I
don't imagine too that some of these were probably pretty
ostentatious and incorporated like ice sculpturey, you know, into these
like winter wonderlands. I'm not I don't have this, you know,
on authority, but I can only imagine that certain of
the higher muckety MUCKs of the time would have insisted
on these kind of ostentatious flourishes.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Of course, these guys probably had like Siberian garden gnomes
and stuff, you know what I mean, or garden hermits,
So excuse us, excuse us. So the we do know
that they understood the elementary physics that to inform most
roller coasters a long time ago. If you look at
a ride in Saint Petersburg in seventeen eighty four, you
(09:07):
see that they had these carriages and grooved tracks that
traveled up and down small hills, all riding off the
power generated by the height and slope of that first ascent,
which is why the first hill is usually the largest
in old school coasters.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Is interesting how Soviets have a history of innovation but
also not the best safety track record, And a lot
of that has to do with just jumping right into
innovation without really thinking about how it might potentially hurt
hurt people. Yeah, one hundred percent, man shade necessarily maybe
(09:45):
mild shade, I guess. But it's true of even electronics,
Like they're known for really interesting early innovations in consumer electronics,
but also in a lot of like manufacturing flaws and
then problems in scale.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
In the Space Race echoed those same lessons. It's a
big plot point, in fact, in a story we did
for a Fantastic Fiction anthology called The Passage, in which
j Edgar Hoover talks at perhaps problematic length about the
Russian approach to progress, which is historically throwing bodies at
(10:20):
the problem. Sorry, Russian listeners, Russian ridiculous historians, that is
just historically true. This is part of the reason why
roller coasters are so awesome. To bring it back home,
the first quote unquote roller coaster didn't emerge until the
(10:42):
early eighteen hundreds, and it was a French builder who
bought what they called the Russian Mountains to Paris. And
the problem was the climate is very different. Russia is
colder than France, and so ice did freeze as well.
So the French quickly realized. It was kind of sad
(11:05):
at first. It was like, you know, when a little
bit of snow falls and people try to sled on
the snow flurry and they just get like stuck in
the mud.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Or someone trying to make a snow angel in dirty,
melty snow. It's literally just someone rolling around in wet mud.
It's really sad.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Which again is a perfect opportunity for our melodramatic, our
melodramatic European narrator. Right, it's like absolutely observe seeking angels
in the fifth.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yes, and finding only devils. So the silky DeVos. So French.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
I love this vibe we're getting so French. The French
engineers said, Okay, if we can't count on the ice,
which we cannot even back, then then will make these rollers,
these wooden rollers, and we'll still use sleds, but our
sleds will reliably roll upon these wooden contraptions. This is
(12:02):
the origin of the term roller coaster totally.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
And by the way, Ben I find eyes in general
to be quite fickle. It's so changeable, you know. Yeah,
that was a really bad science joke, you know, because
they can change states. Yeah from yeah, okay, thank you,
I liked it. I'm going to stay. I'm not leaving. No,
you should keep it. You's with you, guys. Yeah, it's
(12:26):
rolling at this point, no longer sliding.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Right right, And and they still don't quite look like
the modern roller coasters. They're definitely not safe because you know,
we've all okay, full disclosure of folks, Max Noel and I.
We're dudes, which means at some point we were dumb kids,
which means we did a lot of like jackass level
(12:50):
stunts in our childhood, like, oh, what if we do
jump off this bridge?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
We might still do that stuff, right, guys, I think
you might have me beat on that. I was a
little more of a timid child. I was afraid of
climbing trees. But y'all, I'm sure you guys did some
gnarly stuff, and I look forward to hearing about it
Pepper throughout this episode. I will say, though, as far
as roller coasters are concerned, I don't know if this
is y'all's experience, but I have to almost earn back
(13:20):
my ability to not be scared of riding them. Like
I will have a period where I don't ride a
roller coaster for a long time. Then I go to
an amusement park and it takes me a minute a
couple of times walking around the park before I can
be tough enough. I got to warm up to it.
It's not like riding a bike. It doesn't just come
back to you immediately. I sort of regain my fear
(13:42):
of death at the hands of these you know, metal
machines and then kind of gradually by watching little kids
riding them and mainly just not wanting to be embarrassed
by being the only one that waits behind while everyone
rides the ride and then has to sheepishly kind of
join them at the other side.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
I'll be honest to me, roller coasters have a way
has been kind of like kind of like a like
ice cream is a weirdly good comparison. If it's around,
I'm fine with it, but I rarely wake up and say,
let me travel to some place to get ice cream.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Or not what you'd call it. Coaster head, And I
think at a certain point in this episode we're going
to talk about some that we quite enjoy, But first
we've got more history to get through going.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Okay, so safety measures, first off, not a thing in
the early days. The injuries that passengers got were actually
the best marketing for these rides, because people would come
up to each other in Paris and say something like,
you know, Jacques ruled one of the Russian mountains, and
(14:53):
they say he'll never regain full use of his left arm,
and people are like, what.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
I gotta go. Yes, Gabrielle lost a finger.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Well that's classic Gabrielle. Let's get on this thing.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So she can't have many left at this point, right.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So in eighteen seventeen, the Belleville Mountains and the aerial
walks in Paris started adding some safety things. They added
wheels that would lock continuous tracks, and eventually they beat
that first problem we were talking about returning the car,
so they hoist They had cables that would hoist the
(15:33):
car back to the top of the hill so you
didn't have to have people pushing it. They finally did
that pulley that you're talking about. They still have not
made a continuous circle track yet.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, and if anything, this is just going to increase
their yield, you know, or their take, right because they
can have more rides per hour, per hour, you know,
per day, and not to pull the thing up by hand.
And again, Ben, where is this kind of in the
trajectory of like the history of the automobile.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
This is pre automobile, Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, and we know even the early automobiles didn't really
have very many safety features. So in a lot of ways,
it's not like they actively didn't want to have safety features,
just like technologically they kind of hadn't really you know,
cracked it yet.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
I Mean, I think one thing that's really interesting is,
and this is something I didn't know when I was
throwing the research.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
It's like parallel time with the train, the Locomo very much,
very much so, which would have had things like locking wheels,
which would have had so and especially on a track.
Absolutely makes sense Max. That is there's that parallel between
a tract train and a coaster.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Yeah, it's right interesting because they're kind of advancing I
mean train much more than the roller coaster, That's what
I'm saying, advancing the ball together in some ways.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Interesting. Surely early trains didn't have those locking wheels either
or like some of the safety mechanisms, and that's why
there were so many train derailments and horrific acts, right,
uh huh.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
And I'm sure at some point late in a night,
a Parisian engineer was speculating whether or not you can
make a coal powered roller coaster. However, we know, we
know that the idea of train cars comes in here,
especially in the United States. If we go to some
(17:22):
great work by American experience, we see we see this
sort of parallel advancement that you're referencing, Max.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
That's right. American Experience goes on to say, when the
proprietors of mauch Chunk Railway in eastern Pennsylvania began operations
in the eighteen twenties, their mission was not entertainment but
coal mining, and their first passengers were mules herded into
a train laden with cold. These lucky beasts coasted from
the top of Mount Pisga down to a canal, then
(17:55):
hauled the train back up for another go. Considering this task,
I don't know if i'd call them lucky. And then
by eighteen forty four there had been a return track lay.
And you know what it makes me think of too,
those little two person mining carts where you kind of seesaw,
you know, in order to propel the little the cart,
(18:15):
you know, on a train track. So, I mean a
lot of this stuff really is I've never thought about this, Max,
But the parallels between the technology advancements of the locomotive
absolutely parallel that of the roller coaster, only with much
lower stakes. One would argue, well.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
How, I don't know. The financial stakes are high on
the trains.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
But people, I mean, no lower on the roller coasters.
Lower stakes in terms of like, you know, how much
loss could be accrued by a derailment or accidents. Every
human life is important, every one of Gabrielle's fingers important
for some task. But you know this is like I
don't think there was there were as many eyes on
the safety track record of these early roller coasters as
(18:59):
there were maybe on the the the entire railway system
at large.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Regulatory bodies did not exist the way they exist today.
By eighteen forty four, there had been a return track
constructed for this Mount Chunk railway, and this removed the
need for the mules entirely. They dubbed this first system
the switchback And to our friends of Britannica, thanks again
(19:26):
for tuning into our Britannic episode. To our friends of Britannica,
this shows that the rail line was daring and it
was again entirely for mining coal. This is a huge improvement.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
So it is a circular track at this point, or
is a whole other route going maybe not up the
steepest part of the mountain.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Max Max is orchestrating Maxwen.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
So it's basically a straight down in one part and
then it kind of goes around in a chill path.
So the train, it's like the train couldn't on its
own power, couldn't get up the hill, like, so that's
why they needed the mules. But so yeah, now it's
a circular track the entire way, so you could, you know,
ride it if you wanted to, if.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
You wanted to, as surely some people did, but they
were at work, they may not might not have been
having the best day. They certainly weren't paying money to
ride it. This thing was pretty long. The journey downhill
is nine miles, so they would load up as many
as fourteen very heavy cars. We're talking like each car
(20:28):
having fifty thousand pounds of coal, and then it would
go down the mountain under with one guy who literally
has one brake lever and is just thinking, my time
means impeccable.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Well, and it would it would again be the same
kind of brake lever as you see whenever there's maybe
a damsel tied to the rail railroad tracks and it's
like you have to you can't just yank it, or
the whole thing's gonna just USh, you know, every all
the cars are gonna become smashed or whatever. You have
to grab dually engage it, you know, so you're slowly
losing speed instead of like because otherwise everyone would just
(21:06):
slam into the front of the car and break their necks.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And eventually the promise of danger lured in paying passengers.
Coal was still hauled in the morning. But it's kind
of it reminds me of the story. It reminds me
of the story of Hidden Valley ranch dressing, where they
started a dude ranch, but people increasingly just traveled there
to get the condiment ranch dressing. So now people are
(21:32):
increasingly showing up in the afternoon to pay. Sources differ,
but to pay something around like fifty cents per ride
just to go down that incline.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
How'd you get up in the first place? You would?
You would behind that up. Yeah, you'd be hauled up
by the mules, presumably up the gentler Like, how did
the passengers? Yeah, how would the passengers have gotten up?
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I think I think the up part was the probably
the more accessible part. I think what they were doing
is because they mined the coal at the top and
they went down and that's why guess where they processed
the coal.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I don't know, That's what it sounds like. I guess
I'm wondering if they had to walk up the mountain
by foot and then ride the cart down the mountain,
or if they were actually because it's see, I'm confused
a little bit about how it's a continuous track. No,
I see. But but I guess I'm asking is when
they're coming down from the top, there's there's obviously no mule,
and there's enough momentum generated by that mutt. That's what
(22:30):
I'm saying that I'm asking. Yeah, so there's enough momentum
generated by that for it to make the downwards slow
and then just continue back up of its own volition.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Well, it it goes around the switch back the more
level thing. And it's also you know, you have the
train there, so the train will pull it the rest
of the way.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Got it, got it, got it? Thank you enough? If
if it could.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Uh, I wanted to do an inflation calculator to give
everybody a sense of this, And so fifty I made
eighteen forty four is the equivalent a.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Lot of money ten bucks, twenty bucks, twenty dollars in
eighty ten cents this ride. So it's it's a lottable,
but it's still a lot. Well, I mean, nowadays you'd
pay for the privilege of going into an amusement park
where you can actually ride stuff without having abused tickets.
Probably fifty bucks is going to be the minimum.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I still is still one of the big problems I
have with the coolest thing at six Flags here in
Georgia for a long time, laser tag. You pay get
in the park, and then laser tag costs more money extra.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah, it's just not cool. I appreciate Max rolling his
eyes there. You've been there too, bro. I love laser tag.
I miss it. I haven't played it in years, and
I would love to. Isn't don't they don't? They do
it at Andretti's that place out in the urbs here
that does like go kart racing. I think they also
have laser tag.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Yeah, Lasertag is awesome. Six Flegs sucks well.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Okay, now I disagree. I disagree the Cedar Fair all day.
Go to Cedar Fair Park. I don't know about that, Okay,
I'll check it out. It farway near it.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yes, I'm more like hot air balloons.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Well, it turns out we'll talk about this later. There's
another park in Atlanta. I was, yes, Okay, well save it.
This is awesome.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I was just gonna say, by the way, guys, I
haven't been the Six Flags in UH at least over
a year, but I still pay my monthly subscription fee
that's about fourteen bucks. It's so little that I barely
notice it. But I am just filling the coffers of
Six Flags.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
No, no coasters given in return.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And look, when I say that I'm gay a pilot license,
I want to ride hot air balloons, I'm not at
all disparaging roller coasters. We all seek our flirtations with
death in our own manner, in our own choosing right,
so so we wish you luck on yours. We also
know that, given the mining history of roller coasters, you
(24:52):
might not be surprised to learn that enjoyment for the
passengers was a side business for these guys. It was
not there primary priorities. So as mines expand throughout nearby mountains,
this switchback thing eventually becomes less and less useful, and
they say, look, we are not making money with this
(25:16):
thing as a mining implement or as a mining process,
so let's just turn it into a tourist attraction. This
is the first scenic railway. Scenic railways have been a
thing for a long time. You can still ride scenic
railways in various parts of the Southeast, for sure. There's
(25:36):
still several in Tennessee, and some of them were pretty rough.
I remember at one time there was a scenic railway
I want to say in East Tennessee where where while
you were on the ride, part of the ride was
being attacked by quote unquote Indians and these guys dressed
(25:57):
up as indigenous people would come on and like like
haunted house, hassle you. Thankfully that doesn't happen anymore. But
with this first scenic railway, you would the ride would
start at five or ten miles an hour, and as
a passenger you were able to look at the Pocono's
(26:19):
and then you see a panoramic open quarry, a burning
mine that have been on fire since eighteen thirty two.
Nice to visit, don't want to live there. And then
by the time you hit this thing they called the
home stretch, the ride was sixty five miles an hour,
so it's kicking up.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Speed the entire time. That's right, that's huge at this point, right,
that's like, I mean, man, unbelievably fast. This is these
are speeds as yet perhaps unexperienced right by humans. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Absolutely, I mean at the it's definitely not a normal
person's day. It goes sixty five miles an hour. In
the eighteen hundreds, at the peak of his popularity, this
scenic railway carries something like thirty five thousand passengers a year.
There were special trains run to accommodate the tourists and
the enthusiasts. The more intentional roller coasters follow after this,
(27:17):
they echo this, and it all goes back to eighteen
seventy two. A guy named J. G. Taylor from Baltimore.
He is, if you played that game roller Coaster Tycoon? Yeah,
I love that game.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It's so fun. This this guy's kind of like, would
be would be roller Coaster Tycot? Couldn't you build them
real dangerous on purpose and stuff like that? Wasn'tless a
part of the fun of that game? Yes?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah, as long as losses are acceptable or within an
acceptable march, win the game. This guy, JG. Taylor, he submitsmall.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Tycoons have an initial I just want to ask you
gotta be you know or whatever? JK, that's such a
tycoon thing to do. Sorry, please carry out.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Oh, this guy, a Baltimore native, JG. Taylor, submits what
was likely the first patent for roller coaster. People debate it,
but he called it improvement and in kind railways.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah, it does strike me as a thing that would
be a little tricky to patent, like all in right,
because I mean, no one owns gravity, right, No one
owns the manipulation of gravity with wheels. So I imagine you
could patent a roller coaster design, you know, for the way,
or a particular type of mechanic that like hauled you
(28:40):
up and dropped you down or whatever it might be,
perhaps even like a type of means of distributing electricity.
But I can't imagine one could fully own the concept
of a roller coaster. So what happened here?
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Well after that, there's a patent in eighteen seventy eight
by a guy named Richard Knudsen, and he's in Brooklyn.
He's a Brooklyn kid, and invention to your point about
specifying the mechanics or the construction everything, that's what he does.
His invention is two parallel sets of tracks, each of
which progresses from some height down to ground level. And
(29:15):
the car descends one set of tracks and then it's
raised by a lift to the top of the other
set of tracks. So it goes back and forth all day.
It's a pretty small operation, the ways picturing, and it
carries about four people at a time. And he never
actually built it, but he called it the inclined plane railway.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
The inclined plane Okay, the ramp, yeah, exactly. And you know,
obviously this is the kind of thing where you can
try to patent it. You could do that, but it's
so easy for him to make one little change and
then all of a sudden it's kind of its own thing.
And that's how you.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, there is one carries five people, and so on.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Can you patent the wind? Ben?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Can you paint with all the colors of it?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I can pay with most of them. One of them
is continues to elude me.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
So we have to we have to continue the story
with a guy named LaMarcus. aDNA Thompson.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
I love a LaMarcus.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
I knew LaMarcus.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
That means the Marcus. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
By the end of the eighteen hundreds, these American trolley
companies were in on the game. They were building amusement
parks at the very end the terminus point of their
lines to attract people looking for amusements. You know, you're courting,
you're out on the gas take. Yeah, you're taking the
(30:38):
kids out this trolley terminus thing. The most famous is
probably Coney Island in New York City. Have you guys
been to Coney Island?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Dude, I love it. I've r in the Wonder Wheel
a couple of one coaster. I think it wasn't a
crazy one. It was maybe like a sort of a
smaller one. But the Wonder Wheel is class second. I
just love the vibes. Man, It's just a it makes
you feel like you're stepping into history, a lot of
interesting American history in that place. You can feel.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, Coney Island was the place to be for quite
a long time. It also became home to several theme
parks that were in competition. So, like, if you enjoy
amusement parks, folks, imagine it similar to you know, every
town or every big city has a couple of roads
(31:27):
that are just filled with dealerships, car dealerships, and they're
like right next to each other, right across the street
from each other. Coney Island was doing this with amusement
parks for a while, or theme parks.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I think even to this day, there's two. There's like
Luna Park and then there's the other one that's sort
of across the way, and they still somewhat compete, even
though it all just feels like Coney Island. And it's
very likely that you'll do both because neither of them
are like particularly massive.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And they have the hot dog eating contest.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Which I've never seen personally, but I do love.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Attend in person.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I think it would be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
So Coney Island has a lot of their stuff is
inspired by the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in eighteen
ninety three. Also check out The Devil in the White City,
a fantastic book about the about the exposition and the
serial killer H. H.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Holmes.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Just gonna throw that in there.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Thanks Maxx.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
They popularize the hot dog as American food, you know,
the Frankfurture, a European invention. Anyway, into this milieu stros
Lemarcus Adma Thompson. He is considered and what a cool
(32:45):
street name is this? What a cool honorific. He is
considered the father of the gravity, the father of the gravity.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yes, yes, not just gravity. Okay, well, I mean at.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Least gravity is like a you know, a roller coaster.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It's like the knowledge you know. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, okay,
fair enough. Sorry, it's really easy to take that as
like I am God, the father of yes for people. Yeah,
God is the actual father of gravity or the actual
creator of gravity, but the gravity is different.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
This guy, uh has a weird description in the American experience.
He is called quote a Sunday school teacher and dime
store moralist. He thinks you're gonna say moron, that would
have been funny. I don't even know what a dime
store moron would be. But like he looks at amusement
parks and he's one of those shake your fist at
(33:40):
the sky. I hate the stuff the kids like. And
he says these amusement parks are sinful, they need redemption. Uh.
But still his switchback railway gets built, and Cody, well, bro.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
I mean, think about it. I can imagine that some
purists at the time, or puritanical folks, would take great
issue with the idea of cheating gravity because that is
not what God intended. God intended for us to have
our two feet on the earth, you know, not to
be flying around willy and or nilly in the sky
on these these metal monstrosities.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yeah, and this is this is the thing it's like
for I picture LaMarcus Thompson saying privately to himself in
the night, Oh, the delicious forbidden pleasure, to deny the
gravities of God, if only for a moment. Anyway, he
does make this thing that is called the gravity pleasure ride,
(34:40):
and off air. Several weeks ago, we were all talking
in one of our one of our many group threads
about whether the term gravity pleasure ride is inherently dirty.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I just it sounds like handstuff to me. I don't know.
There we go. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
It was based on nuts and system from Brooklyn and
this switchback railway quickly or like they charge people a
nickel a ride and in just a few hours, like
per day they make six hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Now that's a big desiree steep discount from the railroad. Yes,
discounts sense right, well, very yeah, but I mean that's
pretty wild. So they're they're I think the deal is
it's so centrally located that they're just turning over riders
and this thing is easily you know, reloaded over and
over and over and over again, every hour on the hour.
(35:33):
So yeah, what would you say, Ben, I'm making about
six hundred and six fifty a day.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Six hundred bucks a day, yeah, a nick at a
nickel pop per passenger. So in like three weeks, this
entire contraption pays for itself. But it's not what you
would think of as a modern roller coaster or even
a scenic railway. It's got a top speed of about
six miles an hour, and it's kind of you know
(35:59):
how a lot of theme parks will have this sort
of introductory quote unquote four kids roller coaster, right, like
six Flags over Georgia, yes, whatever, exactly, get a couple
hard turns. So that's what this thing is. However, it
(36:19):
made a lot of money, and this dime store moralist,
which is still a confusing term to me. Uh he says, Okay, well,
surely God doesn't want me to be poor, so I'm
going to go all in on this roller coaster.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
That's like some prosperity gospel stuff, right, and the American
Experience goes on saying that was all the encouragement Thompson
needed to apply his ingenuity to its fullest for his
orient Scenic Railway in Atlantic City. I just can never
get over that, the exoticism of all that, the use
of that term. You still see it sometimes today. And
(36:59):
you'll even go to like kind of you know, traveling carnivals,
you know that go from town to town, and you
can see some remnants of this kind of stuff, and
in some of these like air brushed, you know, these
collapsible rides and these gates. I gotta say this.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
I remember being a kid like elementary school, and you know,
so it's a minute since then, and uh, when it
was like a standardized testing and one of the choices
for like race was orient and I didn't know what
that was. But this is in nineties, and I remember
ask my parents like, yeah, I don't use that term.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Don't use that one.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I remember my parents saw me always put other uh.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
And for some reason though, the only area where it
seems I don't I still not argue appropriate but really
common is with rugs. Right, you still see them all
over the place as Oriental rugs. And I just don't
understand how that sort of made it, you know, it's
to still be around as prominently as it is.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
It's kind of like when you're walking around different parts
of New York and you still see the double headed
fire hose faucets and they say this is a Siamese
fawcet or Siamese pump. I take pictures of those with
my girlfriend whenever we're traveling out there, because her family
(38:15):
is from Thailand. But anyway, yes, language is weird. It's
an old this is an older legacy thing. It is
a bad name, all agreed. Our boy LaMarcus discovers, Okay,
America experience does another phrase that I think is weird.
Here they say La Marcus rediscovered the French trick of
(38:37):
pulling the cars up the first hill by cable, and
I love the I love the vague mystery of oh
the French.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Trick, Yes, you know stuff? Yeah, what is the French trick?
With the gravity pleasure ride? We are really getting steamy here, folks.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
So he also did a couple other I saw that
hand signal Max. He also did a couple of other
uh innovations, we could say mechanical innovations. He makes these
triggers under the tracks that can stop the ride if
something goes like a kill switch, an emergency cable. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Like you know, if you've been on some older trains
(39:19):
sometimes they'll have a cable at the top that you
can pull. Sure where beat me here, max where, Like
the oh shit handle is in a passenger.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Car, sure, or even on a treadmill where there's a
big red button in case things get out of hand.
You slam that big red button and it'll cause the
whole thing to come screeching to a halt.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
He also built tunnels, so you would be riding all
of a sudden you're in darkness, right and uh. By
eighteen eighty eight, this guy has become an actual roller
coaster tycoon. He's like, take that, you patent nerds of
previous years. I've actually built the thing. I've build like
(40:01):
fifty I think fifty roller coasters across Europe in America
had thirty patents in his own right. The guy's a beast.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
This is an opportunity here for a quick discussion that
I'm curious about what you guys think. Like, obviously, in theory,
something on paper you know that's been approved for construction.
Everything should be able to be planned out to the
last detail, with tolerances within a certain level of acceptability,
et cetera, especially in modern times. But back then, don't
(40:30):
you think that sometimes you had to build the thing
to even figure out what the problem might be. Like,
could you plan everything within levels of perfection just on paper?
You need both is the.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Thing, which is why, you know, going back to our
model training episode, that's why they had to build model
trains after they had figured it out on paper, right,
so they could before they you know, plunge into building
a full size, very expensive contraption. That things happens on
the way to his tycoon hoood is that we see
(41:04):
our boy Labarcus gets this, I would say, gets to
a crossroad about some of his high fluting ethics of
what should or shouldn't be fun and he monetizes some
scenic views from the Bible in a ride called Dragon's Gorge.
(41:25):
This is incredibly influential. There's a lot of elaborate scenery
now right Like previously you would just build these things
maybe around a nice natural vista, but now they're actually
building the scenery through which the ride occurs.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
One hundred percent, which is like part of the attraction.
At this point where you're you're almost like uh in
you're being transported into like a magical world, you know,
where there's like things to look at along the way,
and then obviously you know, if you look at Disney
this would go on to extend even into the lines,
you know, waiting in the having the themed attractions, which
I'm not gonna lie man. Part of what I really
(42:05):
enjoyed about going to Disney World as an adult was
waiting in the lines. There's a lot of cool stuff
to look at as you progress through those cues. You know,
it's like being in a transported into this kind of
world where every detail is paid attention to.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
I liked, I love the immersive environment. I'm all about
that kind of stuff. I will say that as a
child being kind of like forced to go into roller coasters,
I have some I actually almost died on a rituals
coaster in childhood. We'll get to that part to me,
But for me, sometimes, like if you're a kid and
(42:39):
you're going to take a scary ride like Space Mountain
and Disneyland, waiting in the line is sort of a
longer version of that.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Oh my god, you're right, And I have to say
I distinctly remember being absolutely terrified by Space Mountain when
I was a kid, and when I just went, you know,
a few years ago as an adult, I didn't find
it boring or any thing. But I found it a
little tame, you know. Yeah, but when you're a kid,
it's like there's a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Is dark in the dark.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Yeah, No, for sure, no question about it.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
I found it terrifying as adult because I'm like, oh
my god, this thing feels like it's about a fall apart.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
That's true. That's true. No one dies at Disney, guys. No,
they get they get trundled off site where they officially
or declared death. That's not entire it's sort of true.
There's we I don't know, a topic for another day or
check out our episode and stuff they don't want you
to know about.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Right, And at this point we are still kind of
in line for the ride. There are a lot of
things that are going to go down in episode two
of Ridiculous History roller Coasters, which is maybe when we
return in part two, we'll study the arms race that
occurs when everybody figures out people are super into feeling
(43:55):
like they might die for about two minutes. With that,
thank you as always to our super producer mister Max
Williams also a research associate for this episode. Let's see
No gosh our credits get longer and longer, which I
absolutely love. Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister, do you think
he likes roller coasters?
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I you know, we should ask him. We should ask him.
I know he likes Disney. But that's the thing about Disney.
It's not very roller coaster heavy. They've got this new
that they've been leaning more into the thrill rides lately,
it seems like, but in general it hasn't been their
primary focus. They've got this new Tron ride which seems
incredible though, and the Guardians of the Galaxy Rye, which
(44:35):
is also partially in the dark, is a coaster and
it's indoor and it's really really cool too.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Jonathan seems like a tepagud who likes the line like
he wasted the line again, the.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Line is the ride amazing.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
It's all about the journey, guys. It's about the journey
and the food. They have really cool, interesting eclectic food
at Disney as much. Actually look forward to going back.
So thanks to Jonathan aj Bahamas. I don't know if
he doesn't strike me as a coaster guy, but unless
he was doing a deep dive where he only traveled
by roller coast.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, the year of traveling by coaster.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
What you would do? Also thanks to East Jeff Coat,
who will be spoiler returning soon thanks to our fellow
Ben Ben Thompson Badass of the week check that out.
Thanks also recording with him this week I believe. Yes, yeah,
he's on the way as well. Yes, spoilers and let's
see and also you know, thanks to you, Ben, I'll
(45:29):
take it. Thanks to you as well. We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Throw your hands up in the air. I'm been bowling.
Joined as always with the inimical, the imminent mister Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hello have you guys? You guys know that Smashing Pumpkins
song in nineteen seventy nine, No what is music exactly? Who?
What even his music? Well, there's a really great meme
where it's a Billy Corgan writing a roller coaster. That's
the title of the meme and it's from the perspective
of someone writing a roller coast and he goes and
we you know, don't even care where they just extend
(01:07):
the Wii. And last thing, there's another amazing roller coaster
related image of Billy Corgan. This is actually of him
looking really bummed out on a roller coaster, just sitting
there with I guess presumably his manager, looking about as
crestfallen as one could be in the happiest place on earth.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Last of our last of first things shout out to,
of course Red Hot Chili Peppers Roller Coaster of Love.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
People, how do America soundtrack? Uh huh? Excellent version of
that tune.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
So, folks, you're probably wondering what we're talking about in
this week's series, which is an on purpose two parter.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
We did it. We figured it.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Out in advance. This time we are talking about roller
coasters upside down on the dip dip dip A.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Have you ever have you.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Ever been just on your regular feet, on the regular
ground and thought this is disappointing.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Maybe there's more good exactly? Oh man, what if we
what if we put ourselves in this situation where we
were purposely under duress?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
What if it felt like I was dying? And it's
funny because just for a second though, and how how
cool would it be if I waited in line up
to two hours before I had that rush? It's like
what if what if drugs were slower and then emerged
from the whole experience not dead, and we had renewed
lease on life and looking for your phone and your
(02:30):
hat and your parents limb or your kids. Yeah, so
this is this is the great noble dare we say
universal human impetus behind roller coasters, behind seeking thrills, The
modern roller coasters, we know, are pretty much multimillion dollar
(02:51):
operations at this point, and they're they're in an arms
race of hyperbole. What's the what's the tallest, what's the fastest,
what's the longest, et cetera, et cetera. But the idea
of a roller coaster the nuts. I actually know a
guy who works building roller coasters for amusement parks, and
(03:12):
he told me his historical thing. He won't give us tickets.
I checked, sorry, guys, sorry, ridiculous history ask but he said, uh,
he said, you know, been the interesting thing about the
history of roller coasters is I'm pretty sure the first
ones were non consensual. I said, what do you mean,
and he said, I feel like a lot of people
(03:33):
just fell down hills and died, and the ones who
lived were like, let's do it again, right.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It's like the guy who first ate a mushroom and
didn't die. I was like, you know what, that kind
of is a little bit yummy. It's almost as though
it has a fourth flavor, are called mummy, you know,
but yeah, you know, it's funny. It's like, speaking of
you know, non consensual. I mean, the earliest roller coasters
were borderline non consensual and the like. It was just
(04:01):
such an unknown people were kind of stepping consensually somewhat
into an experience that one could argue is non consensually
dangerous without their knowledge.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Right right, and big thanks to Gil Chandler for the
Massachusetts Department of Education, who says the modern day like
the purpose Flee designed thrill ride or gravity ride, goes
back to the sixteen hundreds in Russia wherein these folks
would build big high wooden ramps. They would cover them
(04:34):
with water, knowing this water would freeze and become ice.
So they were making like you know, luge courses almost
and they were about two feet wide, just enough for
a small sled, and you would have to climb a
ladder like you would for a water slide at a
water park. The ladder was pretty high, seventy feet and
(04:54):
then you would sit on the sled and then somebody
would come along at the top of the ladder, they
pushed the sled on into the ramp. You would speed
down to the bottom. You would safely, if everything worked out,
coast to a stop along a six hundred foot sort
of rampway or straight away.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah exactly. And you know, like you said if everything
went well, there certainly were things. Whenever you play with
gravity and don't have a series of kind of contingency
plans in place, there are opportunities for things to go
horribly awry. And this does kind of just remind me
of like it's like almost just controlled sledding in a way,
(05:33):
because even earlier than this, you know, you could argue
that the early roller coasters were hills with people, you know,
in these little slidy crafts known as sleighs or sleds.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah, and this is the part where some where something
like British documentarian or European documentary if they're gonna be
heard all about it is like.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Man has always found great offense in the unfast structures
of gravity. Spit in the face of God one more
time upon the worthy gig.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
May you slip and slide ye way exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I would love to hear more commercials for these kinds
of rides phrased in that in that sort of high
melodrama up Britannica points out that there were mechanical problems
a right, not mechanical problems, but you know, there were
the areas of opportunity, as HR would call them, because
once the sled goes all the way down very quickly,
(06:29):
somebody's got to haul it all.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
The way back up, right, I mean, I guess, I
guess in science y terms, this is what you might
call a simple machine. Right. It's about as simple as
it gets. And maybe they could have employed another simple machine.
The pulley and rope would have really been helpful in
hauling that thing back up. And we're gonna see a
lot of simple machines in modern coasters, like the wire
(06:53):
that literally hauls the coaster, or the chain that hauls
the coaster up that that incline that.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Royce maxically get that noise.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So the chain there, I believe, is what it's called.
We'll get to victims. But to me, guys, I don't
know about y'all. That's the scariest part of the entire
coaster is that it is a slow crawl towards death,
and then once you're in it, it's so fast and
furious part two that you don't even have a chance
to be scared. You're just screaming for out of sheer
(07:23):
joy and excitement.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I argue there's a purposeful psychological aspect to that. In
modern roller coasters because you could mute that sound now,
but the of the slow upward climb gives you just
enough time in a relatively short experience to think, was
this a mistake?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's like the sound of the chamber rotating in a good, old,
wholesome game of Russian Roulette?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Did I know you were going to say that?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Click? Not nearly as scary, right, that's.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Another kind of roller coaster. I did say that on air.
But people, If we go back to Gil Chandler, he
notes that people in big cities and rural villages alike
all dug these things that they would call ice slides.
They were built in public parks. Some really fancy aristocrats
(08:17):
had them, because again this is pre Russian Revolution. And
some of them even had lanterns so you could slide
around at night.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
A good night's slide. Who doesn't love that? Yeah? I
don't imagine too that some of these were probably pretty
ostentatious and incorporated like ice sculpturey, you know, into these
like winter wonderlands. I'm not I don't have this, you know,
on authority, but I can only imagine that certain of
the higher muckety MUCKs of the time would have insisted
on these kind of ostentatious flourishes.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Of course, these guys probably had like Siberian garden gnomes
and stuff, you know what I mean, or garden hermits,
So excuse us, excuse us. So the we do know
that they understood the elementary physics that to inform most
roller coasters a long time ago. If you look at
a ride in Saint Petersburg in seventeen eighty four, you
(09:07):
see that they had these carriages and grooved tracks that
traveled up and down small hills, all riding off the
power generated by the height and slope of that first ascent,
which is why the first hill is usually the largest
in old school coasters.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Is interesting how Soviets have a history of innovation but
also not the best safety track record, And a lot
of that has to do with just jumping right into
innovation without really thinking about how it might potentially hurt
hurt people. Yeah, one hundred percent, man shade necessarily maybe
(09:45):
mild shade, I guess. But it's true of even electronics,
Like they're known for really interesting early innovations in consumer electronics,
but also in a lot of like manufacturing flaws and
then problems in scale.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
In the Space Race echoed those same lessons. It's a
big plot point, in fact, in a story we did
for a Fantastic Fiction anthology called The Passage, in which
j Edgar Hoover talks at perhaps problematic length about the
Russian approach to progress, which is historically throwing bodies at
(10:20):
the problem. Sorry, Russian listeners, Russian ridiculous historians, that is
just historically true. This is part of the reason why
roller coasters are so awesome. To bring it back home,
the first quote unquote roller coaster didn't emerge until the
(10:42):
early eighteen hundreds, and it was a French builder who
bought what they called the Russian Mountains to Paris. And
the problem was the climate is very different. Russia is
colder than France, and so ice did freeze as well.
So the French quickly realized. It was kind of sad
(11:05):
at first. It was like, you know, when a little
bit of snow falls and people try to sled on
the snow flurry and they just get like stuck in
the mud.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Or someone trying to make a snow angel in dirty,
melty snow. It's literally just someone rolling around in wet mud.
It's really sad.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Which again is a perfect opportunity for our melodramatic, our
melodramatic European narrator. Right, it's like absolutely observe seeking angels
in the fifth.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yes, and finding only devils. So the silky DeVos. So French.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
I love this vibe we're getting so French. The French
engineers said, Okay, if we can't count on the ice,
which we cannot even back, then then will make these rollers,
these wooden rollers, and we'll still use sleds, but our
sleds will reliably roll upon these wooden contraptions. This is
(12:02):
the origin of the term roller coaster totally.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
And by the way, Ben I find eyes in general
to be quite fickle. It's so changeable, you know. Yeah,
that was a really bad science joke, you know, because
they can change states. Yeah from yeah, okay, thank you,
I liked it. I'm going to stay. I'm not leaving. No,
you should keep it. You's with you, guys. Yeah, it's
(12:26):
rolling at this point, no longer sliding.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Right right, And and they still don't quite look like
the modern roller coasters. They're definitely not safe because you know,
we've all okay, full disclosure of folks, Max Noel and I.
We're dudes, which means at some point we were dumb kids,
which means we did a lot of like jackass level
(12:50):
stunts in our childhood, like, oh, what if we do
jump off this bridge?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
We might still do that stuff, right, guys, I think
you might have me beat on that. I was a
little more of a timid child. I was afraid of
climbing trees. But y'all, I'm sure you guys did some
gnarly stuff, and I look forward to hearing about it
Pepper throughout this episode. I will say, though, as far
as roller coasters are concerned, I don't know if this
is y'all's experience, but I have to almost earn back
(13:20):
my ability to not be scared of riding them. Like
I will have a period where I don't ride a
roller coaster for a long time. Then I go to
an amusement park and it takes me a minute a
couple of times walking around the park before I can
be tough enough. I got to warm up to it.
It's not like riding a bike. It doesn't just come
back to you immediately. I sort of regain my fear
(13:42):
of death at the hands of these you know, metal
machines and then kind of gradually by watching little kids
riding them and mainly just not wanting to be embarrassed
by being the only one that waits behind while everyone
rides the ride and then has to sheepishly kind of
join them at the other side.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
I'll be honest to me, roller coasters have a way
has been kind of like kind of like a like
ice cream is a weirdly good comparison. If it's around,
I'm fine with it, but I rarely wake up and say,
let me travel to some place to get ice cream.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Or not what you'd call it. Coaster head, And I
think at a certain point in this episode we're going
to talk about some that we quite enjoy, But first
we've got more history to get through going.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Okay, so safety measures, first off, not a thing in
the early days. The injuries that passengers got were actually
the best marketing for these rides, because people would come
up to each other in Paris and say something like,
you know, Jacques ruled one of the Russian mountains, and
(14:53):
they say he'll never regain full use of his left arm,
and people are like, what.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
I gotta go. Yes, Gabrielle lost a finger.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Well that's classic Gabrielle. Let's get on this thing.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So she can't have many left at this point, right.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So in eighteen seventeen, the Belleville Mountains and the aerial
walks in Paris started adding some safety things. They added
wheels that would lock continuous tracks, and eventually they beat
that first problem we were talking about returning the car,
so they hoist They had cables that would hoist the
(15:33):
car back to the top of the hill so you
didn't have to have people pushing it. They finally did
that pulley that you're talking about. They still have not
made a continuous circle track yet.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, and if anything, this is just going to increase
their yield, you know, or their take, right because they
can have more rides per hour, per hour, you know,
per day, and not to pull the thing up by hand.
And again, Ben, where is this kind of in the
trajectory of like the history of the automobile.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
This is pre automobile, Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, and we know even the early automobiles didn't really
have very many safety features. So in a lot of ways,
it's not like they actively didn't want to have safety features,
just like technologically they kind of hadn't really you know,
cracked it yet.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
I Mean, I think one thing that's really interesting is,
and this is something I didn't know when I was
throwing the research.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
It's like parallel time with the train, the Locomo very much,
very much so, which would have had things like locking wheels,
which would have had so and especially on a track.
Absolutely makes sense Max. That is there's that parallel between
a tract train and a coaster.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Yeah, it's right interesting because they're kind of advancing I
mean train much more than the roller coaster, That's what
I'm saying, advancing the ball together in some ways.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Interesting. Surely early trains didn't have those locking wheels either
or like some of the safety mechanisms, and that's why
there were so many train derailments and horrific acts, right,
uh huh.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
And I'm sure at some point late in a night,
a Parisian engineer was speculating whether or not you can
make a coal powered roller coaster. However, we know, we
know that the idea of train cars comes in here,
especially in the United States. If we go to some
(17:22):
great work by American experience, we see we see this
sort of parallel advancement that you're referencing, Max.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
That's right. American Experience goes on to say, when the
proprietors of mauch Chunk Railway in eastern Pennsylvania began operations
in the eighteen twenties, their mission was not entertainment but
coal mining, and their first passengers were mules herded into
a train laden with cold. These lucky beasts coasted from
the top of Mount Pisga down to a canal, then
(17:55):
hauled the train back up for another go. Considering this task,
I don't know if i'd call them lucky. And then
by eighteen forty four there had been a return track lay.
And you know what it makes me think of too,
those little two person mining carts where you kind of seesaw,
you know, in order to propel the little the cart,
(18:15):
you know, on a train track. So, I mean a
lot of this stuff really is I've never thought about this, Max,
But the parallels between the technology advancements of the locomotive
absolutely parallel that of the roller coaster, only with much
lower stakes. One would argue, well.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
How, I don't know. The financial stakes are high on
the trains.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
But people, I mean, no lower on the roller coasters.
Lower stakes in terms of like, you know, how much
loss could be accrued by a derailment or accidents. Every
human life is important, every one of Gabrielle's fingers important
for some task. But you know this is like I
don't think there was there were as many eyes on
the safety track record of these early roller coasters as
(18:59):
there were maybe on the the the entire railway system
at large.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Regulatory bodies did not exist the way they exist today.
By eighteen forty four, there had been a return track
constructed for this Mount Chunk railway, and this removed the
need for the mules entirely. They dubbed this first system
the switchback And to our friends of Britannica, thanks again
(19:26):
for tuning into our Britannic episode. To our friends of Britannica,
this shows that the rail line was daring and it
was again entirely for mining coal. This is a huge improvement.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
So it is a circular track at this point, or
is a whole other route going maybe not up the
steepest part of the mountain.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Max Max is orchestrating Maxwen.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
So it's basically a straight down in one part and
then it kind of goes around in a chill path.
So the train, it's like the train couldn't on its
own power, couldn't get up the hill, like, so that's
why they needed the mules. But so yeah, now it's
a circular track the entire way, so you could, you know,
ride it if you wanted to, if.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
You wanted to, as surely some people did, but they
were at work, they may not might not have been
having the best day. They certainly weren't paying money to
ride it. This thing was pretty long. The journey downhill
is nine miles, so they would load up as many
as fourteen very heavy cars. We're talking like each car
(20:28):
having fifty thousand pounds of coal, and then it would
go down the mountain under with one guy who literally
has one brake lever and is just thinking, my time
means impeccable.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Well, and it would it would again be the same
kind of brake lever as you see whenever there's maybe
a damsel tied to the rail railroad tracks and it's
like you have to you can't just yank it, or
the whole thing's gonna just USh, you know, every all
the cars are gonna become smashed or whatever. You have
to grab dually engage it, you know, so you're slowly
losing speed instead of like because otherwise everyone would just
(21:06):
slam into the front of the car and break their necks.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And eventually the promise of danger lured in paying passengers.
Coal was still hauled in the morning. But it's kind
of it reminds me of the story. It reminds me
of the story of Hidden Valley ranch dressing, where they
started a dude ranch, but people increasingly just traveled there
to get the condiment ranch dressing. So now people are
(21:32):
increasingly showing up in the afternoon to pay. Sources differ,
but to pay something around like fifty cents per ride
just to go down that incline.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
How'd you get up in the first place? You would?
You would behind that up. Yeah, you'd be hauled up
by the mules, presumably up the gentler Like, how did
the passengers? Yeah, how would the passengers have gotten up?
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I think I think the up part was the probably
the more accessible part. I think what they were doing
is because they mined the coal at the top and
they went down and that's why guess where they processed
the coal.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I don't know, That's what it sounds like. I guess
I'm wondering if they had to walk up the mountain
by foot and then ride the cart down the mountain,
or if they were actually because it's see, I'm confused
a little bit about how it's a continuous track. No,
I see. But but I guess I'm asking is when
they're coming down from the top, there's there's obviously no mule,
and there's enough momentum generated by that mutt. That's what
(22:30):
I'm saying that I'm asking. Yeah, so there's enough momentum
generated by that for it to make the downwards slow
and then just continue back up of its own volition.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Well, it it goes around the switch back the more
level thing. And it's also you know, you have the
train there, so the train will pull it the rest
of the way.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Got it, got it, got it? Thank you enough? If
if it could.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Uh, I wanted to do an inflation calculator to give
everybody a sense of this, And so fifty I made
eighteen forty four is the equivalent a.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Lot of money ten bucks, twenty bucks, twenty dollars in
eighty ten cents this ride. So it's it's a lottable,
but it's still a lot. Well, I mean, nowadays you'd
pay for the privilege of going into an amusement park
where you can actually ride stuff without having abused tickets.
Probably fifty bucks is going to be the minimum.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I still is still one of the big problems I
have with the coolest thing at six Flags here in
Georgia for a long time, laser tag. You pay get
in the park, and then laser tag costs more money extra.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah, it's just not cool. I appreciate Max rolling his
eyes there. You've been there too, bro. I love laser tag.
I miss it. I haven't played it in years, and
I would love to. Isn't don't they don't? They do
it at Andretti's that place out in the urbs here
that does like go kart racing. I think they also
have laser tag.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Yeah, Lasertag is awesome. Six Flegs sucks well.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Okay, now I disagree. I disagree the Cedar Fair all day.
Go to Cedar Fair Park. I don't know about that, Okay,
I'll check it out. It farway near it.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yes, I'm more like hot air balloons.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Well, it turns out we'll talk about this later. There's
another park in Atlanta. I was, yes, Okay, well save it.
This is awesome.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I was just gonna say, by the way, guys, I
haven't been the Six Flags in UH at least over
a year, but I still pay my monthly subscription fee
that's about fourteen bucks. It's so little that I barely
notice it. But I am just filling the coffers of
Six Flags.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
No, no coasters given in return.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And look, when I say that I'm gay a pilot license,
I want to ride hot air balloons, I'm not at
all disparaging roller coasters. We all seek our flirtations with
death in our own manner, in our own choosing right,
so so we wish you luck on yours. We also
know that, given the mining history of roller coasters, you
(24:52):
might not be surprised to learn that enjoyment for the
passengers was a side business for these guys. It was
not there primary priorities. So as mines expand throughout nearby mountains,
this switchback thing eventually becomes less and less useful, and
they say, look, we are not making money with this
(25:16):
thing as a mining implement or as a mining process,
so let's just turn it into a tourist attraction. This
is the first scenic railway. Scenic railways have been a
thing for a long time. You can still ride scenic
railways in various parts of the Southeast, for sure. There's
(25:36):
still several in Tennessee, and some of them were pretty rough.
I remember at one time there was a scenic railway
I want to say in East Tennessee where where while
you were on the ride, part of the ride was
being attacked by quote unquote Indians and these guys dressed
(25:57):
up as indigenous people would come on and like like
haunted house, hassle you. Thankfully that doesn't happen anymore. But
with this first scenic railway, you would the ride would
start at five or ten miles an hour, and as
a passenger you were able to look at the Pocono's
(26:19):
and then you see a panoramic open quarry, a burning
mine that have been on fire since eighteen thirty two.
Nice to visit, don't want to live there. And then
by the time you hit this thing they called the
home stretch, the ride was sixty five miles an hour,
so it's kicking up.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Speed the entire time. That's right, that's huge at this point, right,
that's like, I mean, man, unbelievably fast. This is these
are speeds as yet perhaps unexperienced right by humans. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Absolutely, I mean at the it's definitely not a normal
person's day. It goes sixty five miles an hour. In
the eighteen hundreds, at the peak of his popularity, this
scenic railway carries something like thirty five thousand passengers a year.
There were special trains run to accommodate the tourists and
the enthusiasts. The more intentional roller coasters follow after this,
(27:17):
they echo this, and it all goes back to eighteen
seventy two. A guy named J. G. Taylor from Baltimore.
He is, if you played that game roller Coaster Tycoon? Yeah,
I love that game.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It's so fun. This this guy's kind of like, would
be would be roller Coaster Tycot? Couldn't you build them
real dangerous on purpose and stuff like that? Wasn'tless a
part of the fun of that game? Yes?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah, as long as losses are acceptable or within an
acceptable march, win the game. This guy, JG. Taylor, he submitsmall.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Tycoons have an initial I just want to ask you
gotta be you know or whatever? JK, that's such a
tycoon thing to do. Sorry, please carry out.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Oh, this guy, a Baltimore native, JG. Taylor, submits what
was likely the first patent for roller coaster. People debate it,
but he called it improvement and in kind railways.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah, it does strike me as a thing that would
be a little tricky to patent, like all in right,
because I mean, no one owns gravity, right, No one
owns the manipulation of gravity with wheels. So I imagine you
could patent a roller coaster design, you know, for the way,
or a particular type of mechanic that like hauled you
(28:40):
up and dropped you down or whatever it might be,
perhaps even like a type of means of distributing electricity.
But I can't imagine one could fully own the concept
of a roller coaster. So what happened here?
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Well after that, there's a patent in eighteen seventy eight
by a guy named Richard Knudsen, and he's in Brooklyn.
He's a Brooklyn kid, and invention to your point about
specifying the mechanics or the construction everything, that's what he does.
His invention is two parallel sets of tracks, each of
which progresses from some height down to ground level. And
(29:15):
the car descends one set of tracks and then it's
raised by a lift to the top of the other
set of tracks. So it goes back and forth all day.
It's a pretty small operation, the ways picturing, and it
carries about four people at a time. And he never
actually built it, but he called it the inclined plane railway.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
The inclined plane Okay, the ramp, yeah, exactly. And you know,
obviously this is the kind of thing where you can
try to patent it. You could do that, but it's
so easy for him to make one little change and
then all of a sudden it's kind of its own thing.
And that's how you.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, there is one carries five people, and so on.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Can you patent the wind? Ben?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Can you paint with all the colors of it?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I can pay with most of them. One of them
is continues to elude me.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
So we have to we have to continue the story
with a guy named LaMarcus. aDNA Thompson.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
I love a LaMarcus.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
I knew LaMarcus.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
That means the Marcus. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
By the end of the eighteen hundreds, these American trolley
companies were in on the game. They were building amusement
parks at the very end the terminus point of their
lines to attract people looking for amusements. You know, you're courting,
you're out on the gas take. Yeah, you're taking the
(30:38):
kids out this trolley terminus thing. The most famous is
probably Coney Island in New York City. Have you guys
been to Coney Island?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Dude, I love it. I've r in the Wonder Wheel
a couple of one coaster. I think it wasn't a
crazy one. It was maybe like a sort of a
smaller one. But the Wonder Wheel is class second. I
just love the vibes. Man, It's just a it makes
you feel like you're stepping into history, a lot of
interesting American history in that place. You can feel.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, Coney Island was the place to be for quite
a long time. It also became home to several theme
parks that were in competition. So, like, if you enjoy
amusement parks, folks, imagine it similar to you know, every
town or every big city has a couple of roads
(31:27):
that are just filled with dealerships, car dealerships, and they're
like right next to each other, right across the street
from each other. Coney Island was doing this with amusement
parks for a while, or theme parks.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I think even to this day, there's two. There's like
Luna Park and then there's the other one that's sort
of across the way, and they still somewhat compete, even
though it all just feels like Coney Island. And it's
very likely that you'll do both because neither of them
are like particularly massive.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And they have the hot dog eating contest.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Which I've never seen personally, but I do love.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Attend in person.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I think it would be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
So Coney Island has a lot of their stuff is
inspired by the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in eighteen
ninety three. Also check out The Devil in the White City,
a fantastic book about the about the exposition and the
serial killer H. H.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Holmes.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Just gonna throw that in there.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Thanks Maxx.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
They popularize the hot dog as American food, you know,
the Frankfurture, a European invention. Anyway, into this milieu stros
Lemarcus Adma Thompson. He is considered and what a cool
(32:45):
street name is this? What a cool honorific. He is
considered the father of the gravity, the father of the gravity.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yes, yes, not just gravity. Okay, well, I mean at.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Least gravity is like a you know, a roller coaster.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It's like the knowledge you know. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, okay,
fair enough. Sorry, it's really easy to take that as
like I am God, the father of yes for people. Yeah,
God is the actual father of gravity or the actual
creator of gravity, but the gravity is different.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
This guy, uh has a weird description in the American experience.
He is called quote a Sunday school teacher and dime
store moralist. He thinks you're gonna say moron, that would
have been funny. I don't even know what a dime
store moron would be. But like he looks at amusement
parks and he's one of those shake your fist at
(33:40):
the sky. I hate the stuff the kids like. And
he says these amusement parks are sinful, they need redemption. Uh.
But still his switchback railway gets built, and Cody, well, bro.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
I mean, think about it. I can imagine that some
purists at the time, or puritanical folks, would take great
issue with the idea of cheating gravity because that is
not what God intended. God intended for us to have
our two feet on the earth, you know, not to
be flying around willy and or nilly in the sky
on these these metal monstrosities.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yeah, and this is this is the thing it's like
for I picture LaMarcus Thompson saying privately to himself in
the night, Oh, the delicious forbidden pleasure, to deny the
gravities of God, if only for a moment. Anyway, he
does make this thing that is called the gravity pleasure ride,
(34:40):
and off air. Several weeks ago, we were all talking
in one of our one of our many group threads
about whether the term gravity pleasure ride is inherently dirty.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I just it sounds like handstuff to me. I don't know.
There we go. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
It was based on nuts and system from Brooklyn and
this switchback railway quickly or like they charge people a
nickel a ride and in just a few hours, like
per day they make six hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Now that's a big desiree steep discount from the railroad. Yes,
discounts sense right, well, very yeah, but I mean that's
pretty wild. So they're they're I think the deal is
it's so centrally located that they're just turning over riders
and this thing is easily you know, reloaded over and
over and over and over again, every hour on the hour.
(35:33):
So yeah, what would you say, Ben, I'm making about
six hundred and six fifty a day.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Six hundred bucks a day, yeah, a nick at a
nickel pop per passenger. So in like three weeks, this
entire contraption pays for itself. But it's not what you
would think of as a modern roller coaster or even
a scenic railway. It's got a top speed of about
six miles an hour, and it's kind of you know
(35:59):
how a lot of theme parks will have this sort
of introductory quote unquote four kids roller coaster, right, like
six Flags over Georgia, yes, whatever, exactly, get a couple
hard turns. So that's what this thing is. However, it
(36:19):
made a lot of money, and this dime store moralist,
which is still a confusing term to me. Uh he says, Okay, well,
surely God doesn't want me to be poor, so I'm
going to go all in on this roller coaster.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
That's like some prosperity gospel stuff, right, and the American
Experience goes on saying that was all the encouragement Thompson
needed to apply his ingenuity to its fullest for his
orient Scenic Railway in Atlantic City. I just can never
get over that, the exoticism of all that, the use
of that term. You still see it sometimes today. And
(36:59):
you'll even go to like kind of you know, traveling carnivals,
you know that go from town to town, and you
can see some remnants of this kind of stuff, and
in some of these like air brushed, you know, these
collapsible rides and these gates. I gotta say this.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
I remember being a kid like elementary school, and you know,
so it's a minute since then, and uh, when it
was like a standardized testing and one of the choices
for like race was orient and I didn't know what
that was. But this is in nineties, and I remember
ask my parents like, yeah, I don't use that term.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Don't use that one.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I remember my parents saw me always put other uh.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
And for some reason though, the only area where it
seems I don't I still not argue appropriate but really
common is with rugs. Right, you still see them all
over the place as Oriental rugs. And I just don't
understand how that sort of made it, you know, it's
to still be around as prominently as it is.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
It's kind of like when you're walking around different parts
of New York and you still see the double headed
fire hose faucets and they say this is a Siamese
fawcet or Siamese pump. I take pictures of those with
my girlfriend whenever we're traveling out there, because her family
(38:15):
is from Thailand. But anyway, yes, language is weird. It's
an old this is an older legacy thing. It is
a bad name, all agreed. Our boy LaMarcus discovers, Okay,
America experience does another phrase that I think is weird.
Here they say La Marcus rediscovered the French trick of
(38:37):
pulling the cars up the first hill by cable, and
I love the I love the vague mystery of oh
the French.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Trick, Yes, you know stuff? Yeah, what is the French trick?
With the gravity pleasure ride? We are really getting steamy here, folks.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
So he also did a couple other I saw that
hand signal Max. He also did a couple of other
uh innovations, we could say mechanical innovations. He makes these
triggers under the tracks that can stop the ride if
something goes like a kill switch, an emergency cable. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Like you know, if you've been on some older trains
(39:19):
sometimes they'll have a cable at the top that you
can pull. Sure where beat me here, max where, Like
the oh shit handle is in a passenger.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Car, sure, or even on a treadmill where there's a
big red button in case things get out of hand.
You slam that big red button and it'll cause the
whole thing to come screeching to a halt.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
He also built tunnels, so you would be riding all
of a sudden you're in darkness, right and uh. By
eighteen eighty eight, this guy has become an actual roller
coaster tycoon. He's like, take that, you patent nerds of
previous years. I've actually built the thing. I've build like
(40:01):
fifty I think fifty roller coasters across Europe in America
had thirty patents in his own right. The guy's a beast.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
This is an opportunity here for a quick discussion that
I'm curious about what you guys think. Like, obviously, in theory,
something on paper you know that's been approved for construction.
Everything should be able to be planned out to the
last detail, with tolerances within a certain level of acceptability,
et cetera, especially in modern times. But back then, don't
(40:30):
you think that sometimes you had to build the thing
to even figure out what the problem might be. Like,
could you plan everything within levels of perfection just on paper?
You need both is the.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Thing, which is why, you know, going back to our
model training episode, that's why they had to build model
trains after they had figured it out on paper, right,
so they could before they you know, plunge into building
a full size, very expensive contraption. That things happens on
the way to his tycoon hoood is that we see
(41:04):
our boy Labarcus gets this, I would say, gets to
a crossroad about some of his high fluting ethics of
what should or shouldn't be fun and he monetizes some
scenic views from the Bible in a ride called Dragon's Gorge.
(41:25):
This is incredibly influential. There's a lot of elaborate scenery
now right Like previously you would just build these things
maybe around a nice natural vista, but now they're actually
building the scenery through which the ride occurs.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
One hundred percent, which is like part of the attraction.
At this point where you're you're almost like uh in
you're being transported into like a magical world, you know,
where there's like things to look at along the way,
and then obviously you know, if you look at Disney
this would go on to extend even into the lines,
you know, waiting in the having the themed attractions, which
I'm not gonna lie man. Part of what I really
(42:05):
enjoyed about going to Disney World as an adult was
waiting in the lines. There's a lot of cool stuff
to look at as you progress through those cues. You know,
it's like being in a transported into this kind of
world where every detail is paid attention to.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
I liked, I love the immersive environment. I'm all about
that kind of stuff. I will say that as a
child being kind of like forced to go into roller coasters,
I have some I actually almost died on a rituals
coaster in childhood. We'll get to that part to me,
But for me, sometimes, like if you're a kid and
(42:39):
you're going to take a scary ride like Space Mountain
and Disneyland, waiting in the line is sort of a
longer version of that.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Oh my god, you're right, And I have to say
I distinctly remember being absolutely terrified by Space Mountain when
I was a kid, and when I just went, you know,
a few years ago as an adult, I didn't find
it boring or any thing. But I found it a
little tame, you know. Yeah, but when you're a kid,
it's like there's a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Is dark in the dark.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Yeah, No, for sure, no question about it.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
I found it terrifying as adult because I'm like, oh
my god, this thing feels like it's about a fall apart.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
That's true. That's true. No one dies at Disney, guys. No,
they get they get trundled off site where they officially
or declared death. That's not entire it's sort of true.
There's we I don't know, a topic for another day or
check out our episode and stuff they don't want you
to know about.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Right, And at this point we are still kind of
in line for the ride. There are a lot of
things that are going to go down in episode two
of Ridiculous History roller Coasters, which is maybe when we
return in part two, we'll study the arms race that
occurs when everybody figures out people are super into feeling
(43:55):
like they might die for about two minutes. With that,
thank you as always to our super producer mister Max
Williams also a research associate for this episode. Let's see
No gosh our credits get longer and longer, which I
absolutely love. Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister, do you think
he likes roller coasters?
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I you know, we should ask him. We should ask him.
I know he likes Disney. But that's the thing about Disney.
It's not very roller coaster heavy. They've got this new
that they've been leaning more into the thrill rides lately,
it seems like, but in general it hasn't been their
primary focus. They've got this new Tron ride which seems
incredible though, and the Guardians of the Galaxy Rye, which
(44:35):
is also partially in the dark, is a coaster and
it's indoor and it's really really cool too.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Jonathan seems like a tepagud who likes the line like
he wasted the line again, the.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Line is the ride amazing.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
It's all about the journey, guys. It's about the journey
and the food. They have really cool, interesting eclectic food
at Disney as much. Actually look forward to going back.
So thanks to Jonathan aj Bahamas. I don't know if
he doesn't strike me as a coaster guy, but unless
he was doing a deep dive where he only traveled
by roller coast.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, the year of traveling by coaster.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
What you would do? Also thanks to East Jeff Coat,
who will be spoiler returning soon thanks to our fellow
Ben Ben Thompson Badass of the week check that out.
Thanks also recording with him this week I believe. Yes, yeah,
he's on the way as well. Yes, spoilers and let's
see and also you know, thanks to you, Ben, I'll
(45:29):
take it. Thanks to you as well. We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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