Sylvan Beach Amusement Park - 2024 visit

We've been here before on Bayern Kurve Blog, but this summer I returned to one of my favorite time capsules, Sylvan Beach Amusement Park on Oneida Lake in Upstate New York. Since my last visit, the park has refurbished several of its rides with new paint jobs, and I am thankful this park has an owner who truly cares about it. However, paint is pretty much the only thing that changes at Sylvan Beach. The park is perfect as is, a delightful collection of vintage rides that reminds visitors of a time when similar lakeside amusement parks dotted the country.

I adore vintage kiddie rides (I'm weird, I know), and Sylvan Beach has a wonderful collection. Take the kiddie Ferris wheel, which is cable-driven and much taller than other rides of its type. 

The kiddieland includes a rare Allan Herschell tank ride. The park also has the more common Herschell kiddie sky fighter, which uses the same guns. I don't think they work here anymore, but the guns originally made a loud mechanical clicking sound.

One ride at the park that is virtually unheard of today is the Rotor, but the Sylvan Beach model is currently standing but not operating. I was fortunate enough to experience it in 2017, and sticking to the wall when the floor dropped was quite the sensation!

Just like the rides, the arcades at Sylvan Beach are stuck in time. I love the vintage signage for these poker machines ("three in a line" references different nearby machines).

There is no shortage of skee ball here, and next to the Playland arcade is another sought-after game once common in old amusement parks.

It's Fascination! But here we break for vintage neon.

The premise of Fascination is simple (roll the ball and light five in a row), but it's addictive and a great way to spend a quarter... or several quarters! 

I could really appreciate the vintage look of this room, with the tile flooring, classic announcer booth, and the rounded glass counter that I'm sure once held all manner of wonderful prizes.

It can't be easy to keep a fleet of vintage arcade games like this in operating condition, so props to the park for keeping them going.

There's also an old shooting gallery at the park. The guns use light beams, so if you take a flash picture, every target goes off at once. It's kind of ridiculous and hilarious. Watch the video above at your own risk.

Of course, the main reason I came to Sylvan Beach is for the vintage dark ride, Laffland. This 1954 dark ride represents an era in dark ride history that is not preserved anywhere else. For one, it's the last ride of hundreds built by the Pretzel Amusement Ride Co. to still feature its trademark cars with yellow Pretzel counterweights. And it's kept in absolutely impeccable condition.

There's no line, so you know that I am about to take more than one ride on this one-of-a-kind classic. With an unmistakable electric humming and clicking sound, the car lurches around the corner and bangs through the first set of doors into the ride.

I believe this "Ride and Laugh" window was originally used for a Laffing Sal or other ballyhoo-type figure.

You can't see this in the darkness of the interior, but a few cars are stored inside the ride as spares. Watch out for the skeleton coming up on the right! He begins to move as a loud bell goes off before you crash through a brick wall.

The devil figure on the left isn't even animated with electricity; the car simply rolls over a lever that mechanically pops the figure up into the air. This is the grandfather of the Haunted Mansion's pop-up ghosts.

The alligator in a barrel is also operated with the motion of the car. These stunts have seen a lot, and that's what makes them special.

I don't know if this Himalaya ride came from another park, but it runs pretty fast for a ride of its type.

The paint scheme on this old arcade typifies what I love about vintage parks. There's just something about these old-fashioned colors on an old building, sagging with age, that is so charming and wonderful.

This arcade, one of three in the park, features a classic fortune teller. Who knows, this could be from the 1950s, 40s, or earlier.

Here's a video of it in motion.

I love the aged look of this machine. You can either appreciate stuff like this for what it is, or you see it as old and in need of updating. It's not a secret which group I belong to! If you insert a dime (yes, a dime!) a light comes on displaying a picture of conjoined twins with a caption of "the miracle of birth." The finest entertainment of the 1940s.

Who knows how longs this neon sign has been hanging here....

Vintage coin-operated kiddie rides look out to the Kiddieland area.

Ok, this will be our last detour into the world of vintage arcades in this post.

I have a hard time believing there is a better way to spend ten cents on the Earth (it just vibrates your feet like crazy). I can confidently say all the listed adjectives are very true.

Before we leave, a few more rides on Laffland are in order. The clown with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth should be warning enough that smoking is strictly forbidden.

This facade after dark is simply the best.

I always appreciate every minute of my visits to parks such as these, knowing that there very well might not be a "next time."

As we make our way back to the car, the vintage Roll-O-Plane is silhouetted against a darkening sky. I hope you enjoyed this look at one of the most untouched time capsules of amusement park history left in the nation!

Tilt-Shift

 "Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination..."

I've often enjoyed playing with the tilt-shift setting on my camera, and I thought it would be fun to apply the effect to some Disneyland images. Some of the results were better than others, but I hope you enjoy them. Looking at an already scaled-down world with a "miniature" filter lets you see the park in a different light!

Though we never got to ride the Submarine Voyage, we watched the subs ply the lagoon during testing, and I feel like the kinetic energy this adds is part of why the ride is important. Hopefully whenever I get back to Disneyland, the attraction is still operating.

Watching the train approach the New Orleans Square station may be one of my favorite views in the park. Who doesn't love the little historic depot? I can't remember for sure if they ever ran four trains while we were there, but I was impressed by even three at once.

I'm surprised that Disneyland still has turnstiles when so many parks have done away with them. I wonder how old these particular turnstiles are at Small World. This exit wouldn't be built today with ADA accessibility in mind!

Casey Jr. is peak Disneyland charm. Storybook Land has plenty of candidates for tilt-shift photos, though I feel like I could capture new scenes with an even more convincing effect.

I remember this ride on Casey Jr. in the early morning light fondly, seeing a guide in training on the canal boats. I am so happy that these wonderful vintage ride vehicles continue to operate without safety modifications.

Seeing both the Mark Twain and Columbia operating at once was such a happy sight for me. The Columbia had a relatively limited capacity compared to the Mark Twain, so you had to time it just right if you wanted to ride it. The little boy inside of me wishes I could be the guy operating the cannon!

Returning to Frontierland aboard the Columbia, the Golden Horseshoe beckons. Though there isn't a full show anymore, during our visit there was a piano player. (Now, there apparently is no entertainment at all.)

I swear that the Cherry Coke I drank sitting on the upper level of the Golden Horseshoe was the best-tasting Cherry Coke I've ever had, but that was probably affected by where I was drinking it.

I love the yellow umbrellas in front of the Jolly Holiday Bakery Cafe (former Plaza Pavilion) and the fringe umbrellas around the Hub. They seem like something you'd see in the park during the 60s to me for some reason.

Either the tilt-shift effect is working, or Main Street just looks miniature on its own. It looks like someone will need to duck to enter the shop! But if he wants to visit the Silhouette Studio, it was still temporarily closed in 2022.

I remember glancing at this sign and believing it, then when I was looking at my pictures I thought "wait a minute..." Clever theming (or lying)!

Happy to see the mailbox hails from the great state of Pennsylvania!

When Main Street isn't crowded, a ride on the Horse-Drawn Streetcar sounds like a wonderful idea. Or you can just sit on the bench and look at a park map to plan your next ride...

Fortunately, there are lots of open benches from which to choose! I'm guessing that these small trees replaced older, larger ones that made it more difficult to see the castle.

Though the cannons have been moved out of the walkway into the adjacent planters, they still herald a patriotic theme that is appropriate for Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.

No "tilt-shift" nonsense here, just a cannon in its full glory (albeit plugged up).

While we're at it, let's take that plug off and shoot that cannon right down Main Street! We'll only hit a couple people.

No matter what happens at Disneyland, this will always be the prettiest entrance of any park anywhere, in my opinion! And it's not even close.

Ok, shooting the cannon now might not be as good of an idea as it was in the previous picture where the street was largely empty. I took this picture from the Omnibus, or I was standing on the shoulders of my 7-foot-tall dad. I can't really remember...

Why ride the Horseless Carriage when you can rent a hoseless, electric scooter of your own! Yee haw! (Yeah, I'm running out of ideas...) I think the brick border on the streetcar tracks is an improvement over how it was, but I can see how people would be nostalgic for the old look.

The last time the Main Street Electrical Parade ran was during its 50th anniversary in 2022. Hopefully it returns someday, though I can see how some people might see it as tired. This is an image I posted previously, but I couldn't resist using the tilt-shift effect on it. 

I can appreciate my rides on Splash Mountain all the more now that the conversion to the new theme is largely complete. I have a feeling that Disneyland's Splash Mountain will not only always be the best log flume I've experienced but one of the best dark rides too. I love the melancholy look of this shot, as the sun was setting on the attraction's tenure at the park.

Here's one shot from DCA. I love the lights for this restaurant in Paradise Gardens Park. They evoke an old turn-of-the-century "electric park" perfectly. With the lights on Golden Zephyr across the way, the effect was as close as I could get to being at an early 1900s amusement park today.

And now for a few completely different shots! These are from Story Book Forest at Idlewild Park in Ligonier, PA, a self-contained fairytale park with no rides. These are the original shots taken with the built-in tilt-shift effect on my camera that convinced me to do this post. That's Snow White's cottage in the background (its chimney has seven multicolored stacks).

Story Book Forest has the Seven Dwarfs, but it is also home to the generic "elves of the forest." Here's one of the bunch.

Finally, this is Laffland at Sylvan Beach Amusement Park in New York, a delightful old dark ride that is pretty much a perfect time capsule of the 1950s like the park itself. If all goes according to plan, I will be riding this ride this coming Friday. After dark, I love how the sign is illuminated and the clowns are shrouded in the shadows.

I feel like the tilt-shift thing is kind of hit-or-miss, but I hope that didn't take away from the photos. I'll have more to come on Disneyland and other parks in the future! I'm very busy "working" at Kennywood (it's mostly fun), but I hope to get another post out by the end of July.