Coney Island Cyclone
The Cyclone, also called the Coney Island Cyclone, is a wooden roller coaster at Luna Park in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. Designed by Vernon Keenan, it opened to the public on June 26, 1927. The roller coaster is on a plot of land at the intersection of Surf Avenue and West 10th Street. The Cyclone reaches a maximum speed of and has a total track length of, with a maximum height of.
The roller coaster operated for more than four decades before it began to deteriorate, and by the early 1970s the city planned to scrap the ride. On June 18, 1975, Dewey and Jerome Albert, owners of the adjacent Astroland amusement park, entered an agreement with New York City to operate the ride. The roller coaster was refurbished in the 1974 off-season and reopened on July 3, 1975. Astroland Park continued to invest millions of dollars in the Cyclone's upkeep. The roller coaster was declared a New York City designated landmark in 1988 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. After Astroland closed in 2008, Cyclone Coasters president Carol Hill Albert continued to operate it under a lease agreement with the city. In 2011, Luna Park took over the Cyclone.
History
was the largest amusement area in the United States from about 1880 to World War II, attracting several million visitors per year. At its height, it contained three amusement parks and many independent amusements. The Cyclone site was occupied by the Giant Racer from 1911 to 1926.Early history
The success of the Thunderbolt and Tornado roller coasters, which respectively opened in 1925 and 1926, led Irving and Jack Rosenthal to acquire land at the intersection of Surf Avenue and West 10th Street for a coaster of their own. The Rosenthal brothers leased a land lot for 19 years from the Coast Holding Company, a syndicate composed of "many prominent business and amusement men of Coney".With a $100,000 investment, they hired leading coaster designer Vernon Keenan to design a new ride. Harry C. Baker supervised the construction, while local companies provided the material, including steel contractor National Bridge Company and lumber contractor Cross, Austin, & Ireland. Its final cost was reportedly $146,000 to $175,000. When the Cyclone opened on June 26, 1927, a ride cost 25 cents, except on Sundays and holidays, when the Rosenthals charged 35 cents. With the success of the Cyclone, the Rosenthals installed a similar ride at Golden City Park in Canarsie, Brooklyn, in 1928.
In 1935, the Rosenthals took over the management of New Jersey's Palisades Park. The Cyclone was placed under the supervision of Christopher Feucht, a Coney Island entrepreneur who had built Drop the Dip in 1907. Feucht performed minor retracking work on the Cyclone The ride's first drop was reduced by in 1939. By that time, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses planned to clear a area inland of the Riegelmann Boardwalk, which would have required the relocation or closure of the Cyclone. These plans were subsequently modified to preserve the amusement area there. The ride remained extremely popular. A person with dwarfism would originally zap disembarking riders with an electric paddle, a practice which ended during the 1950s.
Decline
Sylvio and Al Pinto acquired the Cyclone in March 1959. By the 1960s, attendance at Coney Island was declining. Increased crime, insufficient parking, poor weather, and the post-World War II automotive boom were all cited as contributing factors in the decline. Coney Island's last remaining large theme park, Steeplechase Park, was closed in 1964 and subsequently demolished. The Cyclone was sold to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation in 1965. Around that time, the New York City government wanted to construct an expansion to the New York Aquarium, which had been constructed east of the Cyclone in 1954. The city began planning to acquire the Cyclone via eminent domain in 1967. Its owners, East Coaster Corporation, unsuccessfully fought the city; they did minimal long-term maintenance, enough to keep the ride operating safely. The city bought the Cyclone for $1.2 million in 1969.The Cyclone was then operated under contract by East Coaster Corporation while the city worked with the New York Aquarium on plans to redevelop the site. There was a lack of long-term maintenance by the city, and the coaster soon received 101 safety violations. In 1972, aquarium officials announced that they would replace the Cyclone with a swamp display. Opponents of the plan organized a "Save the Cyclone" campaign to contest the proposed demolition of the coaster. This created a conflict between the aquarium, which supported the Cyclone's demolition, and the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce, which opposed it. The owners of the AstroWorld theme park in Houston were considering buying the Coney Island Cyclone and moving it to Houston. This was eventually rejected as being too expensive, and AstroWorld's owners instead built a replica, which they branded as the Texas Cyclone.
By 1974, city officials doubted their decision to purchase the Cyclone and considered leasing the coaster to a private operator. The proposed demolition of the Cyclone was seen as potentially disastrous to Coney Island's economy. The city changed its plans to dismantle the coaster and, in April 1975, invited sealed bids to lease operation of the ride. The owners of the Astroland amusement park won the lease, with a bid of $57,000 per year. After Astroland spent $60,000 to refurbish the Cyclone, the coaster reopened on July 3, 1975.
Preservation
During the 1986 season, insurance disputes forced the Cyclone to stay closed until July. The Cyclone remained in operation as a separate enterprise following the 2008 closure of Astroland and during the single operating season of Dreamland in 2009.The adjacent Luna Park took over management of the Cyclone in 2011 and began a major refurbishment of the coaster during the off-season. The ride had not been refurbished since the 1970s, and various planks and other elements of the structure had come loose. Although Luna Park officials said the Cyclone's maximum speed and layout would remain unchanged, roller coaster enthusiasts expressed concern that the refurbishment would make the ride experience smoother, saying that the Cyclone's roughness was a major characteristic of the ride. Luna Park hired Great Coasters International to refurbish the roller coaster.
The roller coaster remained largely intact after the surrounding area was flooded during Hurricane Sandy in late 2012. GCI completed its refurbishment of the Cyclone in 2016. The Cyclone did not operate during the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City; it reopened during the 2021 season.
Characteristics
The wooden roller coaster covers at 834 Surf Avenue and on West 10th Street, which is owned by NYC Parks. The former concession stands was home to the Coney Island History Project, which was moved to a space near the Wonder Wheel. A souvenir stand selling Cyclone-based shirts, hats, and on-ride photos remains. The Cyclone is considered an "irreplaceable" structure, since timber-supported coasters can no longer be built under modern New York City building codes.The track is long, including six fan turns and twelve drops. The ride's top speed is, and each ride takes about one minute and fifty seconds. The brown wooden track has red wood fencing alongside it and has a white structural framework, giving it a distinctive appearance. The steel framework is composed of vertical I-beams, horizontal tie bars, and diagonal cross-bracing beams, connected by riveted steel plates. "Cyclone" appears in large, red, incandescent letters on the east and west sides of the lift hill; the letters on this sign were originally high. The coaster is surrounded by a fence. Before 2000, the Cyclone's 58.1-degree initial drop was the third-steepest drop of any wooden coaster in the world., it has the ninth-steepest drop of any wood coaster worldwide.
The Cyclone has three trains, each with three cars; one train can run at a time. Riders are arranged two across in four rows, for a total of 24 riders per train. The trains have bench seating, and a single-position lap-bar restraint system which drops across the entire row. The seats do not have headrests.
The Cyclone is a pay-per-use attraction, since each ride in Luna Park charges a number of credits for admission. Ride admission is also included in Luna Park's fixed-date and any-date passes. "Bonus credits" accumulated by the purchase of ride credits cannot be used for the coaster. The station is accessed from the ticket booth on West 10th Street. It consists of two wooden platforms, one on each side of the track; the outer platform is for riders who are boarding, and the inner platform is for exiting riders. The station is under a gable roof canopy supported by a steel arch frame, which has segmented arcades along its sides. A mechanical room is partly underneath, and next to, the platform. Outside the station is a vertical sign with incandescent letters spelling "CYCLONE", which measures high.