A Thunderbolt and two Cyclones

[mmcirvin]

 Back in 2012 I noted that while Canobie Lake Park's Yankee Cannonball is often described as a relocation from a defunct park in Connecticut, the only known photo of it in its original location shows a substantially different ride. (The pages linked from there are defunct, but Quassy's website has a copy of the picture.)

This story is a bit reminiscent of that, though the details are different. In my previous post about Six Flags New England, I described the 1941 Thunderbolt at that park as a reconstruction of the Cyclone from the amusement area of the 1939-40 New York World's Fair (as related by several sources, including RCDB). (This ride is not to be confused with the unrelated, and far more famous, Coney Island Cyclone.)

More recently I tried to find some photos of the World's Fair Cyclone and was slightly puzzled trying to match them to the Thunderbolt's layout. Either trains were going the wrong way, or I had the ends of the ride confused or something. That none of the photos really shows the whole thing made it more difficult.

This photo from the Museum of the City of New York finally made it clear: the Thunderbolt is a mirror image of the New York World's Fair Cyclone. That's the top of the lift and the turnaround into the first drop, and the pop up from the double down into the second lap in front. The corresponding elements on the Thunderbolt are reflected left to right.

While poking around, I found another surprise: there was another Cyclone with this layout at the other big American fair of 1939-40, the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in San Francisco. And the San Francisco Cyclone was a mirror image of the New York one, that is, identical to the Riverside/Six Flags Thunderbolt! So while the Thunderbolt opened with the trains from the New York coaster, in a sense, it's more accurate to say that it is a replica of the ride's San Francisco counterpart.

(Most of the articles about roller coasters and the Golden Gate Exposition are mostly about the never-realized, truly daft plan to build a world-record roller coaster on the Golden Gate Bridge itself. But I appreciate the ones that mention the ride that was actually built.)

Comments

[mmcirvin]

This post is also not about the *other* Cyclone at SFNE (which became Wicked Cyclone), either Coney Island Thunderbolt, or any of the other myriad Cyclones and Thunderbolts around the world. These names are common enough that they're hard to keep track of.

[secretagentmoof]

Chirality trips folks up again! Now, if one version were notably faster than the other, that'd be interesting.

[mmcirvin]

I'm sure there would be arguments about which of these were distinct "credits" if there were any coaster enthusiast alive who remembered riding these old coasters. But they only existed in 1939 and 1940.

[metahacker]

So you're saying it's a cyclone clone? A Cy-clone?

[mmcirvin]

Many of the coasters called Cyclone are clones of the storied Coney Island Cyclone, but none of these were. (Neither was Six Flags New England's 1983 Cyclone--that had been the idea but the plot of land didn't allow it, so it had an original layout, which Wicked Cyclone roughly inherited.)

[mmcirvin]

It just occurred to me that if I searched for aerial views of the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, I might find one with a full aerial view of the Cyclone. But the ones I can find all center on the grand central avenue with the Trylon and Perisphere, and the amusement area was way off to the side. I found a couple with the roller coaster in frame but it's too small for much to be made out--nothing like that splendid shot from a high place of the San Francisco one. Photographers intent on capturing the Fair wouldn't have been that interested in the details of what was after all a fairly ordinary roller coaster in an extraordinary place.