Midway Directory · Kinds of listings
Ride and game manufacturers
A company that designs and builds amusement rides or midway games, sold to parks, fairs and travelling shows.
Ride and game manufacturers design and build the machines of the midway: wheels, carousels, coasters, spinning rides and games. The trade dates from the 1893 Ferris wheel and the carousel workshops of the same era; today makers such as Zamperla (1966) and Chance Rides (1961) sell to parks and travelling shows worldwide.
What it is
A ride maker engineers, builds and certifies amusement rides, then sells them to parks, fairs and midway operators, and keeps the parts coming for decades.
History, era by era
- 1849–1893
- A 50-foot wheel ride stood at the New York State Fair in 1849; George Ferris’s 264-foot wheel, with 36 cars of 60 riders each, opened in Chicago in 1893.1
- 1912
- The C.W. Parker company of Leavenworth, Kansas, built its 119th carousel in 1912.2
- 1928
- The Philadelphia Toboggan Company built a carousel pavilion at Happyland in Vancouver’s Hastings Park in 1928.3
- 1961–1966
- Chance Rides, of Wichita, Kansas, dates itself to 1961; Antonio Zamperla’s company in Italy was established in 1966.45
- 1976–today
- Zamperla opened a branch in Montreal in 1976 and supplied seven of Disneyland Paris’s twelve attractions in 1992.5
The midway connection
Every ride on a midway came from a maker, and many of them were built to travel: folding onto a trailer, up in hours. Chance began with miniature steam trains in the 1960s.4
Wherever people walk a row of booths, the midway is there in some form: the full kind, with rides, games of skill and food joints, or the quieter kind, with craft tables, home baking and a booth like ours. That walk, with family and friends and something to look at every few steps, is what this directory is about.
One fact worth knowing
- A ride on the first Ferris wheel took twenty minutes and made two turns.6
Questions people ask
Who built the first Ferris wheel?
George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., an American engineer, for the 1893 Chicago fair.1
When was Zamperla founded?
In 1966, in Italy.5
Sources
- National Conference of State Legislatures: Meet Me at the Fair. Read on · reference
- Heritage Burnaby: C.W. Parker carousel. Read on · reference
- Heritage Burnaby: C.W. Parker carousel collection description. Read on · reference
- Chance Rides: About Chance Rides. Read on · official
- Zamperla: Zamperla Group. Read on · official
- Chicago Park District: Midway Plaisance Park. Read on · government
How these listings work
Listings are free and factual; nobody pays to be here. Every line on a listing points to its source, official pages first, and each source shows the day we read it. What we couldn't confirm is listed on the page, not guessed. Each page says where the organisation works and links to the fairs and places in the directory it is tied to, but only when a source makes the tie.
Listed by name
Listed in the census (short listings)
The Midway Mailbag
New fairs, festivals, midways and attractions as we add them to the directory. About twice a month in fair season, less in winter.
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