The Astroland Rocket Has Landed Back Home

[sparky2u]

1960s Space Age icon and First Ride in Astroland Park Brought Back by Coney Island History Project and Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park

The famed Astroland Rocket Ship, one of the first and only surviving early amusement park “simulators,” returned home to Coney Island today after five years in storage at Staten Island’s Homeport. It debuted in 1962 at Astroland Park as one of the first of the “imaginary” space voyage simulators constructed during the Space Race. The Rocket showed simulator films of “rocket rides” while the chassis “rocked” its viewers to outer space. The Ride, which has 26 seats, lasted about three minutes, the length of the film.

http://www.coneyislandhistory.org/news/?p=1725

Lovely to see any park not destroy it's history.

 

[ATTACKHAMMER]

Sounds like an intriguing ride! I really like classic rides like this one so hopefully I will ride it in the future. Would be interesting to compare it with a modern simulator to see the evolution of simulators.

 

[rollermonkey]

Canobie Lake Park either had one, or still does.

 

[bmac]

Dutch Wonderland had something like this when I last visited like 12 years ago.

 

[Gavin]

I've been on two. Though the outer shells were a bit different, I'm pretty sure the rides are the same. There's a very narrow aisle of seats facing a ridiculously small screen. From the back you can see **** all.

There's one in Siam Park City, Bangkok, and another in Luna Park, Tel Aviv.

They're s**t.

 

[Gazza]

There was one of these that was on the travelling circuit in Australia years ago , but it had the ability to roll as well. The most memorable thing for me was that the ride film was literally a video export of the Coney Island Cyclone track from NL1, with some cheap stuff done in after effects to make it as if it was an underwater roller coaster.
Gavin summed it up well.