Pretzel Amusement Ride Company
The Pretzel Amusement Ride Company was an amusement ride manufacturer which produced a variety of rides including a kind of dark ride known as The Pretzel, the namesake of the company. Pretzel built over 1400 pretzel rides and sold them to carnivals and parks.
Name
The name of the company and their original ride came from the twists in the ride's course. A related story developed that the name from the comment of an unknown person who rode the prototype dark ride. That person said, "It felt like I was turned and twisted like a Pretzel".History
The Pretzel Amusement Ride Company was established in 1928, after company founders Marvin Rempfer and Leon Cassidy patented a single-rail dark ride. Their ride was constructed in Tumbling Dam Park on the banks of Sunset Lake in Bridgeton, New Jersey. The company remained in Bridgeton throughout its existence.A large heavy pretzel design was originally affixed to the front of each car to prevent the car from flipping backwards. In 1929, a standard Pretzel ride had five cars, 350 feet of track, and was one and a half minutes per ride. A pretzel ride sold for $1,200.
Portable pretzel rides for carnivals weighed about 9 tons. They were unloaded from huge moving vans and set up. For the first 3 decades, Pretzel rides were single story. In the late 1950s, they started making double decker rides. The ride carts were hoisted to the 2nd story by a lift chain. Leon Cassidy was not in favor of the double decker. The Mad Giant was 17 tons, 40'x 8' on trailer, and 70'x30' when opened up. It took about 5 hours to set it up. Pretzel also made spinning rides, including a famous one for Coney Island.
Leon's son William Cassidy ran the company after his father. William Cassidy sold the rights to build the rides in 1979.
List of rides
The rides were usually themed.A few of the rides were: The Caveman, Haunted House, Lost Mine, Gold Nugget, Thunderbird Jr. Ride, Toonerville Trolley, Whirlo, Kiddie Circus, Devil's Cave/Pirate's Cove/Bucket O' Blood, Devils Inn, Winter Wonderland, Orient Express, Mad Giant, Laff in the Dark, Laff in the Dark with spinning cars, Laffland, Pirates Cave, Pirates Den, Paris After Dark, Arabian Nights Tunnel of Love/Casper's Ghostland, Treasure Island, Spook-A-Rama, Le Cachot/Safari/Zoomerang, and 3 Dante's Infernos.
| Name | Location | Ref | ||
| Haunted Pretzel | Historic Bushkill Park | |||
| Pretzel Ride | ||||
| The Pretzel | Bay Shore Park | |||
| The Pretzel | Hersheypark | |||
| Devil's Den | Conneaut Lake Park | |||
| Haunted House | Camden Park | |||
| Laffland | Sylvan Beach Amusement Park |