With the carousel now installed inside The Stanley Chocolate Factory, workers are putting the finishing touches on the 6,500-square-foot hexagon-shaped building ahead of a Labor Day weekend opening. It might even be sooner.
The 28-foot merry-go-round was designed and manufactured by Chance Rides of Wichita, Kansas, a company that has built more than 200 of the spinning amusement rides during its 65-year history.
The Estes Park attraction is one of more than 100 of the company’s standard 28-foot models, a ride platform used in parks and attractions across the country and around the world.
Although the carousel itself is a proven design, the installation presented an unusual engineering challenge.
“We almost always install into concrete,” said Travis Lane, project management director for Chance Rides. “Installing into a steel substructure, with this building having the crawl space underneath, was a little bit of a unique challenge for us.”
Lane said Chance Rides worked directly with John Cullen, Westover Construction, and other subcontractors for months to ensure the building’s structural support was ready before installation began.
The carousel features 18 hand-painted fiberglass figures, including traditional carousel animals alongside more whimsical additions such as a sea dragon, a triceratops, and a Bengal tiger. Each figure is finished with durable automotive-grade paint, and artists individually hand-paint every animal, making each one unique, said Lane. For a touch of local authenticity, one animal, a deer, includes real antlers.
The ride also includes a stationary chariot that provides wheelchair-accessible seating.
Lane said the carousel itself is complete and operational. It has passed its initial inspection, with only minor documentation remaining before final approval, and the Stanley staff have already completed operator and maintenance training.
Additional decorative elements, including a feature to fill the cupola space above the carousel and an integrated sound system, are expected to be added.
Chance Rides handled the manufacturing, shipping, and installation of the carousel.
“I think The Stanley team picked a great selection of figures,” Lane said. “It blends the new and the old. The scenery and Americana coloring are very classic and timeless, but then you have figures like a triceratops and a sea dragon that you don’t see on a carousel every day.”
Still spinning after centuries: The history of carousels
The origins of today’s modern carousel are rooted in medieval military exercises designed to sharpen the skills of cavalry soldiers.
The word carousel comes from the French carrousel, meaning “little battle.” The name evolved from the Italian garosello and Spanish carosella, terms used to describe elaborate mounted competitions in which horsemen demonstrated their skill by spearing small rings with lances while riding at full gallop.
Sometimes they rode on real horses. Other times they practiced on wooden horses suspended from a rotating wheel powered by a team of draft animals or a group of people. The military exercises became a popular attraction at fairs and festivals. It wasn’t long before onlookers eagerly climbed on board for the thrill of a ride on what people in the U.K. call a galloper or a merry-go-round.
In 1861, an English inventor, Thomas Bradshaw, introduced the first steam-powered carousel, and Frederick Savage, another engineer, introduced gears and offset cranks on the platform carousels, giving animals their up-and-down galloping motion.
While the carousel was born in Europe, it crossed the Atlantic during the second half of the 19th century and reached its artistic peak in the United States, where European immigrant craftsmen produced thousands of hand-carved wooden horses adorned with flowing manes, jeweled saddles, expressive faces, and brilliant paint.
Carousel menageries soon featured not only traditional horses, but lions, tigers, zebras, camels, rabbits, mythical creatures, and ornate chariots.
Between the 1870s and the early 1930s, it is estimated that about 4,000 wooden carousels were created, thousands for amusement parks and traveling carnivals. Fewer than 200 complete wooden carousels from that era are known to survive today.
Many American carousels included a mechanism that dispensed metal rings, which a carousel rider seated on the outside row could try to grab. While most rings were steel, one special ring was made of brass. Whoever caught it could win a free ride or another prize, turning every rotation into a friendly competition.
Carousels also came to feature organs and calliopes that played a backdrop of cheerful marches and waltzes, the soundtrack we associate with amusement parks and carnivals.
Whether you call it a carousel or a merry-go-round, the ride remains one of the oldest and most beloved attractions in the amusement world. When The Stanley Chocolate Factory Carousel begins turning, it will add a new chapter to that centuries-old tradition—and likely become one of Estes Park’s most popular family attractions.
Beautiful!
How much will it cost to ride and is there a ring to catch as you ride?