Wonder Wheel on Coney Island. Photo by doBLeuVe

I’ve long been a fan of the bygone days of amuse­ment parks. I’m a sucker for a good old fash­ioned wooden roller coaster, like the American Eagle at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee Illinois.

Naturally, I was drawn to a won­der­ful New York Times arti­cle about Coney Island’s Wonder Wheel, includ­ing a beau­ti­ful 360 degree panoramic shot of the engine that dri­ves the Ferris wheel. The arti­cle describes the behind-the-scenes work­ings of one of America’s most famous attractions:

…in a small room under the Wonder Wheel, the 89-year-old car­ni­val amuse­ment that com­mands the local sky­line, a cheap elec­tric engine kicked to life.

There was a sud­den smell of axle grease, and the ticky-tacky cars surged back and forth. The lights came on, and the gears began to turn. In a caged pen near the plat­form, a sleep­ing dog woke up.

“There it goes,” said Deno John Vourderis, bet­ter known as D. J., 28 years old and a mem­ber of the third gen­er­a­tion of the fam­ily that has run the famous 150-foot-high Ferris wheel for nearly 30 years.

Read the entire arti­cle at the New York Times web­site and be sure to check out the 360 degree panoramic photo as well.

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