Portal:Amusement parks/Selected article

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

< Portal:Amusement parks

edit

Selected articles

1 Selected articles
2 Usage
3 Selected articles list
4 Nominations

Usage

The layout design for these subpages is at Portal:Amusement parks/Selected article/Layout.

Add a new Selected article to the next available subpage.
Update "max=" to new total for its {{Random portal component}} on the main page.

Selected articles list

Portal:Amusement parks/Selected article/1

Bolliger & Mabillard Consulting Engineers (more commonly known as B&M) is a roller coaster design consultancy based in Monthey, Switzerland. The company was founded in 1988 by Walter Bolliger and Claude Mabillard, with Bolliger acting as president and Mabillard as vice-president. Since 1990, B&M have built over 60 roller coasters around the world and have pioneered several new ride technologies, most notably the inverted roller coaster. The company started with four employees and has since grown, now employing more than 30 people, mostly engineers and draftsmen.

...Archive/Nominations

A pendulum ride is an amusement ride based on the motion of a fixed pendulum. These rides consist of an arm attached to an axle. One end of the arm is fitted with a passenger-carrying gondola, while the other is usually fitted with a heavy counterweight. The ride experience consists primarily of swinging back and forth, although some designs incorporate rotating gondolas or allow the ride to invert completely. Pendulum rides are propelled by one of two methods; a series of DC motors driving the axle, or by wheels underneath the gondola station to push the ride.

...Archive/Nominations

Werner Stengel (born 22 August 1936) is a German roller coaster designer and engineer. Stengel is the founder of Stengel Engineering, also known as Ingenieur Büro Stengel GmbH.

Born 22 August 1936, in Bochum, Germany, Stengel first worked on amusement park rides in collaboration with Anton Schwarzkopf in 1963. He established his own company, Stengel Engineering, in 1965. His collaboration with Schwarzkopf was responsible for many innovations in roller coaster design, including in 1975 the first modern looping coaster - Revolution at Six Flags Magic Mountain. His clothoid loop is now standard on many roller coasters as it produces less intense forces on the human body than a circular vertical loop. In 1976 Stengel and Schwarzkopf established the first horizontal launch "Shuttle Loop". Stengel is also noted as being a pioneer in heartlining, the principle of having the track twist around the heartline of the rider, rather than the center of the track rotating itself.

...Archive/Nominations

A pleasure garden is usually a garden that is opened to the public for recreation. They are differentiated from other public gardens by containing entertainments in addition to the planting; for example, concert halls or bandstands, rides, zoos or menageries.

Public pleasure gardens have existed for many centuries. In Ancient Rome, the landscaped Gardens of Sallust (Horti Sallustiani) were developed as a private garden by the historian Sallust. The gardens were acquired by the Roman Emperor Tiberius for public use. Containing many pavilions, a temple to Venus, and monumental sculptures, the gardens were open to the public for centuries.

...Archive/Nominations

George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. (February 14, 1859 - November 22, 1896) was an engineer born in Galesburg, Illinois. He is most well known for inventing the Ferris wheel, constructed for the World's Columbian Exposition in an attempt to create something as impressive as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.

His family moved to Carson City, Nevada when Ferris was five years old. The family house in Carson City is on the historic tour list. His family later relocated to California, and Ferris attended high school in Oakland. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was a Charter Member of the Chi Phi Fraternity, in the class of 1881 with a degree in civil engineering. After that, he began a career in the railroad industry and was interested in bridge building. He founded a company, G.W.G. Ferris & Co. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to test and inspect metals for railroads and bridge builders.

...Archive/Nominations

A roller coaster inversion is an element of a roller coaster track that turns riders upside-down and then rights them. The degree to which it must invert riders is nebulous and a point of contention when it comes to elements like overbanked turns, which turn riders such that their heads are below their feet, but are not considered inversions.

The first inversions were circular vertical loops built in the early 1900s that accumulated massive g-forces, breaking necks. In 1975, designers from Arrow Dynamics developed the corkscrew, and the inversion was revived. Since then, elements have evolved from the simple vertical loop to massive cobra rolls. With ten inversions, Colossus of Thorpe Park in Chertsey, England is the record holder for roller coaster with the most inversions.

...Archive/Nominations

A marine mammal park (sometimes oceanarium) is a commercial theme park or aquarium where marine mammals such as dolphins, beluga whales and sea lions are kept within water tanks and displayed to the public in special shows. A marine mammal park is more elaborate than a dolphinarium, because it also features other marine mammals and offers additional entertainment attractions. It is thus seen as a combination of a public aquarium and an amusement park. Marine mammal parks are different from marine parks, which include natural reserves and marine wildlife sanctuaries such as coral reefs, particularly in Australia.

...Archive/Nominations

Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Disney is notable as one of the most influential and innovative figures in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Walt became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $35 billion.

Walt Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He received twenty-two Academy Awards and forty-eight nominations during his lifetime, holding the record for the individual with the most awards and the most nominations. Disney has also won seven Emmy Awards. Disney and his staff created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters, including the one many consider Disney's alter ego, Mickey Mouse. He is also well-known as the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, France, Japan and China.

...Archive/Nominations

A carousel is an amusement ride consisting of a rotating platform with seats for passengers. The "seats" are traditionally in the form of wooden horses or animals, which are often moved mechanically up and down to simulate galloping. This leads to one of the machine's alternative names; "the galloper". Other popular names are "merry-go-rounds", "roundabouts" and "flying horses". Usually, music is looped while the rides spins.

Although modern carousels are mainly populated with horses, carousels from earlier periods frequently included diverse varieties of animals, including dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs, and deer, to name a few.

...Archive/Nominations

The roller coaster is a popular amusement ride developed for amusement parks and modern theme parks. LaMarcus Adna Thompson patented the first roller coaster on January 20, 1885. In essence a specialized railroad system, a roller coaster consists of a track that rises in designed patterns, sometimes with one or more inversions (such as loops) that turn the rider briefly upside down. The track does not necessarily have to be a complete circuit, as shuttle roller coasters exhibit. Most roller coasters have multiple cars in which passengers sit and are restrained into. An entire set of cars hooked together is called a train. Some roller coasters, notably Wild Mouse roller coasters, run with single cars.

...Archive/Nominations