05 February 2015

Elaborate stage illusion - updated


An illustration from an 1897 book "Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, including Trick Photography."  (with a hat tip to reader S. Norma for that online fulltext link)

Found at Vintage Blog, where no further explanation is offered.   I'll bet the participants sit in the group swing, which swings back and forth, and then the "room" surrounding them is rotated the opposite way, to give the illusion of near-inversion.

Clever.  I wonder if any modern amusement parks incorporate this idea into their rides.

Addendum:   In the Comments section, several readers have noted that this type of illusion still exists in amusement parks - for example the Villa Volta in the Netherlands and a Dutch Wonder House in Pennsylvania.

This type of ride is often referred to as a Madhouse ("designed to be an optical and physical illusion, consisting of several rows of seats attached to a swaying gondola within a rotating drum. The ride creates the impression that the rider is turning upside down, whereas it is actually the room that is moving around them.  The ride is a modern implementation of a haunted swing illusion.")

I may have given the impression while writing the post that I am totally unfamiliar with amusement parks.  Au contraire, mon frere.  I grew up in a Excelsior, a suburb of Minneapolis, home to the Excelsior Amusement Park.  Built in the 1920s on the shores of then-pristine Lake Minnetonka, it was an attraction for Minneapolis city-dwellers who arrived at the park via a (long) streetcar ride.  The featured attraction was this roller-coaster (cropped for size from the original at Minnesota Reflections):


Photographed in the 1920s, when it had a field of grain on the shoreward side.   I last visited the park in the 1960s when the field of grain had replaced by suburban homes and businesses.  The roller-coaster was constructed from wood, which had survived 40 years, but pieces of it were scattered on the ground underneath, and as I recall I opted out of testing its integrity.

The coaster was demolished in the 1970s (memoriam here) and the lakeside amusement park replaced by the inevitable condominiums.  I've not been to an amusement park since then; I don't suppose they've changed much...

13 comments:

  1. Yes.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Volta
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzWIa8_W26A

    It is very disorienting.

    Side note: The Efteling is pretty much the Dutch equivalent of Disney World. In fact, the original designer of the Efteling, Anton Pieck knew Walt Disney and they clearly exchanged ideas.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Pieck

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    1. Came here to say this! Protip: If Villa Volta gets you nauseous, focus on the mirrors on the side walls. They're the only thing that stay in their original position. I'm quite sure this was done on purpose, seeing how the 'eyes' on the walls point the mirrors out.

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    2. Excellent. And blogworthy. I'll update the post tomorrow. Tx, Nepkarel.

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  2. There is a similar ride at Lancaster, PA's "Dutch Wonderland" that I visited several times as a child in the 70s. It was the "Wonder house" -- a cottage that supposedly flipped upside down. My mom refused to go on it, as she was wearing a skirt. :)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Wonderland

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  3. We also have similar ride in the amusement-park near by. Not my cup of tea, makes me quite sick (I enjoy rollercoaster ...). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ff762MPUtY

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  4. There was one of these at Alton Towers last time I went which would have been about 2000-2 kind of era. (Although it may have spun along the long axis of the carriage rather than the short.)

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  5. I'm not mad, hoorah - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_%E2%80%93_The_Legend_of_the_Towers is what I'm remembering, specifically the Vault section

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  6. "Clever. I wonder if any modern amusement parks incorporate this idea into their rides." -> At first I thought you were being ironic, since I have known these attractions since I was very small.

    Probably the first ride like this I experienced was in the Belgian park "Bobbejaanland", it was simply called "Draaiend huis" (turning house). It was rather basic, not very convincing (e.g. motor noise, walls made of canvas or plastic?), and it got very hot in the Summer! Very effective way to get nauseous, though. ;-) I now checked it on the internet: it was from a German firm (Schwingel) and has been removed in 1992.

    Later, there were better versions in other Belgian park (Bellewaerde en Walibi) in the style of a magician's house.

    I have also been to the German park Phantasialand, which has/had one of these in the style of a Chinese palace.

    Looking for more info, I found this list of "Madhouse rides": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhouse_%28ride%29

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  7. As a child, Arnold's Park in Iowa's Great Lakes had such a room that would spin around the swinging carriage. I immediately thought of it when I saw your post. I haven't been there in decades, so I don't know if it still exists.

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  8. The whole book is here:
    http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/magic-stage-illusions-and-scientific-diversions-including-trick-photography-1897/

    You can read it all

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    1. Good find. I'll add that to the post tomorrow. Thank you.

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  9. https://diva.sfsu.edu/bundles/216931

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    1. My iPad is acting weird, so I couldn't add a caption to that link. It is a picture of the Haunted Swing at the midwinter International exposition in S Francisco 1894.

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