If you’re a television watcher you may have notice a national commercial featuring a bumper car.
A father and son are in a carnival setting on a bumper car ride. Seeing a billboard advertisement they drive out off the track, down the midway, out onto streets busy with automobile traffic ending up drifting into a parking place in front of the intended ice cream establishment.
The commercial coincides with the subject herein – not ice cream, but bumper cars.
No matter your age, people typically have some history with bumper cars. For the youth it may be the time spent at modern family fun centers that have, in some instances, continued the tradition of this ride.
Older folks have stored memories of a time in their youth when the ride of yore was prolific and found in carnivals, theme parks or tourist attracting funfest towns where roller coasters were wooden structures.
The fact is bumper car venues have been around since the 1920s and were a mania in the 50s and into the mid 60s.
In Ocean Shores an experience of the vintage bumper car ride is readily available.
Near city center on Point Brown Avenue is the Ocean Shores Playtime Family Fun Center. You can’t miss it because the go-kart tracks and bumper car house sit together.
A promotional video for the business has the narrator reporting, “Our bumper cars are the original bumper cars since 1965.”
The Ocean Shores bumper cars are the original cars from 1965, making the experience a “classic” for bumper car nuts and also a time travel chamber of sorts.
Here are found the end results of the work by bumper car dreamers and innovative builders, such as American machinists Joseph C. and Robert “Ray” Lusse of Philadelphia.
These cars are the standards for modern versions of the earliest models deriving electrical power from grids in the floor or metal ceilings control activated by the ride attendant.
Customers begin lining up early to purchase tickets for rides after the business opens at 10:00 a.m.
According to local resident employee, ticket seller and ride attendant Ethan Moyer it can get busy with nonstop action for the 5-minute ride around the bumper car track.
“The busiest day is Fourth of July,” Ethan said over the noisy race under way. “Last year we were open until 1:00 a.m. There were lines of people wrapped around the front of the building and down the side.”
There are some rules for people wanting to take their excursion on the track.
For example, the cars are double occupancy capable and when asked about children taking a seat next to a parent for a ride Ethan pointed to a ground level sign with cartoon personages painted on it. One was a 38-inch child figure indicating the minimum height for a copilot or taller and up to 52-inches needed for a kid to drive a car.
Now, come along and enter the house of slam, bang, clunk and CRASH!
Stand aside the course at railings well protected from the circle of madness. Watch the elation of unleashed chaos and unadulterated joy. Find out what all the commotion is about that has drawn people to places like this for nearly a century.
The riders have mounted their steeds, shinning bumper cars aligned against the west wall of the building like race horses in the starting gate before they spring down the track’s first stretch.
The attendant, after reciting his instruction and rules of the road for the ride, withdraws to his post. In a following moment of deft silence the tension is palatable.
Ethan throws the switch sending electrical juice down the poles affixed to the rear of each bumper car reaching to contact the metal ceiling thus powering their forward movement only. And they’re off!
Straight away the cars become the bumpers they are banging into one another, usually predicable at the first turn. Some spin out some move on. Some get stuck against the opposite wall and fight one another for release all the while being smacked into by a grinning opponent.
The race noise overwhelms the scene with drivers and passengers laughing, cheering their way around the car-tired meridian.
For five seemingly too short minutes people forget the woes of life, bond together and strangers, in a weird way, get to know one another.
Everybody wins.
Departing, two family members leave their bumper cars on the track and meet at the exit. Shaking their heads and laughing out loud one says to the other, “Man, that was so fun! Crazy!”
That’s what it’s all about.
Check the Ocean Shores Playtime Family Fun Center’s website for summer hours, ride prices and other attractions.
