KIRMES & Park REVUE (English) Special: Rouen (Vorschau)

PORTRAIT
After rebuilding with
suspended seats: “Hard
Rock” from Keith James
It’s now over a decade
(6/2000) since Kirmes & Park
Revue profiled the history of
the Orbiter. The British-built
machine made something of
an impression in Europe and
around the world, but since
the turn of the century has
enjoyed renewed popularity
in the UK with a new generation
of rides called the ‘Extreme.’
Text: IanTrwell & Owen Ralph
Photos: IanTrwell, Owen Ralph, Ian Cant,
Stephen Smith, National Fairground Archive
Orbiter, Remix, Extreme
First we are turning the calendar back to 1965 to
reveal a strange homemade construction travelled
as the “Flying Saucer” by the Gray and Appleton
families. Seen at the prestigious Nottingham
Goose fair in 1965 and photographed again
at various locations in 1967, there is little other
record of this machine. Yet it is significant because
this ride could be considered as a prototype “Orbiter”,
only with a single, circular gondola on each
arm rather than the more familiar cluster of three
cars. It is said that the gondola rotation was
through independent motors and suggested that
the ride was problematic in operation.
Woolls Mark I/II
It was the engineer and former showman
Richard Woolls, trading as Tivoli Enterprises,
that we have to thank for the development of the
Orbiter proper.
The ‘Mark I’ machine arrived in 1976 and was operated
by Woolls’ relative Henry Smith, as already
documented in K&PR. Whilst providing a
very new ride experience, it was some way off
the modern capability of the Orbiter. The construction
did not have a central lifting mechanism
and so, strangely, there was a pay box in the
middle.
To give the cars sufficient floor
clearance as the arms were lifted,
they were positioned high
up with drop-down steps for
the riders to embark/disembark.
Another feature was a
build-up floor, although
Thurston replaced this with a
fold-out floor, and also
scrapped the central pay box.
Several refinements were
made by the time the first ‘Mark
II’ Orbiters were delivered in
In a way, the predecessor
of the “Orbiter” and of further
developments: “Flying
Saucers” at the Nottingham
Goose Fair, 1965
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