After spending more than six months as the most photographed wild mouse coaster in the world, the Jet Star will finally be removed from the ocean off the remnants of Casino Pier tomorrow.
I wanted to take a ride over and get a last look at it this morning, but Prince Harry is giving it a visit today and generally making the town a “do not enter” zone.
However, everyone can watch the dismantling thanks to the wonderful world of webcams. You can check it out here (and if you look right now, you’ll get to see how boardwalk pilings are drilled into the sand).
A wild mouse is a small, compact roller coaster designed for tight spots like piers, county fairs, and the like. Nothing too high (they usually top out at 40-50 feet), with small cars (usually four riders tops). Still, a well-made one can be a helluva lotta fun.
The Jet Star is the one that broke off from the pier in Seaside Heights and has been sitting in the ocean ever since.
As an aside, I wish I did take a ride over there today…Harry isn’t coming until tomorrow. Ah well.
I heard that they wanted to leave it out there as a curiousity and tourist attraction. Apparently they decided that it was too much of a safety hazard. Too bad, in a way.
I was just down there. You can’t get near the thing to photograph it (unless, possibly, you go all the way north past the end of the boardwalk and then all the way down the beach). You’re blocked by boardwalk construction and the pier itself otherwise.
The towers you see, by the way, are the “skyride” towers that parallel the boardwalk from the north end of the boards down to casino pier. The stations at the ends are gone, but the towers were well-rooted in concrete pilings (like the Tower of Terror and Giant Swing rides that survived on Funtown Pier), so I don’t see why that ride couldn’t be restored.
If they’d kept the coaster remains out there, it would’ve been like the structural remains that inspired Ray Bradbury’s The Foghorn (which sorta kinda became The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms)
I wish! Some construction vehicle is constantly backing up **<Beep> <Beep> <Beep> **& a then minute ago the fire siren went off. Haven’t heard the relaxing waves.
Busch Gardens in VA has/had a coaster called the Loch Ness Monster, you dove into a tunnel & they misted water on you, like you were going underwater. My fantasy is that they would fix this coaster where it is & you’d actually ride into the ocean. (Yeah, I know it wouldn’t work, but a cool idea nonetheless.)
ETA: it’s not going down w/o a fight!
My wife was there this morning when they started, she was able to get reasonably close to get some pictures and video of it as they took it apart. A lot of people there today though.
This got me thinking about the “Wild Chimpmunk” wild mouse coaster at Lakeside in Denver. I started googling and found pictures of the Staride there.
Something I hadn’t thought of in a long time. The last time I rode the Staride, around 1970 probably, the brake mechanism failed. They had to just kill the power and see where it coasted to a stop. It took a couple hours to unload it, and my brother and I were the last ones off. I never saw it running again, and we used to pass by on I-70 every couple of weeks. It is possible I am the last person to have ridden it…one of the last for sure.
For some reason I always remembered this ride being called “Around The World”. Maybe it was a name my parents had for it.
I think I last rode the JetStar on the night before I left for college, which was … a while ago. I really do wish they could leave it in the water, but I’m sure there are all sorts of safety and environmental hazards that go along with that. But it could have been New Jersey’s premier scuba-diving theme park!
The more I think about that, the more unbelievably awesome it is. I might learn to scuba-dive for that.