I don’t remember what we called them, but pretty sure it wasn’t “merry go round”. This is going to bug me. I also don’t remember anyone getting sick from it 
We had two versions in the park I played at as a kid (then later as a young teenager with much faster notions of spin control):
a) Wooden flat seats to sit on, metal tubular piping making the main body of the thing. (I’m talking pipes the size and gauge of steam heat risers in city apartments). As older kids we’d have some of us outside continuing to shove it to ludicrously high speed while folks riding it would climb INWARD against the centrifugal force hand over hand on the pipes, through the center (whee!) and out the other side to the bench 180° away from where they started.
b) Looked more like an egg (from mid-egg up to point) than the things y’all call a witch’s hat, I think? Shallow scooped-out body-shaped hollows all around the outside of the “egg”. You stood up in that space and held on for dear life to handles that were approximately at armpit level. The scooped-out area terminated at the bottom in a shallow rubber place you could put your feet. There was no way to climb up unless it was motionless, nothing to hold onto. That thing could freaking SPIN. As crazy teenagers we’d get it flying then try to move from one slot to the next, oozing out around the protruding handle and reaching WAYYYY over there for the next handle over while trying to avoid being slung off. Or, more safely, would stand in the normal place but face OUTWARD and see the world go by at a nauseatingly rapid blur.
Never heard of a “roundabout.” Is that a regional thing? Britishism? Not familiar with this witch’s hat contraption, either.
The anchored thing that spins from the OP was most definitely a merry-go-round. The thing with horses that go up and down at the fairground is usually a carousel, but could also be a merry-go-round. Which brings us to…
<Marge Simpson at an old carousel from her childhood>
This used to be my favorite horse. I called it Funny Goodfeeling.
</Marge Simpson>
Yep, it’s a merry-go-round.
And here are witch’s hats, apparently. I’ve never seen one before. Those who had them: where and when was this?
Later 80s, early 90s, Winder GA.
I was at the park it was in earlier this year, and the witch’s hat had been removed. The merry go round was still there though, and still in good condition.
We had both a merry-go-round and a witch’s hat on the playground when I was a kid. The witch’s hat let you hang from your hands, and it would swing all the way in so you would crush your fingers against the pole. Good times.
Edmonton in the mid to late 80s and most currently my son’s school installed one a couple years ago.
I’m odd, but in my family, we called them “spinners” or when I was really young, “spin-me!” If someone said “I was riding the merry-go-round at the park…” I’d think of horses and calliope music.
Heh. This was just featured on the most recent episode of Tosh.0 (Comedy Central) as the show’s opening video. I watched it (DVR) over my lunch break and was all, “OMG! I *just *saw a thread about this!!”
this thing. We didn’t call it anything. Just ran up to it and went at it.
One kid would stand and spin it, while the rest of us would stand at its rim, bowing from our waist, being kept on our feet by centrifigal force.
There were those hobby horses mounted on tractor springs. Boring to ride. You stood off them and pulled them back as far as possible and let go, making the saddled caterpilar or whatever it was jerk as spasmodically as possible, without getting hit.
The worst was a thing that looked like a short garden gate that swung around a post, with a hand bar across the top and a footboard along the bottom. The winner wasn’t the one who could hang on, just the one who was thrown the farthest.
(as a child I believed there was an actual medical condition called “just had the wind knocked out of him.” No real internal damage; just that everyone carries a reserve breath of air inside them, and mine had been pushed out when I fell eight feet off the monkey bars and landed flat on my back)
Come home with head trauma and be more docile, easier to control. That was the point, right?
Here’s the main type I remember: wooden seats around the outside. We would get it going really fast then climb towards the center, holding onto those metal poles, then back out the opposite side. Another similar model
Aha, the other model was called a “UFO”!
Merry-go-rounds were fun, but the best fun and danger required a maypole- the kind with chains hanging from a swivel at the top of a pole. Grab a chain’s handle and run around the pole until you flew outward-
I always called them a merry go round, but an alternative British term is roundabout, especially magic ones!
Huh, that thing called a witch’s hat looks like what in my childhood, and on one particular playground, we called an Ocean Wave.
Planks to stand on, pipes going up to a central column in the middle. It didn’t just go around, it swayed back and forth. It was no fun unless there were a LOT of kids on it, and the fun thing was to step off into the center–where there was an old tire to absorb the shock, and it was a lot of shock–and then up onto the other side. It required some skill, and if you missed, the thing would come down on you.
The tire sat on the ground and on one side the ocean wave, when it came down, would skid over the top of the tire and then kind of lodge there. That’s how low it went (and why nobody sat on the planks).
At some point it existed but had been modified so it no longer swayed, but just went around, none too fast. It still had the tire in the center, and kids still jumped from one side to another, but without the sway it was a whole different challenge.
Another one they immobilized was a thing that had trapeze bars attached to chains. Three bars, so if you grabbed the top one, the middle one was banging on your chin and the bottom one on your chest. You grabbed your preferred bar and ran around until your momentum lifted you off the ground.
It happened every year: Mean boys from the upper grades would come upon it when little kids were flying around, and they’d grab hold of the bars and run around, and the little kids would fly out, shrieking, unable to touch their feet to the ground and afraid to let go. Lots of fun to watch. Not so fun if you were on there hanging on for dear life and getting blisters on your hands.
After immobilization, it was just like a round thing and you could swing from bar to bar. Not so much fun.
Then they got rid of the whole lot and replaced it with plastic stuff.
On preview: I don’t think that’s what we called it, but it sounds like a Maypole.
I remember figuring out how to spin them without getting off. That’s the only way I would ride them.
This is pretty old, but I’ve been writing about it recently and posted a photo on my Facebook page. (Don’t know how to post a photo here). The contraption under discussion is called an Ocean Wave. I played on it with my classmates in elementary school about 1950. It would NEVER be permitted now. I remember a couple of kids who received gashes on their foreheads. I know I got thrown off at least once. It rocked back and forth, up and down!
Another vote for merry go round.
Merry-go-round is a multiple-meaning word. The spinning contraption on the playground, or the thing at the park with the horses.
All the equipment mentioned here is verboten on school playgrounds that I’ve worked on, but ours here has a cage-like contraption. It reminded me of the Grimace toy on McDonald’s playgrounds, except this one spins. You can stand inside or hang off one of the vertical bars while others grab a bar and run as fas as they can to spin it. AFAIK, no one has been hurt so far, but every day on runner falls and is trampled by the other runners. Our biggest problem? Making sure the entire 4th grade doesn’t cram themselves all in at once.
My kids called it the ‘push me’. When I had enough I called I the ‘push it yourself’!!
Merry-go-round is what we always called them. There is one at my neighborhood park.