Coney Island Cyclone

The Cyclone, also called the Coney Island Cyclone, is a wooden roller coaster at Luna Park in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. Designed by Vernon Keenan, it opened to the public on June 26, 1927. The roller coaster is on a plot of land at the intersection of Surf Avenue and West 10th Street. The Cyclone reaches a maximum speed of 60 miles per hour (97 km/h) and has a total track length of 2,640 feet (800 m), with a maximum height of 85 feet (26 m).

The roller coaster operated for more than four decades before it began to deteriorate, and by the early 1970s the city planned to scrap the ride. On June 18, 1975, Dewey and Jerome Albert, owners of the adjacent Astroland amusement park, entered an agreement with New York City to operate the ride. The roller coaster was refurbished in the 1974 off-season and reopened on July 3, 1975. Astroland Park continued to invest millions of dollars in the Cyclone's upkeep. The roller coaster was declared a New York City designated landmark in 1988 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. After Astroland closed in 2008, Cyclone Coasters president Carol Hill Albert continued to operate it under a lease agreement with the city. In 2011, Luna Park took over the Cyclone.

Coney Island was the largest amusement area in the United States from about 1880 to World War II, attracting several million visitors per year. At its height, it contained three amusement parks (Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park) and many independent amusements. The Cyclone site was occupied by the Giant Racer from 1911 to 1926.

The success of the Thunderbolt and Tornado roller coasters, which respectively opened in 1925 and 1926, led Irving and Jack Rosenthal to acquire land at the intersection of Surf Avenue and West 10th Street for a coaster of their own. The Rosenthal brothers leased a land lot for 19 years from the Coast Holding Company, a syndicate composed of "many prominent business and amusement men of Coney".

With a $100,000 investment, they hired leading coaster designer Vernon Keenan to design a new ride. Harry C. Baker supervised the construction, while local companies provided the material, including steel contractor National Bridge Company and lumber contractor Cross, Austin, & Ireland. Its final cost was reportedly $146,000 to $175,000. When the Cyclone opened on June 26, 1927, a ride cost 25 cents (equivalent to $4.53 in 2024), except on Sundays and holidays, when the Rosenthals charged 35 cents. With the success of the Cyclone, the Rosenthals installed a similar ride at Golden City Park in Canarsie, Brooklyn, in 1928.

In 1935, the Rosenthals took over the management of New Jersey's Palisades Park. The Cyclone was placed under the supervision of Christopher Feucht, a Coney Island entrepreneur who had built Drop the Dip in 1907. Feucht performed minor retracking work on the Cyclone The ride's first drop was reduced by 5 feet (1.5 m) in 1939. By that time, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses planned to clear a 100-foot-wide (30 m) area inland of the Riegelmann Boardwalk, which would have required the relocation or closure of the Cyclone. These plans were subsequently modified to preserve the amusement area there. The ride remained extremely popular. A person with dwarfism would originally zap disembarking riders with an electric paddle, a practice which ended during the 1950s.

Sylvio and Al Pinto acquired the Cyclone in March 1959. By the 1960s, attendance at Coney Island was declining. Increased crime, insufficient parking, poor weather, and the post-World War II automotive boom were all cited as contributing factors in the decline. Coney Island's last remaining large theme park, Steeplechase Park, was closed in 1964 and subsequently demolished. The Cyclone was sold to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) in 1965. Around that time, the New York City government wanted to construct an expansion to the New York Aquarium, which had been constructed east of the Cyclone in 1954. The city began planning to acquire the Cyclone via eminent domain in 1967. Its owners, East Coaster Corporation, unsuccessfully fought the city; they did minimal long-term maintenance, enough to keep the ride operating safely. The city bought the Cyclone for $1.2 million in 1969.

The Cyclone was then operated under contract by East Coaster Corporation while the city worked with the New York Aquarium on plans to redevelop the site. There was a lack of long-term maintenance by the city, and the coaster soon received 101 safety violations. In 1972, aquarium officials announced that they would replace the Cyclone with a swamp display. Opponents of the plan organized a "Save the Cyclone" campaign to contest the proposed demolition of the coaster. This created a conflict between the aquarium, which supported the Cyclone's demolition, and the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce, which opposed it. The owners of the AstroWorld theme park in Houston were considering buying the Coney Island Cyclone and moving it to Houston. This was eventually rejected as being too expensive, and AstroWorld's owners instead built a replica, which they branded as the Texas Cyclone.