Never Regret Not Being Brave Enough

By Rob Ascough

Staying in the Crest every summer, the nightly drive to the boardwalk involved heading north on Ocean Avenue where the Screem Machine (or Scream Machine, or Jack Rabbit, depending on how far back you go) towered over everything in the area of Schellenger. The lift hill that carried the ancient cars to the peak of the massive, creaking beast six stories into the Wildwood sky was an oppressive, intimidating wall of salt air-worn timbers, looming large before my eyes, and definitely in my mind.

Considering I was only six years old when it was demolished in 1984, it makes sense I never quite worked up the boldness to take a ride. While my approach to getting others to ride roller coasters has always been to guide with a gentle hand instead of pressure, I sure wish someone had forced me to take a ride before the sun set on the classic ride, which dated all the way back to 1919 – before roller coasters had “upstop” wheels to keep the vehicles locked to the track (hence Screem Machine’s shallow drops and slow turns compared to modern thrillers).

Wildwood’s boardwalk, like most amusement centers, isn’t static art, but instead an ever-changing canvas representing the latest and greatest concocted by ride manufacturers to make riders spin, scream, and sometimes spill all over the midways. Just as the boardwalk piers of today look little like the ones of my youth, the ones of Morey’s Piers’ eventual 75th anniversary will little resemble those of their recent 50 th . If we’re lucky, at least Great White will dominate the skies of Wildwood as long as Screem Machine (it’s worth noting that in another five years, Great White will be as old as the iconic Hunt’s Pier Flyer was when it was torn down before the 1989 season).

My Wildwood memories are packed with rides I’d wished I’d had the audacity to tackle in my youth. Before the days of the Zoom Phloom and Great Nor’easter, Morey’s Surfside Pier was dominated by the Jumbo Jet roller coaster. An import from Germany where it was designed the travel the fair circuit, the modern steel ride was a true spaghetti bowl of twisted yellow track, impossible for the eyes to untangle. Instead of seated side-by-side, riders sat in front of each other in toboggan-like vehicles that noisily darted from one end of the structure to the other, rising and falling and turning like fighter jets true to the roller coaster’s name. I missed being brave enough by only a year or two, and at least there’s a happy ending to this story – an identical roller coaster operated at Coney Island in New York City, and I took advantage of the opportunity to ride it while it was still in operation. Still, it made me wish I could have experienced the Wildwood version of the ride, perched at the end of the amusement pier with the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing in the distance.

Youthful fears and apprehensions resulted in my missing a lot of the boardwalk’s legendary (and not-so-legendary) haunted houses. Dark rides (as they’re known in the amusement industry) are fairly rare these days, but at one time all of Wildwood’s amusement piers had at least a couple. Someone I managed to deal with Whacky Shack on Hunt’s Pier (the ugly bird popping out of the clock face is something that still creeps into my nightmares) but ignored so many others, much to my internal and eternal chagrin.

When I unearthed my teenage daring, I paid a visit to Castle Dracula. The dark fixture of the boardwalk looked terrifying, but I was pleasantly surprised by the charming hokeyness of the experience, including but not limited to pitch-black corridors, employees competing with each other by making strange noises, and even a room with walls closing in on guests. The antithesis of Walt Disney World levels of immersion, it took a wild suspension of disbelief to imagine Vlad the Impaler residing on the Wildwood boardwalk in a domicile comprised of plywood and other hardware store items, but the tour was fun, nonetheless. When Castle Dracula was unceremoniously vandalized and destroyed in a January 2002 fire, it was a huge loss to the island as well as the amusement industry that moved away from walkthrough haunts and fun houses in recent decades. Yet through my sadness I could see a silver lining, because I had discovered enough valor to experience something special.

If you’re a kid reading this… well, let’s face it, a kid probably isn’t reading this. But if you’re on the fence about taking a ride on Kong, Sea Serpent, or “it”, I suggest you dig down deep for some nerve and challenge an intimidating ride today, because you never know if it’ll be gone tomorrow once you finally find it. I could fill a book with pictures of rides I never challenged –the kind of book one might find at a museum (hint, hint).