Travelling Rides

[Coastercal]

Question.

What do you all do when it comes to counting coasters that aren’t permanent instalments listed on RCDB?

If you count them, how can you be sure that a runaway train or caterpillar coaster isn’t the same one you rode last year or five years prior for that matter? How can you be sure that a travelling spinning coaster isn’t the same travelling spinning coaster you rode last week at a different fair? They’re just to me seems no way of counting these properly. Especially when they mostly don’t even have names.


Personally only 4-5 of my 160 credits are funfair rides. I may remove them if I can’t find confidence from within my fellow enthusiasts on this thread.

Discuss and advise,
Cheers!

 

[Rob Coasters]

A worrying amount of my count is travelling rides.

Keep track of the showmen that own them. Facebook is a great place for fairly knowledgeable fairground enthusiasts, asking around there can help quite a lot.

You also start remembering minor details. "Two of them are yellow but one doesn't have an operator cabin" stuff like that. Colour schemes and backdrops are important too.

In my credsheet, in the 'park' segment of the travelling coaster I put the showman's surname in. So Wild Mouse is "Travelling (Danter)". Or Crazy Caterpillar is "Travelling (Rose)".

 

[CanobieFan]

Coaster-Count does a phenomenal job of keeping track of portable/traveling rides

 

[Trax]

Coaster-Count does a phenomenal job of keeping track of portable/traveling rides

Yep, Coaster-count is amazing for travelling rides. Not only do they keep track of loads of fairs in Europe (don’t know about other continents), but when using their iOS app, you can even look for the closest credit to your location, including fairs. Makes counting really convenient.
Only disadvantage: you need to pay to use the latter feature in the app, but pricing starts at ~3€ per year.

They yielded me quite a lot of funfair counts since I started using the App in 2020, including one credit in Finland.

 

[Coastercal]

A worrying amount of my count is travelling rides.

Keep track of the showmen that own them. Facebook is a great place for fairly knowledgeable fairground enthusiasts, asking around there can help quite a lot.

You also start remembering minor details. "Two of them are yellow but one doesn't have an operator cabin" stuff like that. Colour schemes and backdrops are important too.

In my credsheet, in the 'park' segment of the travelling coaster I put the showman's surname in. So Wild Mouse is "Travelling (Danter)". Or Crazy Caterpillar is "Travelling (Rose)".

Maybe this is a daft question. But how can we be sure of the showman’s name?

 

[Thekingin64]

Maybe this is a daft question. But how can we be sure of the showman’s name?

It usually can be found on in the small print of the safety signs or on staff uniforms. If not on them, just ask the staff who should tell you.

As already mentioned, Coaster Count is also your friend here. Cross reference what you've seen/ridden with the photos already on the site to confirm the owner.

 

[Rob Coasters]

Maybe this is a daft question. But how can we be sure of the showman’s name?

Funfair facebook groups, funfair photographers, and YouTube vloggers. Sometimes the showman's name is in the name of the funfair (e.g Monty Hammond's Fun Fair) often seen on the posters around the area, so the coaster in that fair is almost certainly owned by Hammond.

Large fairs like Hyde Park Winter Wonderland are very well documented on what showmen own which ride. If you're still not convinced, people have managed to discover that three different mouse coasters have all been in the Ice Mountain structure. They know everything.

Youtube and Facebook are your best friends with identifying showmen

 

[Indy]

In the States, the showman will often be mentioned at the ticket booth or on the ticket signs for the rides, such as below:

 

[TilenB]

Yeah, it's a bit of a worry, especially in the countries that don't have the best data available when it comes to funfair rides. For example, German rides are easy to track, especially if you have Coaster-count total, while Spanish and Italian fairs can be a right pain. Names of showmen are rarely displayed and there's no good database that would keep great track of them. For example, I have 3 Wacky Worms called Bruco Mela by an Italian showman Reccanello in my count. To the best of my knowledge, those are all 3 distinct coaster, as there is some minor differences in theming, but maybe coaster-count will figure out they're in fact all the same coaster and my count will go down by 2.