 Hello and welcome to Ride History with Amusement Insiders. I'm your host, Jasmine, and today I wanted to talk to you about the antique carousel at Canada's Wonderland. Okay, I know what you're thinking. This isn't the most exciting topic, but I did want to round out the Canada's Wonderland series that I had originally planned for my own channel and just finish out that series here on Amusement Insiders, and this was one of the rides that I had planned to discuss. So in honour of finishing the Canada's Wonderland series that I have footage for, today we're going to talk about the antique carousel at Canada's Wonderland, and I promise next week we'll move on to a more exciting topic still within Canada, but branching outside of Canada's Wonderland, so stay tuned for that as well. So let's dive right into today's topic. The antique carousel at Canada's Wonderland was manufactured in 1928 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company. The ride was purchased by Canada's Wonderland in 1972, though as I just mentioned it was built in 1928. So where did the carousel reside before Wonderland bought it? Well, it actually resided at the Palisades amusement park in New Jersey, which closed in 1971. So Wonderland purchased the ride in 1972, and it actually sat in storage for almost nine years, because as you guys know, Canada's Wonderland didn't open until 1981. So with that said, and just like the other rides that we've discussed so far in this series, this ride opened along with the park on May 23rd, 1981. The day that Canada's Wonderland first opened. Now, this 90-year-old carousel has 64 hand-carved horses. There are 24 stationary horses, 42 jumpers, and two chariots. And if you're wondering, the lead horse's name is Caesar. So for those of you who aren't up on carousel culture, the lead horse is usually the biggest and the most decorative horse on a carousel. And traditionally this lead horse will be found somewhere on the outside position of the carousel behind a chariot. So next time you're at Canada's Wonderland and you're near the antique carousel, maybe go take a peek and see if you can find the lead horse, Caesar. So speaking of Caesar and all of his friends, Canada's Wonderland earlier this year actually gave us a little sneak peek into the kind of TLC and off-season care that these hand-carved wooden horses, chariots, and other elements of the ride receive from year to year throughout the many years to keep them looking just like new. I know until I saw this blog post myself back in February, I didn't realize that it could take up to three weeks to fully restore a single hand-carved wooden horse for an antique carousel like this. So I'll include the link down below in case you want to read that full blog post for yourself. Take a closer look at all of those photos and maybe learn a little bit more about the awesome artist who has been working at Wonderland for over 30 years and helping out with these restorations during the off-seasons to keep all of these beautiful hand-carved wooden detailed elements looking just like new. Now although Canada's Wonderland's antique carousel is celebrating its 90th birthday this year, it's actually nowhere near being the oldest carousel in the Cedar Fair chain of parks. In fact, it's only the 11th oldest carousel at a Cedar Fair park. The oldest carousel in the Cedar Fair chain of parks actually currently sits at Knott's Berry Farm and was built in 1902. So quite a bit older than Wonderland's antique carousel. Actually visited Knott's last year and did not realize that at the time, so that's a pretty cool little fact. Did you know that Cedar Fair had so many antique carousels in their chain of parks? And which one is your favorite? Feel free to share your opinion down below and let me know if this video actually did end up being a little bit interesting to you. Would you like to hear more about antique carousels? I know there are some with some pretty cool and even some pretty creepy history in some cases and I'm a big fan of them, so let me know if you guys would like to see more Ride History videos including rides like carousels going forward. And next time you visit Canada's Wonderland, make sure to go and check out the antique carousel and see if you can spot Caesar for yourself. So thanks for sticking with me through this weird little detour in our Ride History videos and make sure to tune into next week on Ride History when we will be jumping into the history of a ride outside of Canada's Wonderland but not outside of Canada. So with that said, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure to drop us a like and a comment down below and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.