Pixar Pal-A-Round and the History of the Ferris Wheel

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, and each is notated accordingly. If you click and make a purchase using these links, Where In The Park may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. These commissions are used to cover podcast operational costs. Thank you for your support!

Hello and welcome to the Where In The Park Podcast! This is Kevin, and on this episode, we will be celebrating Disney California Adventure's 25th birthday, which was this past Sunday, February 8th, as well as National Ferris Wheel Day, which is the same day as Valentine's Day every year, February 14th.

Today, we are going to cover the history of Ferris Wheels, leading up to the first, and, as we are recording here in February of 2026, the only permanent Ferris Wheel-style attraction at a Disney park, which is currently named the Pixar Pal-A-Round, found at the Disney California Adventure park located at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California.

Before Ferris - The Early Wheels of History

The Invention of the Wheel (Mesopotamia - Anatolia)

Okay, so long-time listeners know that when I go over the history of a subject, I like to start at the beginning. That's why this story starts roughly 5,500 years ago when the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia. It was supposedly used for pottery. Also, did you know that the oldest surviving wheel is a wooden wheel from 5,350 years ago, found in modern day Slovenia? Either way, none of that is actually that important to this story.

So I'll jump ahead... to just over 4,000 years ago, when someone in Anatolia created the first wheel using a hub and spokes design. Again, not vital to telling this story, but I just like covering all of the bases, and truly, without someone figuring this out, someone else likely wouldn't have started creating rides out of the design, so bear with me.

I'll skip the history of water wheels, but it doesn't take too much imagination to see how large circles rotating on their own influenced the original designers of wheel-based attractions.

Early "Great Wheels" of Europe (1615-1800s)

Instead, let's fast forward ahead a few hundred more years, getting us to Constantinople in 1615. Now, it's not that well documented, but there was a mention of a "Great Wheel" at a Ramadan festival included in the writings from a Roman traveler named Pietro Della Valle from that year. Not long after, an English traveler named Peter Mundy described something similar in 1620 in Philippopolis (Constantinople was in current-day Turkey, while Philippopolis was in current-day Bulgaria, according to Google Maps, they're about a six-hour drive apart on modern roads). Either way, both of these were described as man-powered wooden structures with chairs suspended from them that spun vertically. You know, like a Ferris wheel. The photo below depicts what the 1615 version was likely like.

Ups-and-Downs and Russian Swings (18th & 19th Centuries)

This style of attraction gradually spread throughout Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, with Ups-And-Downs, or Russian Swings, becoming a popular take on this attraction. As you can see from the photo above, they look like a huge letter X suspended in the air, with seats at the end of each line of the X, revolving like a Ferris by two men pushing poles that control gears to make the ride turn.

America Starts Spinning

Georgia's 1848 Amusement Wheel and 1849 New Your State Fair Wheel

Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the first recorded creation of a similar attraction was in Walton Springs, Georgia, in 1848. A man named Antonio Maguino used an amusement wheel, also powered by two men, to bring in crowds to his rural park and picnic grounds. The following year, 1849, in Syracuse, New York, specifically, September 11th through the 13th of 1849, guests of the New York State Fair were able to experience a similar ride. Just a fun fact, those 11th through the 13th dates were actually a Tuesday through Thursday. Did you know that the modern concept of Saturday and Sunday being "the weekend" wasn't nationally adopted until 1932? Well, anyway, at that 1849 state fair, two men who had been working on the Erie canal, Samuel Hurst and James Mulholland, put together another hand-controlled attraction, this time a fifty-foot revolving wooden wheel, which, like the wheels before it, had four sections with seats. 

Steam Power Changes Everything

In 1848 and 1849, man-powered wheel attractions entertained thousands of people in Georgia and New York, and by 1861, Thomas Bradshaw invented the world's first steam-powered... Carousel. Now, I know, this isn't the history of carousels. But, let's get real, if Thomas hadn't figured out how to create a horizontal spinning amusement ride with steam power, it's likely that the idea of a steam-powered carousel on its side wouldn't have happened.

In 1867, a man named Isaac Newton Forrestor patented and built what he called the Epicycloidal Diversion. This is considered the first patent on a Ferris Wheel-style ride. It included a series of four large wheels, each 30 feet tall, mounted on a revolving platform, which seemed like a cross between a merry-go-round and Ferris wheel, but the wheels only had two cars on each. It was installed at Mississippi Avenue in Atlantic City.

In 1870, Charles W.F. Dare's Aerial Swing premiered. He sold these amusement rides with either 20-foot or 30-foot diameters, with options for hand-powered or steam-powered operation. A few sources point to this attraction as a precursor to the Ferris wheel, but I haven't been able to find any photos or drawings of it, so if you have one lying around, send it over.

It could have been one of those rides that somebody installed as a wheel-based amusement ride in Atlantic City, New Jersey, around 1870, I couldn't find anything to confirm this either, but it's brought up often as the likely inspiration for a man named William Somers to create the first Observation Roundabout in Atlantic City in 1891. This was a 50-foot-tall amusement ride made out of wood, and powered by steam. It included sixteen seated sections that could hold two people in each, for a total of up to 32 people at a time. He patented his design in 1892, and a few others were built, including one in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and another at Coney Island in New York in 1892, and one in Staten Island in 1893.

Enter Ferris

Now, for those of you taking notes, we have mentioned many people along the way to this point, and you may have noticed that none of them have been named Ferris. But, good news, we have reached that point in the timeline.

I mean, I guess, I could have mentioned him between the 1849 New York State fair and the 1861 steam-powered carousel, because he was born on February 14th, 1859. Which, by the way, his Valentine's Day birthday is the reason why February 14th is Ferris Wheel day. 

He really doesn't enter the story until right about now. I am, of course, talking about George Ferris Jr., or technically George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., the man whose last name represents the attraction we all know and love.

So... What's the story there?

Well, George was born in Illinois, moved around a bit, including some time in California by the way, and eventually earned an engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. 

After graduation, he went to work designing railroad bridges, trestles, and tunnels, as well as making several trips to Pittsburgh to inspect steel for the Kentucky and Indiana Bridge Company. Eventually, he joined a bunch of other graduates from his university in New York to form G. W. G. Ferris and Company in Pittsburgh. They would soon add branch offices in New York, and more importantly to this story, Chicago.

The Chicago World's Fair Challenge

His firm was hired to inspect the steel work for buildings going into the Chicago World's Fair, aka the World's Columbian Exposition. That Colombian name was in reference to this fair celebrating the anniversary of Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, 400 years earlier.

If you're a long-time listener or a Disney trivia buff, you might remember this Exposition as being the one where Walt Disney's father, Elias, worked as a contractor. We mentioned this in Part 3 of our Windows With a View episode back in November.

Anyway, that fair had been an idea since the late 1880s, and had been assigned to Chicago by a vote in the House of Representatives on February 24th, 1890. When they won the vote to be the city for the fair, they didn't have any architectural plans, nor had they even decided on a location for it. The committee in charge of the fair couldn't agree on what they wanted, but they did agree that the fair needed to have an icon that would rival the Eiffel Tower, which had been built for the World's Fair held in Paris in 1889.

There were tower designs that were considered, including a design by Gustave Eiffel himself, but each time, it was determined that those towers would just look like cheap imitations of the iconic Eiffel Tower.

Rejection and Redemption

It was about two years into the project, in early 1892, that Daniel Hudson Burnham, a Chicago architect and the director of works for the fair, called out the architects and engineers working on the fair for not coming up with an iconic building. This was at a luncheon that was being held as a "Saturday Afternoon Club" with the people working on the fair, and one of the engineers in attendance that day was George Ferris Jr. He was thirty-one years old, but he had an engineering degree and a company with his name on it, when he took a blank scrap of paper and started drawing a plan for a large wheel attraction.

There is a quote from George, where he describes sketching out that idea, and how he decided on the size, what to build it out of, and how many cars it would run, and the number of people it would hold... and "my plan has never varied an item from that day."

After he was done with his sketch, he showed it to the other engineers, and they suggested that he should just stop. Or, in 1892, they advised him against soiling his reputation and that his wheel idea could only end in disaster. Burnham, the guy in charge, had the initial reaction of: (quote) "Your wheel is so flimsy it would collapse, and even if it didn't, the public would be afraid to ride in it."

Ferris, though, stood up for his design, and eventually convinced Burnham to share his idea with the fair's board of directors. And after they reviewed the blueprints he had drawn up, they promptly rejected the plan. He, in turn, spent his own money to pay for a feasibility study. At the time, this was $25,000, which adjusted for inflation is more than $900,000 in today's 2026 money. In the end, after having his idea refused twice, they finally gave in and approved his wheel on December 16th, 1892.

The Original Ferris Wheel

His company would go on to create the wheel, but it wasn't easy, with a severe winter with three-foot-deep snows, and a financial depression known as the Panic of 1893 setting back the project. But the Ferris Wheel opened to the public on June 1st, 1893, just over seven weeks after the May 1st opening of the fair. Some sources say it was referred to as the Big Wheel, the Observation Wheel, or the Chicago Wheel, or even the Mammoth Wheel, but vintage maps of the fair and tickets for the ride say "Ferris Wheel" on them, so we'll stick with that as the official name. It was physically huge, at 264 feet above the ground, with the wheel having a 240-foot diameter. It rotated on a 71-ton, 45.5-foot axle, which as the time was the largest hollow forged piece of steel in the world. It was manufactured by the Bethlehem Iron Company, and it weighed 89,320 pounds. The wheel itself was steam-powered, with two 1,000-horsepower engines.

As for the ride, it had 36 ride vehicles, each one roughly the size of a railroad car, and they say that each could hold up to 60 people at a time, but it would have probably been a tight fit. There are a few sources from the time that state that the cars had seating for 40 people, but I'm not sure whether or not that's accurate either. For Marvel fans with Disney+, season 2 episode 3 of the show Loki includes a scene with a recreation of the cars, which I assume was well researched. They show a few stools near the windows, and plenty of standing room.

As for the experience, there are a few different descriptions, but the one I like details that guests would spend around 11 minutes with the cars revolving and stopping to unload and load six times, followed by one 9 minute non-stop rotation, for an experience totaling in at 20 minutes. A few sources talking about the novelty and thrill of being on an attraction that lifts you 264 feet in the air like to point out that in 1893, we were still over a decade away from Wright Brothers' first flight in 1903. But, hot air, and more popularly at the time, gas balloons had been around for over a century. In fact, at the fair itself, there was a hydrogen-filled "Captive Balloon" that would take guests up to 1,500 feet in the air. Of course, that ride cost $2, and could only accommodate up to 15 guests at a time, so there were obviously many people who went on the Ferris Wheel that missed out on the balloon. But, that's not the point.

The Midway Plaisance

Another fun thing to note, the Ferris Wheel wasn't allowed to be part of the main section of the Chicago World's Fair, the area that Elias Disney worked on as a carpenter and building contractor, it was instead relegated to the Midway. This was possibly because of how late into the project that it was approved, but also because of a worry that it would collapse.

Many fairs and amusement parks today also have their Ferris wheel-style attractions on their midways, which is typically an area with rides and carnival games. This 1893 fair is actually where the name for those midways came from. The section of the fair that they referred to as the midway was a stretch of parkland perpendicular to the fair's main area, which had been named Midway Plaisance around 20 years earlier.

The word Plaisance either means "place for boating," or it just was an old way of spelling "pleasance," which is a secluded part of the landscape or garden. It's also possible that the landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, who -by the way- had also worked on New York's Central Park, maybe just thought it was a pretty sounding word for a pleasant park. But, either way, there are old maps showing the design for the Chicago South Park Commission, with an Upper Plaisance, located where Washington Park is today, a Lagoon Plaisance, which is now Jackson Park, and was where the main section of the fair was located next to Lake Michigan, and Midway Plaisance, a narrow stretch of park between those two larger areas.

If you visit Chicago today, all of that parkland is still there, and in the middle of Midway Plaisance, which is what they still call it, you'll find an ice skating rink located roughly where the original Ferris wheel once stood.

After the Fair - Legacy & Loss

Remember that William Somers I had mentioned earlier? He actually sued Ferris in 1893, arguing that he had infringed on the Observation Roundabout patent. George Ferris actually acknowledged in court that he had taken a ride on Somers' wheel in Atlantic City in 1891. Many sources state that Somers won that case, but Ferris appealed, and a judge decided that the Ferris Wheel had improved upon the Somers' patent design enough to not be an infringement. Somers would end up getting out of the amusement ride business after spending who knows how much money trying to defend his patent without success. I should point out right about here that George Ferris never trademarked the name, nor patented his Ferris Wheel design, which is likely the reason why the name Ferris Wheel is still used.

Also, I should point out that the attraction was popular, and despite the high price tag of $400,000 to build, it had 1.4 million riders, making its money back and even earning a profit... But, Ferris did end up suing the organizers of the fair for not giving him his part of that profit.

That first Ferris Wheel, though, after the fair ended, was moved to Chicago's North Side, opening on the corner of Clark Street and Wrightwood Avenue in 1895, in a residential area not far from Lincoln Park. Local residents didn't love it, and it didn't do nearly as well there as it had with all of the World's Fair foot traffic. Eventually Ferris declared bankruptcy after being incapable of making payments on his debts. Then, in November of 1896, at the age of 37, George Ferris Jr. passed away. Many reports say that he died of typhoid fever, but there are reports that say exhaustion, financial difficulties, and a divorce led him to take his own life. We may never really know.

The Wheel Moves to St. Louis

I'm not sure who exactly was running the Ferris Wheel Company after Ferris' bankruptcy and death, possibly his business partner Charles Yerkes, but either way, in 1903 the wheel was purchased at auction by the Chicago House Wrecking Company for scrap and salvage for $8,150.

Instead of scrapping it, though, it was disassembled and sent to St. Louis for their World's Fair, which was themed to the Louisiana Purchase. It reportedly took 178 railroad freight cars to transfer the wheel from Chicago, and it wasn't done being rebuilt until May 28th, 1904, about a month after that fair opened. At that fair, they referred to it as the "Observation Wheel," not the Ferris Wheel.

After the fair was over, though, it was eventually demolished by dynamite on May 11th, 1906. Apparently, there were plans to ship it to Coney Island in New York, but it was determined that it would cost too much.

And well, for the various outlets telling the history of Ferris Wheels, the story usually ends there, if they even make it this far.

But, if I close my eyes and picture a Ferris wheel, this world's fair observation wheel with cars that fit between 40 and 60 people isn't the first thing that I think of.

And well, why is that?

The Birth of the Eccentric Wheel

The original George Ferris Jr. wheel, was fairly unique. If you want to experience something similar to his design today, you will have to go to Vienna, Austria, where the Wiener Riesenrad, or Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel, was built in 1897 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Emperor Franz Josef I. Technically, the one there today is a wheel that was rebuilt in 1945, after the original burned down a year earlier. But, the design, if only 200 feet in diameter, 40 feet less than the original, it still looks very similar to Ferris's, complete with large cabins that resemble train cars.

Other wheels like it included the Great Wheel of London, which only existed from 1895 to 1907, and the Grande Roue de Paris from 1900 to 1920.

As far as I can find, giant wheels with observation cabins weren't built again until 1985, and even then it was only in Japan. And though those wheels were huge, the cabins weren't actually all that large.

It wasn't until New Year's Eve 1999, when the London Eye opened, that large observation wheels, with cabins with standing room that fit several people, started becoming popular around the world again.

But, the truth is that the average person, or at least, the average American, probably pictures a carnival or county fair-style Ferris Wheel when they think of a Ferris Wheel. You know, a smaller wheel, usually with a bench style seat for two to three, or a slightly larger wheel with a seating area for between four and six people.

This is because after going on the Ferris Wheel at the 1893 World's Fair, there were people who walked away with a similar thought that George Ferris had after he got off the Observation Roundabout... Something along the lines of: "Hey, I bet I can make one of these."

George C. Tilyou

An example of this is George C. Tilyou, a man who kind of led the way for amusement parks here in the United States. He eventually built Steeplechase Park at Coney Island, but his first amusement ride was a smaller clone of the Ferris Wheel that he had the Pennsylvania Steel Company build in 1894. Apparently, George Ferris had turned him down on his offer to purchase the original, so he went home to New York and put up a sign saying the World's Largest Ferris Wheel would be coming soon. Again, his wheel was smaller than the original, but he still advertised it as the world's largest, because who was going to look it up? That wheel actually survived a fire that took out half of Steeplechase Park in 1907, and was moved instead of being demolished with the rest of the park in 1966. It was eventually deemed unsafe, and was dismantled in January of 1975.

W.E. Sullivan

Another person was W.E. Sullivan, the founder of Eli Bridge Company. As the name implies, he started out making bridges, just like George Ferris. Eli Bridge started making portable Ferris wheels after Sullivan went on the original Ferris Wheel in Chicago. The "Big Eli" Wheel debuted at the Jacksonville, Illinois Central Park in 1900, and they're still making wheels, as well as a few other styles of amusement rides, today.

Jay Conderman

And one more person to mention here is Jay Conderman, whose J.G. Conderman Company began creating portable Ferris wheels in the early 1890s. They actually sued W.E. Sullivan's Eli Bridge Company in 1904, but they lost the case, with it being determined that nobody could own a patent on Ferris wheels unless something new was added to their design. Their factory burned down in 1910, and they didn't rebuild.

RCS and Vekoma & Chance

Other companies that have gotten in on the Ferris Wheel game include RCS, or Ray Cammack Shows, Inc., which has been creating amusement rides since 1963. Then there's Vekoma and Chance Rides since 1967, and Intamin since 1973. And I'm sure there have been many more before and after. But, these companies, for the most part, weren't building huge wheels with large cabins; they were more intimate and less expensive than George Ferris's design, and they're what most people think of as Ferris Wheels.

And, just a reminder, this episode is about the Pixar Pal-A-Round at Disney California Adventure, which isn't a normal Ferris Wheel.

Ferris Wheels Come to Disneyland

Before I get into that, I do want to point out that Disneyland did try out Ferris Wheels during a couple of two-month-long autumn celebrations in 1987 and 1988. There was one wheel installed in front of the train station, while the other was placed in front of the castle.

This was part of CEO Michael Eisner's attempt to get more people into Disneyland during the off-season, with State Fair-themed events happening both years. I couldn't find a source confirming it, but the photos show what appear to be Classic Traditional Cable Drive #5 Big Eli Wheels, originally designed in 1912, and still available for purchase from the Eli Bridge Company today. There was also a map from 1988 that showed a Ferris Wheel kind of near Big Thunder Mountain, but I couldn't find any photos or videos to prove it was ever really put there, so who knows.

But either way, those Ferris wheels were short-lived, and some people say the location in front of the castle is why Imagineer Marty Sklar worked hard to get the Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse "Partners" statue created and installed in that location in the central hub where it is today, to prevent another Ferris wheel from being put there in the future.

Also, there was early concept art created for Disneyland by Bruce Bushman that included a generic-looking Ferris Wheel in Fantasyland. There was another piece of concept art, also by Bushman, depicting a windmill-themed Ferris wheel-type attraction, which wasn't built in Anaheim, but a little over a year after EuroDisney opened, a ride inspired by it was opened in June of 1993 in France. It was called Les Pirouettes du Vieux Moulin, aka The Old Mill's Swirls, but it would close in the year 2000.

There has been concept art for Walt Disney World which includes a Ferris Wheel in the proposed Denmark pavilion, and a pair of Ferris Wheel ears accompanied by a Sorcerer's Apprentice style hat for what was then the Disney-MGM Studios. But, those were never built.

Okay, so let's talk about California Adventure. Back when it was first announced, it was described as a theme park where you will be able to experience the glamour of Hollywood, the exhilaration of soaring over Yosemite Valley, and visit a gleaming California beachfront boardwalk. The concept art that they included in the 1996 annual report was very different than what we ended up getting. For example, it showed a large mountain with a bear head, but it looks like there's a waterfall coming out of its mouth. Also, they left off the beachfront boardwalk. We found another copy of the concept art in that report, but with the area where Paradise Pier would eventually be located not cropped off, but it does not include any rides around the bay.

It wasn't until the 1998 annual report that concept art would appear with Paradise Pier looking closer to what it would end up becoming when the park opened. The prominent Ferris wheel had a sunburst at its center, but did not yet have a face on it, it also didn't have the internal tracks that make the DCA Ferris wheel different, but it did have ride cars in unusual locations scattered around the wheel...

Now, if you have never been to the DCA park in California, you might not know it, but there are two options for riding this Ferris wheel-style attraction, the Disneyland website lists these options as "Swinging" and "Non-Swinging." The Non-Swinging version is described as a ride where you "Take off on a classic Ferris wheel adventure high above Pixar Pier." While, the Swinging is described with, "Climb aboard for an exhilarating Ferris wheel adventure that swoops, swings, and slides -high above Pixar Pier."

You see, this is technically an Intamin Coaster Wheel. It is one of possibly five that have been built by Intamin, with this DCA version being the first, and the only one in the USA. The second was built for Hello Kitty Park in Anji, China, fourteen years later, in 2015. The Intamin website doesn't list it, but there is an entry in Coasterpedia for Intamin Coaster Wheels, and they show another coaster wheel in Fuli Ocean Happy World, which also in China, which they say opened in 2023. We found a photo of it, and it's definitely a coaster wheel, but we couldn't find out any other information about it, so if you know more, please share with us. But, the Intamin website does list the others, including one named Time Rider which is in Gyeongji World which opened in South Korea in 2025, and a fifth one that is going to open at the BON Luxury Theme Park in Vidanta World in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, but that park isn't scheduled to open until fall of this year. That Mexico park is sometimes referred to as a Cirque du Soleil theme park, and it's been under construction since September of 2015, with the "Vista Wheel," having been completed with swinging gondolas installed since at least 2024, but possibly 2023.

So... How did Intamin come up with such a wild design for a Ferris Wheel? They didn't. They borrowed the design from Coney Island.

Now, I remember my first visit to Disney's California Adventure, way back in February of 2001, and I looked across Paradise Bay at the Sun Wheel, as it was named at the time, and I wondered to myself about which long-gone seaside amusement park may have had a Ferris Wheel with moving cars on it. I was confused when I learned that Disney had based it on a Ferris Wheel from New York, because it felt like that didn't make sense in a California-themed park. As far as I know, there has never been another wheel like it in California.

The Coney Island Connection

There are reports that Disney Imagineering went out to Coney Island with representatives from Intamin, or Waagner-Biro working with Intamin, to take notes on an attraction named Deno's Wonder Wheel. To be clear, Disney didn't keep its inspiration a secret. Their early promotional literature stated that it was modeled after Coney Island's 1927 "Wonder Wheel." And even today, their website listing for the swinging gondolas, as they call them, explains that it's a unique attraction that is one of only 2 Ferris wheels in the United States that combine fixed and sliding gondolas, and they say it plainly, that the other one is the Wonder Wheel at New York's Coney Island.

So, what is the Wonder Wheel?

Well, if you ever find yourself at Coney Island, there's a section named Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park. Like the rest of Coney Island, it's open seasonally, so check their website before heading down. The headliner attraction at Deno's is the Wonder Wheel, a 150-foot-tall Ferris wheel, with a 135-foot diameter; it has 24 cars, 16 of them are swinging, while 8 are stationary. Just like the original Ferris wheel, it is made from Bethlehem Steel. Just for comparison, the Pixar Pal-A-Round is only slightly larger, 160 feet tall with a 150-foot diameter.

Now, I don't want to go into a long history of Coney Island here... So, I'll keep it brief. I already mentioned George Tilyou's Ferris Wheel clone being built 1894, and how he eventually built Steeplechase Park in 1897. A decade before the wheel, the first "roller coaster" in America, the Switchback Railway, opened there in 1884. The next year, the first complete circuit roller coaster opened nearby, Gravity Pleasure Road. Different people kept adding new attractions, charging people to go on them as time went on. In 1895, that's a year after the wheel, but two years before Steeplechase, another guy opened Sea Lion Park. That is considered to be the first modern enclosed amusement park in the world, you know where there's a gate that charges admission just to enter. There is some debate whether Tivoli Gardens beat them to this back in 1843, so at the very least it was the first in the USA. In 1903, Sea Lion Park was struggling, and was bought by two other guys, and was renamed to Luna Park, and then in 1904 yet another guy opened yet another park, this one named Dreamland. 

This was the heyday of Coney Island. It had three amusement parks in close proximity, and the area was packed with locals ready for a good time.

As I mentioned earlier, in 1907 half of Steeplechase burned down. It would be rebuilt and reopened to guests by 1909.

In 1911, Dreamland burned down. And it was not reopened.

My point is that it was kind of the wild west of amusement park-style entertainment over there at Coney Island.

Okay, let's get back to the Wonder Wheel...

The Birth of the Eccentric Wheel

The designer of the wheel was a man named Charles Hermann. He had immigrated to New York from the Transylvanian Alps of Romania in 1907, when he was seventeen years old. He got a job working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Happel Iron Works in Manhattan. Around 5 years later, he moved to San Francisco. I'm not clear exactly what he was doing in California, but he did file for a patent in 1914 for an "amusement apparatus" that he called a perpetual motion machine. It was inspired by a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. 

After that, though, stories about him explain that he got a job from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, aka the San Francisco World's Fair of 1915, where he and three of his friends traveled across the country on a donkey-drawn wagon. They were apparently famous at the time as "4 Jackasses and a Donkey." They received a letter of introduction from the Mayor of San Francisco to the Mayor of New York, stating that "the purpose of their expedition is to see the country, and, incidentally, to bear the message of our Exposition across the continent." No one goes into detail about what that trip was like, or how much they got paid to do it, but either way, after 3 years in California, he found himself back in New York. Apparently, it was a one-way trip. That perpetual motion machine patent he filed was approved in 1915, the same year he was back in New York, where he got a job as a custodian and manager of the Rochambeau Apartments, where a German immigrant named Herman Garms was living. I'm not sure exactly how the conversation got there, but Charles told Herman about his perpetual motion machine patent, and Herman reportedly responded with how easy it would be to turn his design into an amusement ride. So, Charles redesigned the illustration and filed it for another patent, this time a Ferris wheel-style attraction with looped tracks all around it. Charles and Herman formed a corporation named the Eccentric Ferris Wheel Company, and then tried to find a place to build it.

They came across William J. Ward, whose father had owned a small bathhouse in Coney Island in the early 1870s, and when land divisions started being sold off, he purchased a full block of the property. They were successful, and had various businesses of their own as well as concessioners on their property, and there was one location that had recently become vacant. A switchback railway style roller coaster named Rough Riders had opened in 1907, but a design flaw made it where the trains could sometimes go too fast and overturn, which caused the death of three people in 1910, and then three other in 1915, which is when it was finally shut down.

They had a location, and William liked the wheel design enough that he also became an investor, offering the land in exchange for a share of future profits.

Construction on the wheel began in 1918, soon after the end of World War I. Herman Garms raised money for the project by selling shares of stock to family and friends, while Charles Hermann insisted that they use expensive Bethlehem Steel, and they ran out of money three times during construction. Charles had all of the structural steel components fabricated onsite, and invented specialized tools to do the work, but for some reason didn't patent those. They ran into issues with design changes for the concrete foundation, and there were postwar shortages of materials. Then, there was the Great Steel Strike of 1919 which could have been a problem, but Herman Garms had hired non-union immigrant workers to continue work on the project. Apparently union officials showed up and complained about the non-union members working on the project and tried to shut it down, so Garms responded by giving the workers stock, making them shareholders. He told the officials that they weren't workers, the were owners, and apparently that worked to allow them to continue working.

Deno's Wonder Wheel

The wheel was completed in 1920, not 1927 as Disney had incorrectly stated in their original literature, and it opened as a new kind of Ferris wheel, originally named... Dip-the-Dip. The design worked just as Charles had hoped it would, but sadly, he had actually sold all of his shares of stock to be able to afford to complete the project, and in the end had no ownership of the ride. When it was done being built, he left Herman Garms in charge of running it, and it was his family that would operate Dip-the-Dip for the next 60 years, renaming it to the Wonder Wheel twenty years later in 1940. 

Charles Hermann moved on, getting a job as a building superintendent, but he did design a scale model of a what he called a Giant Coaster Wheel, which he wanted to be 325-feet tall. He pitched it to the planners of the 1939-1940 New York City World's Fair, but they turned him down because they were concerned it would have made their 180-foot-tall Perisphere look too small. Just so you know, that's about the same size as Spaceship Earth at EPCOT, and if you look up photos of the 1939 Perisphere, you'll think that you're looking at black-and-white photos of the Disney park icon, just interesting for us Disney fans, but not really that important to the story I'm telling right now.

He would also design something called a GyroGlobe, which was a ride inside a huge steel orb that looked like a gyroscope. It was actually built in 1949, and operated at Coney Island across the street from the Wonder Wheel for many years, eventually being moved to Long Beach, California. It didn't really make any money though, and no other GyroGlobes were ever built, and I couldn't really find anyone talking about what happened to it after it went to Long Beach.

Herman Garms's family ran the Wonder Wheel until 1983, when Fred Garms, Herman's son, sold it to a man named Denos D. Vourderis. The story, or at least one version of the story, is that Denos had proposed to his wife in 1948 while they were riding the Wonder Wheel, and he made a promise that one day he would buy the wheel as her wedding ring. There is also a story about how he proposed to her in front of the Wonder Wheel; either way, she was on the record as saying she never went on it again because she found it too scary. But, the gist of the story is that he may or may not have had the money to afford an engagement ring at the time, and promised the Wonder Wheel as her ring. Denos had been selling hot dogs and other food from pushcarts in Manhattan, and eventually operated a restaurant in Tarrytown. In the 1960s, he was operating a Boardwalk restaurant while helping to manage a kiddie park that used to be known as Ward's. Which was likely the same Ward family that Charles and Herman got the property for the Wonder Wheel from years earlier.

In 1981, during what was likely the worst moment in time in Coney Island's history, Denos bought Ward's, because of his love for Coney Island and a belief that it would rebound. Two years later, the Garms family was looking to sell to the Wonder Wheel, likely because of the hard times at Coney Island. To paint the picture here, it's said that Denos's wife told him that the Garms's wanted to sell the Wonder Wheel to him while Denos was in the hospital, recovering from a stab wound to the chest that he had received in the park by a homeless man wielding a screwdriver. So, there's that. But, he bought the Wonder Wheel with a promissory note, he recovered from the stab wound, and he invested money to restore the wheel, at a time when nobody was investing money in Coney Island. In 1989, the Wonder Wheel was declared a New York City Landmark, and in 1999, five years after Denos's death, they renamed the street that the Wonder Wheel is located on to Denos Vourderis Place. And well, it's still there, still run by the Vourderis family, and despite not having a manual -they were given a piece of cardboard from an old cigarette box with some scribbled instructions- they overhaul and repaint the attraction every year to keep it working well and protected from the elements. Also, a few years ago, Denos's son, I believe his name is also Denos, updated the mechanical controls that had been used for almost a hundred years to an updated computer system. But, like I said earlier, it's not open all year long, so check their website at denoswonderwheel.com before heading over there.

Now, I know what you're wondering: When the California Adventure version opened, was it the first time anyone else had tried to make an Eccentric Ferris Wheel? And actually, no, as far as we can find, it was the second copy. If you're a Disney theme park history enthusiast like me, you have probably heard of a park that used to exist in Japan named Nara Dreamland. That park opened in 1961, and there are stories about how it was supposed to be an "official" Disney theme park, with Walt Disney reportedly helping the founder of that park, with Imagineers advising on projects, because there was a plan to license the Disney name. But, that licensing plan fell apart, so Nara Disneyland opened as Nara Dreamland, but it had a train station, a Main Street, and a castle that all looked very similar to the original Disneyland versions, and it even had a Matterhorn mountain with a roller coaster inside it. 

And, it was a successful enough park that the owners quickly set on creating a second park, a little closer to Tokyo, in Yokohama. That second park, which opened in 1964, wouldn't include any of those Disney-inspired icons, opting instead for some other buildings, and one large Ferris Wheel, and you guessed it, it was designed after Coney Island's Wonder Wheel. In fact, in the park it was even named Wonder Wheel. According to Coasterpedia, it was 75 meters tall, which makes it the tallest Eccentric/Coaster Wheel ever built, at roughly 246 feet. It was manufactured by Sansei Technologies, which if you look them up, you'll see they are still creating amusement rides, with photos on their website for Toy Story Midway Mania, The Little Mermaid - Ariel's Undersea Adventure, the Na'vi River Journey from Animal Kingdom, and more.

Unfortunately, both of the Dreamland parks in Japan closed in the early 2000s, but there was a just over a year, between February 8th, 2001, when DCA opened and February 12th, 2002 when Dreamland closed, when both of the Wonder Wheel-inspired rides were operating at the same time. The Yokohama Dreamland Wonder Wheel was eventually demolished in 2004.

Sun Wheel -> Mickey's Fun Wheel -> Pixar Pal-A-Round

But, like I said, there are a total of at least six on the planet today, and the swinging cars, or gondolas, are a thrill. I have often referred to the Pixar Pal-A-Round as the scariest ride at any Disney park, mostly because of the surprise at how fast it rolls, and how if you have been on other Ferris wheels, you know that they shouldn't do that. I'm not the only one, with people online sometimes referring to it as the Death Wheel, Wheel of Death, Wheel of Terror, Wheel of Doom, and other fun names, and I'm sure it has brought many children and adults to tears. But, knock on wood, the eccentric wheel design has never had an accident, or caused any injuries in its 106 year history. Yes, the rides can break down, including if there's an earthquake, or if the power goes out, and you can get stuck on it... But, when this has happened, they have been able to hand-crank the ride to return everyone back to the ground safely. Though it can take up to two hours... But don't worry, it's very rare for this to happen.

But anyway, of course, I did mention that when DCA opened, this attraction was named the Sun Wheel, and it had a large smiling sun on it facing into the park. That theming would change between October 2008 and May 2009, when it was redesigned as Mickey's Fun Wheel. This change was part of a $1.2 billion expansion of the park that had been announced in the fall of 2007, with plans for the lagoon in the park to be updated for a nighttime show named World of Color. The new version of the ride swapped out the sun face for a large pie-eyed Mickey Mouse face, and character art of the Fab Five, that's Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto, added to each of the gondolas. The lighting on the wheel was also updated to multicolor LEDs, which would be incorporated into that nighttime show. That theming and name would stay for almost a decade, changing when Paradise Pier was converted into Pixar Pier in 2018. At that point, it was rethemed with Pixar characters depicted on each gondola, with two separate characters from the same Pixar feature animated film appearing on opposite sides of each gondola, for example Sulley's face is on one side, with Mike Wazowski, both from Monsters Inc. on the other for one vehicle, and with Wall-E and Eve depicted on another. The name at that point became Pixar Pal-A-Round. That pie-eyed Mickey, though, still faces into the park, despite not being a Pixar character.

Now, just to try to make some sense of this Ferris wheel at Disney California Adventure... Let's recap here, George Ferris Jr., the guy Ferris wheels are named after, lived in California for a short while, as did Charles Hermann, the guy who designed the Eccentric Ferris wheel. Also, many seaside pier amusement parks that used to exist in California, including the Abbott Kinney Pier in Venice, Playland at the Beach in San Francisco, and Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, as well as amusement piers that still exist in one form or another today, including Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Belmont Park in San Diego, and the Santa Monica Pier. So, it makes sense that the original designers thought it would fit into their pier-themed district. There is also the point that most, if not all, of those seaside amusement parks in California were built by people inspired by Coney Island in New York.

Early concept art from Tim Delaney, who designed most of the early versions of Paradise Pier, includes this Wonder Wheel-style Ferris wheel. I do not know exactly who at Imagineering pitched it, but knowing the public perception of Ferris wheels being iconic rides at seaside piers, and understanding that a basic Ferris wheel would be considered too boring for a Disney theme park, it makes sense that they would consider a unique design for the new park. It's also worth mentioning that part of the original idea behind this second gate at the Disneyland Resort was adventure, and that this park should have more thrills than Disneyland Park across the way. This is the reason why they had a white water rafting ride with a drop, and a roller coaster with a loop, and a Ferris wheel that makes people cry, probably every day.

But hey, I love the original Deno's Wonder Wheel, the version at DCA, and the rest of Disney California Adventure, and whether you love the Pixar Pal-A-Round as well, or not, I hope you had a good time learning all about it and Ferris wheels in general. If you did have a good time, or at least learned something new, please leave a comment below, or share your stories and photos with us on our free private Facebook group: Where In The Park Explorers. Be sure to check out our unofficial self-paced seek-and-find games for DCA, Disneyland Park, and many other theme parks! Just click the Games button at the top of this page!

Okay, this is Kevin, signing off for the Where In The Park Podcast, until next time, we'll see you somewhere in the park.

---------------------


Articles References:

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, and each is notated accordingly. If you click and make a purchase using these links, Where In The Park may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. These commissions are used to cover podcast operational costs. Thank you for your support!
Back to blog

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.

Discover More Details

View all
1 3
View all