originally posted on 2/14/2019
This feature usually highlights ACE’s success stories in regard to documenting and preserving the history of roller coasters and the club. Conservation is a part of ACE’s core mission. Soon you will read here about the latest ACE Roller Coaster Landmark to be dedicated during the upcoming Preservation Conference in May. To continue those success stories, your help is needed.
ACEers have been very generous donating to the Archives Fund, Preservation Fund and the National Roller Coaster Museum and Archives (NRCMA). In round numbers, ACE has $100,000 in its Archives Fund and $200,000 in its Preservation Fund. ACE also set aside $250,000 several years ago for museum and archives projects. Even though these fund balances may seem large, they took many years of member donations to accumulate and can be used up rather quickly depending on the project or need.
Last issue you read about the NRCMA’s $900,000 fundraising drive to expand its facilities in Plainview, Texas. ACE helped contribute to that effort by donating $10,000 of its 2019 annual budget to the NRCMA. ACE has its own archive facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in need of attention. Much smaller in size than the current NRCMA facility, the Allentown archive facility is a rented space that houses key artifacts and materials from ACE’s 40-plus-year history as well as other items from amusement and coaster history. (ACE also has some coaster cars generously stored at Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters, Inc. in Hat eld, Pennsylvania.) A handful of key volunteers take good care of ACE’s archives, but after years of paying rent in Allentown, the hope is that the archives can be moved into a more permanent home owned by ACE in the not-too-distant future. Donations collected in the Archives Fund as well as a portion of the $250,000 museum and archives set-aside could help aid that effort.
What about preservation efforts? Some may ask, if ACE has $200,000, why isn’t it doing more to save coasters like Waterville USA’s Cannonball Run or Timber Falls’ Avalanche? The truth is that it is very dif cult to save a coaster when it reaches the point of a dollars-and-cents business decision for a park. For a large chain park, that decision is often even more cut and dry. Saving coasters like Six Flags Great Adventure’s Rolling Thunder or Carowind’s Thunder Road (what is it with these thunder coasters?) is near impossible once a decision has been made, though sharing our love for a coaster and respectfully disagreeing with the closure decision can sometimes lead to different outcomes as in the case of Six Flags Great America’s Whizzer.
Whizzer Photo: David Lipnicky. View full-sized image.
ACE is far more successful when it has the support of a park or a local preservation group to make good use of its resources. In other words, there really has to be more support than just ACE. Certainly $200,000 could probably buy a wooden coaster that has been closed down, but then what? As is evidenced by the unfortunate fact that many coasters age poorly over the years and eventually close, there is more to operating and maintaining a coaster than just the initial investment.
Blue Streak Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.
ACE has found more recent success supporting “preventative preservation,” meaning using resources to support endangered parks and coasters. ACE can provide that little kick-start a struggling park may need to repair or maintain a coaster to ensure its continued operation. New projects are always being sought to support. To bring this all full circle, that’s where you come in. You can be the eyes and ears out in the amusement park world that ACE needs. Often one only hears of a park’s woes when it gets covered by the local media, and that can be too late to help. Please let ACE’s History and Preservation Director David Dragun or Preservation Manager Lisa Zigweid hear about any potential candidates for ACE’s assistance. Even if you think someone already knows about a need, that might not be the case. This is particularly true for smaller parks. They can be the easiest to help, the most in need and the quickest avenue to see results. So let ACE know how it should spend your donations. The more people we have engaged, the more success stories ACE can help write.
— Jerry Willard
ACE past president
@#$%&!
#ACENews