Funhouse - Common Features

Common Features

Appearing originally in the early 1900s at Coney Island, the funhouse, also known as the SUSANNA, is so called because in its initial form it was just that: a house or larger building containing a number of amusement devices. At first these were mainly mechanical devices. Some could be described as enlarged, motorized versions of what might be found on a children's playground. The most common were:

• A slide, usually much taller and steeper than one would find on a playground. Some were as much as two stories high. Slides of comparable size can be seen today on carnival midways as separate attractions. Most were made of polished hardwood, and riders would sit on burlap mats to protect themselves from friction burns and to ensure that rubber-soled shoes didn't slow the slider down.
• A large spinning disk. While the disk was stationary patrons would get on and sit in the center, then the operator would start the disk spinning, and people would be thrown off by centrifugal force, ending up against a padded wall. A variation was a disk with a raised center, shaped much like a Bundt cake mold; as the device sped up, people would slide downhill as well as outward.
• A horizontal revolving cylinder or "barrel" called "barrel of love" or "barrel of fun" to try to walk through without falling down.
• Sections of floor that undulated up and down, tipped from side to side or moved forward and back, either motorized or activated by the person's weight. Stairs that moved up and down, tipped from side to side, or slid side-to-side alternating directions between steps. The industry refers to these and similar devices as “floor tricks.”
• Compressed air jets shooting air up from the floor, originally designed to blow up women's skirts, but effective at startling almost anyone and making them jump and scream.
• An array of distorting mirrors.
• A very large ball pit

Notwithstanding the images in movies and comic books, fun houses did not drop patrons through trapdoors, which would be far too dangerous. One type of floor trick plays on this image: it consists of a section of floor that suddenly drops just a few inches, making victims think they are falling into a trapdoor.

Some fun houses would bring new arrivals through a short series of dark corridors or a mirror maze, often leading onto a small stage where they had to negotiate a series of rocking floors, airjets and other obstacles while people already inside the funhouse could watch and laugh at them. A few places even provided bench seats for the watchers. Once patrons were inside they could stay as long as they wanted, moving from one attraction to another, repeating each one as many times as they chose.

This type of fun house resembled a miniature version of Steeplechase Park at Coney Island, whose 'Pavilion of Fun' — a building resembling a huge airplane hangar — included, in addition to rides, a gigantic slide, a spinning disk probably 50 feet (15 m) across, and a lighted stage called the "Insanitarium" where patrons emerging from the Steeplechase ride were harassed by a clown carrying an electric wand, while women in skirts were at the mercy of air-jet bursts. Through the first half of the 20th century most amusement parks had this type of fun house, but its free-form design was its undoing. It was labor-intensive, needing an attendant at almost every device, and when people spent two hours in the fun house they weren’t out on the midway buying tickets to other rides and attractions. Traditional fun houses gave way to “walk-throughs,” where patrons followed a set path all the way through and emerged back on the midway a few minutes later. These preserved some of the traditional fun house features, including various kinds of moving floors, sometimes a revolving barrel and a small slide. They added such things as “crooked rooms” where a combination of tilt and optical illusion made it hard to know which way was up, and dark corridors with various popup and jumpout surprises, optical illusions and sound effects.

Although some walkthroughs were given unique names, like “Aladdin’s Castle” (Riverview Park in Chicago), “Magic Carpet” (Crystal Beach, Ontario) or “Riverboat” (Palisades Park, New Jersey), many were still labelled “Fun House,” and regardless of the official name the public generally referred to them that way.

Many traditional fun houses were removed after parks created walk-throughs. Some became dilapidated and were torn down. A few burned down; they were nearly all wood-frame buildings with extensive electrical wiring. Those that remained were all at traditional local amusement parks and died when those parks closed due to competition from new theme parks. No theme park ever created a traditional free-form stay-all-day fun house, but theme parks sometimes developed the walk-through attraction to new, high-tech heights. A few traditional fun houses are still operating in Europe and Australia.

Related, but with somewhat different history, are walk-through haunted houses and mirror mazes, although the latter are sometimes labelled fun houses.