One of my earliest career goals was to be a ride operator of a crazy spin ride. Back then, my idea of a crazy spin ride was Enterprise - specifically the one at Darien Lake which is slightly smaller than most others making it more intense and the only one of its kind left in the world (for most of its time it has been known as Silver Bullet).
Back then I never imagined how advanced things would become. While Silver Bullet is still a favorite, Fantasy Island's Mind Warp ended up becoming the most intense spin ride ever in WNY and my absolute favorite ride to run (and ride). And Martin DiPietro brought that to us. That's the reason I started working there - specifically to run that ride. Fantasy Island made a childhood dream of mine come true and I'll always love the park for that. (Shoutout to Mom Said No's Mark waiting to run the ride in this pic.)
But Fantasy Island was so much more. The whole atmosphere was just perfect - it was my happy place. A fantasy world with fairy tale characters on one side (Anna in the whale mouth here), nature in the middle with the Eagle's Landing Canoes and then "Fun? Wow!" for the rest with the always changing rides section.
My earliest memory of the park is when I was a kid watching my Dad go on the Devil's Hole ride (the Rotor version - side note, there's still a Rotor operating at Sylvan Beach just east of Syracuse). I couldn't ride back then as I was too young but always remembered how cool that ride was complete with the devil hanging over it. The devil made a brief reappearance towards the end of Fantasy Island (Charles fascinated by him here in 2014).
Many years later, the park got another ride that was a huge favorite of mine - a Chance Chaos. My favorite rides are ones that spin a lot and flip upside down. And for this one, you could rock the car and make it flip even more. I tortured the ride ops all the time by purposely getting my car stuck upside down at the end of the ride. Chaos lasted about 10 years at the park.
When Chaos left. it was replaced in 2007 by Full Tilt. I wasn't sure what to think of it when it first showed up. I didn't appreciate it until many years later when I got to run the ride. It was a fully manual ride - no automatic program. That's really rare for an amusement park. The beauty of that is every ride was different. This ended up being one of my favorite rides to run at the park. I loved stopping it at the top and tilting it, tilting the platform as it swung down from the top full speed, faking everyone out as the ride ended and tilting it at the very end - yeah I really liked the tilt button. And I'd never run a short cycle - 5 or 6 minutes was the norm for me. Had one guest yell out that I was holding her hostage when I ran a 14-minute cycle one night lol.
Another ride I enjoyed running was the 2011 Gravitron version of Devil's Hole. Same deal with this one - I loved doing long cycles and would have the seats go up and down 2 or 3 times per ride. And the best part with this - the ride was operated from inside. Not only did it get us out of the sun but we spun with the ride too (but being in the center didn't feel the forces that pinned everyone else to the wall).
More than the rides, the thing everyone remembers most about Fantasy Island was the Wild West Shootout. The western town area was a cool place and the show itself tacky in the absolute best way possible. This was the heart of Fantasy Island. Just about everyone who grew up in WNY has seen that shootout at least once - and because of how unique it was, usually multiple times.
On the subject of unique - The Blue Goose. Adults couldn't ride but that didn't matter - just watching it in action was a cool experience.
Back to the other side of the park, Silver Comet arrived in 1999. I consider this the wildest & smoothest wooden roller coaster in WNY. And the back seats were the place to be. I'm going to miss this ride.
In 2014, I was crushed when the Old Mill Scream log flume suddenly went away. But the replacement was incredible - although really short-lived lasting about a year. Over The Falls was the type of ride you'd have to pay extra to ride anywhere else but at Fantasy Island no extra charge! It was wild. Happy I got a couple rides on it during its short time at the park. Cheryl goes Over The Falls here...
There was no water involved with the Over The Falls ride, but when thirsty you could always get some free water from the little elephant drinking fountain. Little random things like that are what made Fantasy Island such a cool place.
And it can't be a park without fried dough. And with apples on top oh yeah.
Over the years, there was a bunch of rides that came and went at the park. The Rock O Plane with the egg shaped cars that you manually flipped was a favorite of mine. Also loved the Patriot & Flying Bobs. Don't have pictures of them all but some favorites I do (which lasted until the end) are Flight (one of my least favorite rides to run as you're basically staring up the entire time to watch the ride), Crazy Mouse & Gondola Wheel (way in the back) and Rock & Roll (one of the most popular Fantasy Island rides). If you rode that, then you probably met the Park Mom - Kim. She ran that ride for many years until spending the park's final season in the food department.
Another park favorite was the Giant Slide which was sadly missed in the park's final years. Apex Parks Group tried to fix it up when they took over but the cost to do that made that impossible. I did like that they at least put a sign there explaining what was going on while the slide sat dormant as they tried to make it happen.
One really unique attraction at Fantasy Island was I Got It. I don't know of any other park that had this game, which is usually reserved for carnivals and fairs.
I saved my personal favorite for the end. Mind Warp (a Technical Park Loop Fighter) arrived at the park in 2011. I drove my boss Zack crazy because that's all I ever wanted to run (and my friend Don always tried to make sure that's where I ended up). Riding it was awesome, but running it was equally fun to me (although I was always a little jealous as I watched it). That's the control panel for Mind Warp on the right.
I only worked at the park part-time for the final 3 seasons but a lot of my time there was spent running Mind Warp. And that will go down as some of my favorite moments in life. It was a workout running that ride - those 16 restraints that had to be pulled down each time got tiring after 8 hours. And sometimes a little annoying when one person (always one of the last ones) either got scared and wanted off the ride, wanted to change seats, or wanted the restraint loosened. When that happened, all the restraints had to be reset and the entire process started again. But it was so worth it.
I especially loved when Zack put a fog machine under the ride in the final few weeks of the park (for one weekend we even had a bubble / foam machine underneath). I'm really going to miss running this ride and also the awesome people who kept coming back for it again and again.
Fantasy Island was an incredible place to work and even just to hang at. I'm not even going to try to name all the great coworkers I met there for fear of leaving one out but hope all of them stay in my life. And a huge thank you to the incredible park managers & maintenance who did everything they could to make Fantasy Island the awesome place it was. While it's easy to hate on Apex Parks Group for closing the park in such a rotten way, all the managers on site were the absolute best. I will miss every one of them as they scatter around the country and I thank them for giving me the chance to work at what was one of my favorite amusement parks.
The final moment for Fantasy Island came on October 27, 2019. It was a miserably cold day and when the drizzle came, it made things even worse. By about 3:30 I heard there was only 35 people in the park and the managers decided to close the park for the season shortly after that.
One of my final park memories is when a young kid who was a huge Mind Warp fan showed up right near the early closing. After one Mind Warp ride, he asked to go again. I knew he was a fan of Silver Comet too so told him to rush over to it and get the final ride of the season on it because the park was closing early. I promised him I would give him one more ride on Mind Warp after that.
While Silver Comet probably should have been the final ride to ever run at Fantasy Island, I ran the Mind Warp for him and one other guest after that. That made Mind Warp the final ride to run at Fantasy Island and I'm kinda happy I got to run it (luckily I had a chance to ride it earlier that day). A huge thank you to Fantasy Island's awesome maintenance and managers for keeping the power on to allow that to happen for that kid. I'm sad he'll never get to grow up with the park like I did.
Maybe a miracle will happen and Grand Island or some random investor will save the park at the last second. But it's not looking promising. I'm crushed that I won't get to do something I loved at such a perfect place anymore. But one of my closest friends reminded me all good things come to an end and unfortunately that's looking like the case with Fantasy Island.
For me it was 3 awesome years doing something I loved (running rides) and many, many more just being there. Thank you to anyone who rode the rides I ran - I'll miss running them for you. And thanks to everyone who was ever involved with making Fantasy Island one of my favorite amusement parks.
Here's a picture from early in the day (before people showed up) on the final operating day at the park - 10/27/19 at 12:18pm.
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