Category: Ride features

Dexter Hackett’s new Joker Breakdance draws spellbound audience of riders at Halloween event. Crawl through the cobwebs, fight off the chainsaw wielding Leatherface, side step the approaching zombies and you will find a Joker, the surprise in the trio of fairground rides at this year’s …

Fifth generation Showman Jimmy Beach, now 69, talks us through the rides he’s travelled in and around London and the Home Counties. Growing up When I was little, my dad and grandad had a set of chairs, which they sold then bought a set of …

Keeping his father’s legacy alive, Lancashire Showman Farrar Shaw continues to present rides and fairs under the banner of John Walter Shaw. Here are all the machines he remembers from his youth to the present day. Razzamatazz Waltzer The ride was new in 1974, before …

Hampshire-based Showman John Wall is taking life a little easier these days, but he’s had an impressive list of funfair attractions during his life on the road. Easy Rider The first ride that we travelled when Bernice and I got married in 1966 was an …

There’s a new ride on the block for Kurt Hill’s Northwest Funfairs as former amusement park Miami returns from Ireland and starts a travelling life. A recent addition to the ever growing collection of fairground attractions from Kurt Hill’s Northwest Funfairs is the ‘Stomp It’ …

This year sees the Razzamatazz Waltzer celebrate 50 years with JW Shaw Amusements after its purchase from new as a Speedway in 1974. World’s Fair caught up with the stunning and much appreciated (by ride enthusiasts and public alike) Razzamatazz Waltzer at JW Shaw Amusements’ presentation …

As his father Charlie takes more of a back seat in the business, Scottish Showman Christian Horne has this season assumed responsibility for all the rides travelled under the Horne’s Pleasure Fairs banner. Here he tells World’s Fair about those he’s taken care of until now. …

A set of Victorian Gallopers is finally entertaining the public once again after a long and painstaking restoration. In 2009 Malcolm Potts, a heating engineer from Cambridge, made what he describes as an ‘impulse purchase’ from Beamish Museum in County Durham, and in the process …

Midland Section Showman John Bagnall debuted his Apollo 13 Booster Maxxx ride last month on British soil in Manchester ahead of The Hoppings. The ride, named after the famous NASA rocket and lunar module that launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in April 1970, was …

Swingboats, chair-o-planes and a ghost train feature among the models from Robert Hooper. Robert Hooper is a relative newcomer to fairground modelling, having taken up the hobby during lockdown in 2020. His first model was Teddy Morley’s lorry (an Albion) and living wagon from the …