I took the two youngest grandsons up to Albemarle, NC last Sunday to the Stanley County Fair. Admission was $12.00 a person with an all day ride stamp. When we got there, they only charged us $7.00 a person and they told us we could ride all the rides we wanted.
After our admission, things looked really strange on the midway when there were only two concessions trailers on the grounds and the Merry-Go-Round was being taken apart. The boys didn't care as they started going down the line riding all the kiddie rides.
When we got to the back end, more rides were being taken down. I asked two of the workers who after we talked for a while informed me the NC Ride Inspectors came down hard on them. The Fair had no operating rides the entire first night of the Fair. After that the kiddie rides got to work and one major ride but the other nine majors were out of business.
This had been a Powers Amusements spot for many years. This year J & J out of Ohio had it. Our boys had a ball but there was many a disappointed fair goer this year.
3 comments:
The NC Dept. of Labor is responsible for inspecting amusement devices, and on several occasions have all but delayed the opening of the State Fair here in Raleigh due to the poor condition of equipment. Lots of ride owners have learned the hard way about the tougher standards here.
I know some of the inspectors, since they also do elevators, and the fire alarm systems I install must interface properly. These guys are not unreasonable; if they have taken exception, I've always found the cause to be a code compliance issue that either the elevator installers or I overlooked.
I've got to wonder how the county fair board has reacted to the situation you discribe. Not having operable rides would seem to me to be a clear breach of contract.
I wondered about the Fair Board's thoughts as well. I noticed there wasn't a thing in this week's newspaper in the on-line issue about it.
Bob
Bob, I`ve seen some outfits come here into South Carolina with bad wiring, seat restraints broken, and cotter pins missing. I even had a concession guy once that had his propane tanks hooked up with garden hose. He told me that they didn`t have a problem with it in whatever place it was that he had been the week before. I reminded him that he wasn`t in Kansas anymore, so to speak.
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