One of the Jersey Shore’s most enduring attractions was reintroduced Friday to some of its biggest fans at a sneak peek before the grand reopening.
The 114-year-old carousel on the Seaside Heights boardwalk, officially known as the Floyd L. Moreland Carousel, opened at 1 p.m. for a limited audience for the first time since it was taken apart in 2019 and shipped to Ohio for a restoration project.
It will fully open to the public on Wednesday at 6 p.m., borough officials said.
Visitors on Friday included Floyd Moreland, a retired dean and classics professor at the City University of New York who visited the carousel as a child, and in the 1980s spearheaded a successful campaign to save it.
The restored carousel will have room for about 70 customers per ride, said Seaside Heights Business Administrator Chris Vaz said. The fee is $4, with children under 42 inches tall riding for free.
Rides will last for just under four minutes, with just under four revolutions per minute, Vaz said.
Carousels — often referred to as merry-go-rounds — are an iconic amusement ride whose production peaked in the first half of the 20th Century.
The Seaside Heights carousel is the longest surviving and operating vintage carousel on the Jersey Shore, which until the 1960s was home to dozens, said Patrick Wentzel, president of the National Carousel Association.
Of the more than 3,500 carousels built in the U.S. between the late 1800s through the 1930s, it is among fewer than 175 still in use, Wentzel said.
For its first century, the carousel was privately-owned. However, in 2014 then-owner Casino Pier transferred the carousel — valued at the time for more than $2 million — to Seaside Heights, in exchange for 1.36 acres of beach property.
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Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com.
