Dragon Coaster Returns to Playland as It Nears Its 100th Year
The dragon’s scales, 250 plastic pieces in all, traveled about 200 miles from near the Adirondacks before each was individually fastened into place.
Its new fangs were also hoisted into position this month at Playland Park in Rye, N.Y., as the nearly century-old Dragon Coaster prepares to come back to life, ready to once again hurtle thrill-seekers into its mouth and through a tunnel resembling the mythical creature’s body.
Even dragons, it turns out, have to reverse the signs of age. But the restoration of one of America’s oldest roller coasters, which will reopen on Saturday after last running in 2024, amounted to more than a mere cosmetic procedure.
The Dragon Coaster, a landmark attraction and frequent pop culture backdrop, fell into a state of disrepair in recent years, forcing its closure for all of last year and for what park officials said was only the second time since the ride’s opening in 1929. (The other hiatus was at the apex of the coronavirus pandemic.)
Rotting wood and metal fasteners needed to be replaced. Years of wear and tear and the salt air from Long Island Sound had exacted a toll.
But the most conspicuous and somewhat touchy aspect of a $1.4 million modernization of the beloved wooden roller coaster involved its centerpiece.
“As I’m sure you’ve seen, the dragon has its head back,” Robin Latimer, chairwoman of the Friends of Rye Playland, said during the group’s May 12 meeting.
Over the winter and spring, workers at the amusement park, which appeared in the 1988 Tom Hanks movie “Big” and is known for its Art Deco architecture, removed the fiberglass dragon from the coaster and installed a successor that closely resembles it.
The tracks tunnel through the dragon for about 265 feet, roughly eight seconds of a ride that lasts two minutes and reaches speeds up to 55 miles an hour, according to American Coaster Enthusiasts.
When a member of the Friends of Rye Playland posted a photo of the dragon in a junk pile to the group’s Facebook page in February, some nostalgists fumed.
“I just saw it in the dumpster,” Paula Piekos, 70, who took the photograph, said in an interview. “I wanted parts of it. I especially wanted teeth.”
Ms. Piekos, who lives in White Plains and has been visiting Playland since she was 4, left empty-handed after a police officer told her she could get in trouble scrounging for souvenirs.
Of the roller coasters that are currently operating, the Dragon Coaster is the 15th oldest in the world, said Josh Brown, the history and preservation director for the American Coaster Enthusiasts. It is two years younger than the famed Cyclone at Coney Island.
“It has a nice drop,” Mr. Brown said. “Dragon has a lot of really great swooping turns.”
He added: “You feel the history. You smell the grease.”
Westchester County owns Playland, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, a designation that includes the Dragon Coaster. Despite the county’s investing $150 million in the park in recent years, attendance plunged last year.
Many of the marquee rides were closed for 2025, casualties of deferred maintenance and a dispute between Westchester County and a private company it had hired to operate Playland.
The arrangement ended, with the county reclaiming control of the park’s operations and trying to find replacement parts and materials so it could open the rides, but it was to no avail.
The company, Standard Amusements, accused the county of ignoring its calls for repairs.
At one point, Playland resorted to asking the operators of the Cyclone whether they had any spare bolts that might fit the Dragon Coaster, but vintage roller coasters are not plug-and-play. Custom hardware was required.
Carpenters fortified the Dragon Coaster with marine-grade wood from Georgia.
“This roller coaster is a living, breathing wooden ride,” said Frank Carrieri Jr., the amusement park’s longtime general manager.
Many people associate Playland, particularly the Dragon Coaster, with coming of age and staycations, which explains their attachment to the park, said Kenneth W. Jenkins, the Westchester County executive. Even the park’s mascot is a dragon named Coaster.
“They weren’t going to Six Flags,” he said. “They may not even been going out to Coney Island. They definitely weren’t going to Disney World. Their trip was to Playland.”
Contrary to some grumbling online, the old dragon that was decommissioned was not the 1929 original, but one that was installed in 2004, according to Michael Blau, the president of Adirondack Studios, the Argyle, N.Y., company that made the previous and latest models.
The company used 3-D modeling and a machine with a robot arm to create the new dragon, which was constructed of reinforced fiberglass, he said.
The dragon was painted by hand, mostly with a sprayer, by the same artist who worked on the previous version, noted Mr. Blau, who said the entire dragon weighs about 13,000 pounds.
The components were put on trucks for the three-and-a-half-hour journey to Playland.
“Can you imagine going down the Northway and seeing this thing?” Ms. Latimer said.
Workers at Playland were preparing to install the tail, lighting for the dragon’s yellowish-red eyes and a fog machine, the finishing touches before the Dragon Coaster officially lumbers back into action on Saturday.
“They want a big splash,” Mr. Blau said. “It is one of the sweetest parks. It makes many, many people happy. There’s some really good pop culture moments with it.”
Among them was the music video for the 1995 Mariah Carey hit “Fantasy,” in which the superstar, wearing cutoff jeans, rides the Dragon Coaster.
The ride took a darker turn in the 1987 thriller “Fatal Attraction,” in which Glenn Close’s character kidnaps the daughter of the man she’s stalking (Michael Douglas) and takes her on the Dragon Coaster.
To go on the coaster, riders must be at least four feet tall.
“Us kids couldn’t go on it because we weren’t big enough,” said Diane Neumeister, 65, who grew up in Larchmont, N.Y., and retired to Florida.
Once she reached her 20s, she more than made up for it, recalling that she rode the coaster 18 times in one day. “I just felt green,” she said.
So what became of the 2004 version of the dragon? Park officials said the dragon, which was severely degraded and prone to splintering, was not salvageable.
Mariah Freyre, 33, who was born and raised in the Bronx, came up with her own souvenir.
In March, she got a tattoo on her arm of a dragon riding in the front car of the roller coaster, which says “Playland.”
It was a tribute to her father, who frequently took her to the park.
Whenever Playland comes up in conversation, people often get hung up on her name, Mariah, she said: “Everyone in my life who’s born in the ’90s brings up that song.”
