Written by Kent Learned, 23 July 2019, originally posted to the Wonderland History Facebook group.
Somewhere along the line it was determined that it would be a great idea to have a hot rod and a pink Cadillac convertible to go with some 1950’s entertainment shows in the park, as well as having a parade through the park once a day.
I was a bit of a petrol head as a much younger man, and know my way around cars fairly well. As soon as I drove the “Hot Rod”, I told them it was dangerous and difficult to drive. It was very hard to stop. They bought it anyway. It had the “Look” they were after. It became my job to look after them all.
The Cadillac was a bit better, but it had started life as a 4 door sedan, and was made into a convertible at some point. It had a lot of hidden rust, and a lot of plastic dent filler.
Then there was the “Flintstones” Mobile, aka The Boulder Roller. It was a customised petrol powered golf cart, and it was great. All of the stone age body work was created on site by David Ward-Fear. He’s a movie set designer and builder. He also made all the interesting building facades in H.B. and Transylvania. All of it was made with hot wire cut Styrofoam, which was then textured and painted.
We needed a motorcycle for a show we did down Gold Nugget Theatre. Honda loaned us one (?!?) for the run of the show. About two weeks into the show, the bike wouldn’t start. The battery was flat. It was soon worked out that the bike was started too many times for the amount of use it got, and the battery never fully charged back up again. This was also a problem with the Flintstones Mobile. It would be started up, run halfway round the theatre and stopped. They’d do the show, start it up and drive around the back again. I had to set up a schedule to put a battery charger on them a couple of times a week.
Then there was the Jetson’s Flying Saucer. It was something that was bought from an American theme park, when Wonderland first opened. It hadn’t been used much, and the batteries were 6 years plus when I got to be involved. Once new batteries were installed, it worked well enough on the downhill trip from Hanna Barbera Land down to the front gate. Going uphill was a different story. It usually needed 2 cast members to help push it uphill. It was powered by 2 wheelchair motors and a wheelchair joy stick control system. It was fairly under powered and was never very successful.