Alan Morrell

Seabreeze Amusement Park has had hundreds of rides in its 130-plus years in business, many that have left lasting memories.

Some, like the iconic Jack Rabbit roller coaster, are still around. Others are not – like the Gyrosphere.

Designed by Seabreeze workers, the Gyrosphere was, essentially, the Octopus-armed Scrambler ride inside a dome accompanied by a spectacular sound and light show. “Psychedelic” images flashed on the walls while loud music – for a long time, it as “Fire on High” by ELO – cranked over enormous speakers.

“What we tried to capture was a rock-and-roll concert experience on a ride,” said Seabreeze President Rob Norris. By most accounts, they did; one online review described the Gyrosphere as “all the rush of being on a bad acid trip, without the thin promise of a startling mental breakthrough.”

The Gyrosphere was a big hit, but it’s gone now. So, Whatever Happened to…the Gyrosphere?

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The Norris family debuted the ride in 1976 on the former site of the Lightning Bug ride. Rob Norris said his generation came up with the Gyrosphere based on a similar ride at a park near Pittsburgh, “but we took it to a whole other level with all the (audio-visual) stuff in there.”

One of the first tasks was finding the right music. Steve Ouriel, of Brighton, posted on Facebook that he worked at Seabreeze at the time.

“We tried every piece of music we could find, hundreds of songs, but in the end, ‘Fire on High’ stuck and became the theme song,” Ouriel wrote. Norris said he was impressed with the “orchestral, bigger-than-life sound.” The tune became so synonymous with the ride that local radio stations dubbed it “the Seabreeze Gyrosphere song,” as noted in the book, “Amusement Parks of New York” by Jim Futrell.

Other songs were used in later years, including “Twilight Zone” by 2 Unlimited, but “Fire on High” is what the earliest riders remember.

Riders waited in a long, dark octagon to board the ride. Doors opened and people scrambled to their seats in the dark. The ride began and the show started.

“I can remember the ‘swoosh’ as the ride lunged forward and then side-to-side,” Genevieve Veltre Fable of Orlando, Fla. posted on Facebook. “It was freeing and so ‘dangerous’ when we were younger and the cool ride when we were older.”

The somewhat macabre images were enough to scare the bejesus out of you. On the website midlifemixtape.com, Nancy Davis wrote about the “eyeballs and striking snakes and rats and neon pyramids” in her Gyrosphere review (which included the “acid trip” reference).

“It was awful,” she wrote. “Which, obviously, is why we did it again and again.”

Marcia King of Greece posted on Facebook that she was captivated by the sights and sounds.

“I remember being thrown around like a rag doll in the dark,” she wrote. “My heart was pounding. There was lots of screaming. It was the best!”

Other senses were stimulated inside the Gyrosphere as well. Several people commented on Facebook of recollections of an olfactory cocktail of “mold, gear grease and vomit” and compared the aroma to “a sweaty, musty old locker room.” Kimberly Taft from Rochester posted, “For some reason the smell of the inside and the sound of the mechanics pushing the seats still linger with me. And, thinking, ‘Woah, we just got really close to that other car.’”

But still, they went on the ride again and again. The Facebook memories include tales of blistering heat and harmonious mishaps.

“I ran that ride for one excruciatingly hot summer,” Christine Doersam Norris of Rochester posted. “People thought it was air-conditioned. It was not! I can still tell at what point in ‘Fire on High’ you should pull the brake to stop the ride on time with the music.”

Kathryn “Kitten” Howard of Rochester wrote, “My boyfriend and I went on it and I cracked his ribs slamming into him. He was a bean pole and I was, ummm, not.”

A 1994 fire that destroyed the since-replaced carousel also peeled off the exoskeleton of the Gyrosphere’s dome. A new steel-frame-with-vinyl dome replaced the old air-support structure and the ride continued. Dance music took the place of the iconic “Fire on High” – Norris said that was to keep things fresh.

By the end of the 2007 season, the Gyrosphere was through. A new ride, the Music Express, took its place. Seabreeze sold off the Scrambler ride to one party and the dome structure to another, Norris said. “It was losing popularity,” he said. “It had run its course. We keep reinventing our products.”

Another issue was with the Gyrosphere’s rather-low capacity (about two dozen riders) and the time it took to load and unload the ride. Regardless, the Gyrosphere exists now only in memories. Norris said he doubts the ride would return to Seabreeze.

Kathy Kenez from Rochester called the Gyrosphere her favorite ride, “EVER.” She posted on Facebook that there’s a similar ride, called the Astrosphere, in a Maine amusement park.

“I rode it last summer,” she posted, “with tears of joy.”

Alan Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

About this feature

“Whatever Happened To? ...” is a feature that explores favorite haunts of the past and revisits the headlines of yesteryear.

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