Monday, June 10, 2019

PI Update: Tickets, Tickets, Get Your Tickets!

Originally rolling stock for the defunct Fort Wilderness Railroad from 1973 to 1977, Ticket Booth #2 and Ticket Booth #3 greeted clubbers entering Pleasure Island through its main entrance in front of the then No. 2 Bridge near Mannequins. It's colors and flashing lights hinted at the fun to come! Ticket prices here near the end were $10.95 for one club and $21.95 for two clubs.
Years after the Pleasure Island clubs closed, the two ticket booth cars still stood as sentries adjacent the bridge and we always held hope that they would someday reopen.
CLICK TO ENLARGE By summer of 2014 Ticket Booth #2 had disappeared and presumably demolished while Ticket Booth #3 was marginalized behind a construction wall, awaiting too its demise.
at

4 comments:

  1. TroyJune 10, 2019 at 8:16 AM

    Bob, I actually stumbled across something a while back about one of these booths being reused at Typhoon Lagoon. I haven't been to the water park in years, but the link below shows one of the old rail cars from Fort Wilderness in the Typhoon Lagoon water park.

    And by the looks of it, with the window cut outs, it was a repainted PI booth. http://www.fwrr.info/TyphoonLagoon.htm

    I can't confirm it's there anymore, but we know one of them survived for a little while at least.

    ReplyDelete
  2. KingBobJune 10, 2019 at 8:32 PM

    Troy, I don't know. The PI ticket booth/railroad cars have 4 windows while the one you posted from TL has 6. The ones at PI were stationed in front of the then No. 2 Bridge. The Wikipedia article for Pleasure Island is my source for the PI cars having originated at FW but that article has had a major revamp and that info in no longer there. This website: https://waltdatedworld.com/id119.htm shows a 6 window train car at Pleasure Island though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TroyJune 10, 2019 at 9:29 PM

    Agreed, and that's something I noticed after posting. However, looking at this old PI ticket booth (http://www.fwrr.info/ticketbooths.htm) makes me think the FW Railroad cars may have served as the *original* PI ticket booths before being replaced with the ones seen in your article. No clue when that would have been, however, as it would have predated my time there.

    ReplyDelete
  4. KingBobJune 11, 2019 at 10:23 PM

    Yup, clearly a 6-window train car was used at one time as a PI ticket window. I can't state for certain about the cars I posted.

    ReplyDelete