The Holiday Bounce Carnival Ride ( History ) Extended Version

The Holiday Bounce

The Holiday Bounce Carnival Ride by Steve Truax and Bill M Gowan

As a Child , I ( Rob Connelly ) Working at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto for Puck Canadian Travelling Circus , Any Chance i would get would in Awe, on my breaks, would watch the Holiday Bounce operate , With Colourful Sounds and a Built in Juke Box with a Custom Lighting System, The Holiday Bounce i believe was the most thrilling and exciting ride of all time.

Note from Steve Truax

The original ride was a park model tip top built in 1946 by Custer Manufacturing. The original ride had all wood decks with a canvas covering the center and no back wall. Dwayne Steck hand built the ride you see today. I want to say it was finished in the early 60ts but I'm not positive on that. The ride was originally 3 trailers. The center load, tube load, and scenery load. It was a cable drive much like a tilt a whirl and was elevated in the air by two huge pistons by using compressed air

Additional Note from Bill M Gowan

This ride was hand made by Dwayn Steck. It is a fascinating story. They acquired the "base" in the late 50's from an amusement park in Havana as the country was being overrun by Castro. The park ride was called a Bubble Bounce. Only park models were made.
if you look at the newer pictures of the center loaded for the road you will see a large tube running along the side of the trailer there is one on each side. These huge tubes along with the center (ring on which the sweeps attached) and the forced air ram to lift the center of the ride creating the "bounce" we're all they brought back from Cuba. He told me once these were the only parts of the ride that he could not replace and they were in a little hurry to get out of there!!
When you look through these photos you are seeing 2 different versions of the ride.
Version number 1- the original moved on 3 semis, 1-center,
2-large furniture van for tubs and scenery 3-small semi for the large curved tops of the outer wall.
Version number 2- a gentlemen purchased the ride from Dwayn in the late 90's and made several changes to make movement more cost effective. I never saw the changes in person but looks like he did away with the large van with most of that load going on the center load trailer.
It is very easy to tell the difference. The originals scenery was travel themed. All the back wall panels were names for countries. The newer rendition uses some sort of comic book characters.
Dwayn passes away a few years ago. However, after almost 50 years of friendship I manage to have lunch with Beverly several times a month. As for the "Bounce" it got chopped up for scrap a few years ago.

The Holiday Bounce - Bubble Bounce and Defender Worked Gooding Shows, Conklin Shows and Murphy Brothers.

Photo's and Note's from and by Matthew Ledgerwood, Steve Truax, Terry Brown and Additional Note's by Bill M Gowan

Article by Rob Connelly