Volume 2, No. 21. November 8, 2002
IAAPA Preview
For exhibitors listed alphabetically, click here.
For exhibitors listed numerically, click here.
Editor's Note: Our next issue of THE LOOP will post on Tuesday, November 26, to report on the news from the IAAPA Convention and Trade Show.
They
just clicked
If you want an example of how the amusement industry connects the generations,
stroll by the Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters booth on the trade show floor.
PTC is the show’s longest continuous vendor, this being the company’s
82nd straight year exhibiting at IAAPA. Its booth, however, features the work
of what may be the youngest craftsman on display at this year’s show.
The work, a photograph of the Boulder Dash roller coaster at Lake Compounce
in Bristol, Connecticut, adorns one of four wall panels in PTC’s booth.
Shortly after the wood coaster opened in 2000, PTC owner and CEO Tom Rebbie
saw a photograph in American Coaster Enthusiasts News of the coaster’s
train emerging from the woods. “It was just a 2-inch-by-1-inch (5-by-2.5-centimeter)
black-and-white photo, but it just looked nice the way it came out of the woods,”
Rebbie said. He tracked the photographer down through ACE News, a “young
man” named Alex Nagel in Pennsylvania. Rebbie called one afternoon.
“A lady answered and said he’s at school right now,” Rebbie said.
“I figured he was a teacher, so I said, ‘Is this his wife?’ She
said, ‘No, this is his mom.’” Alex was 16 years old at the time.
When Rebbie explained who he was and what he wanted, it was, to coaster enthusiast
Alex, like an entertainment idol or sports hero calling. “His mom told
me he had thousands of pictures of coasters all over his room. He has his own
web site (www.alexsplace.com)
with photographs of his favorite coasters and from a lot of ACE Conventions.”
At those conventions the Nagels had seen Rebbie speak, but never met him.
So, Alex’s mother put Rebbie in touch with her son, who sent the PTC CEO
a color 8-by-10 inch (20-by-25.5 centimeter) version of the picture. Its quality
was everything Rebbie hoped for, so he had it blown up to an 8-by-10-foot (2.5-by-3-meter)
panel. "I’ve seen a lot of his work,” Rebbie said. “He’s
very meticulous when he photographs things. He doesn’t just point and click
and run, he takes his time. You can tell in his work. And he does it for fun,
a hobby.”
Alex, now a senior in high school, aspires to be an engineering student. “He
wants to design hydroelectric dams,” Rebbie said. Rebbie has since become
close friends with Alex and his mother. “He’s come up to our shop.
He loves going through our old photographs.”
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