Dreamland Carnival tests rides at Park County Fairgrounds

Local kids who caught a gander of the carnival at the Park County Fairgrounds will have to wait a little longer than they might have expected before taking a whirl on any of the rides.

Dreamland Carnival Company needed some space to finish assembling its rides and to do a trial run of their equipment, said Park County Events Coordinator Echo Renner.

As for when the rides will be available for the public, “that is a question we are getting a lot these days,” Renner said. “It is taking longer than anticipated to get the rides assembled, so there’s no projected date when it will be operational.”

The rides and the crew are scheduled to be on site until Sunday, she said.

Ride superintendent James Krei said they are hoping to have the rides ready for people to take a spin by Thursday.

“This is the initial setup; it always takes longer with new guys,” Krei said, adding they’ve redesigned some features such as packing four of the small “kiddie rides” so that they can all be transported by a single truck.

“No other carnival does that,” Krei said.

The crew was busy assembling rides and replacing electrical cables Friday afternoon, but the work actually began in September when Dreamland’s owner, Riley Cooke, started gathering up rides that many Big Horn Basin residents have likely seen along the highway near Bridger, Montana, and Frannie.

“We want to make sure it is safe before opening to the public,” Krei said.

Starting a carnival from scratch takes connections, but there are websites such as usedrides.com where aspiring carnival owners can search for rides other carnival companies want to sell due to either getting out of the business or upgrading to something bigger.

“It is a small industry — sort of like roughnecking,” Krei said, noting that most in the carnival business know each other.

Some of the rides were bought from another company in Billings, one came from Pennsylvania and one South Carolina.

“The owner did it a lifetime ago, and his kid graduated and there was a need for a smaller show,” Krei said, adding that Dreamland has 15 rides so far. “It takes a lot of money to get them up and running.”