By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Staff Writer
A dedication ceremony was held at SkyPark at Santa’s Village on Nov. 6 to dedicate the new B-Rail ride. It is a unique ride from the imaginative brain of SkyPark owner Bill Johnson and is not available anywhere else in the world.
It looks like a bicycle suspended in the air and it travels around an upper rail; it is powered by the leg strength of the rider themself. It sounds like a simple idea but took years to make it operational. The dedication ceremony attracted political attention, media attention and it is predicted will being many bicycle enthusiasts to the area as well.
Santa’s Village opened six weeks before Disneyland, and had other firsts, too, including its monorail. When Santa’s Village closed in the late 1990s, all the rides were auctioned off including the Bumble Bee Monorail that had been a prototype for the three-rail electric monorails used at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.
Cecilia Ponce de Leon was one of the first folks to ride the B-Rail following the dedication ceremony. (Photo by Rhea-Frances Tetley)
The buyer of that ride was from Texas; when he sent his men to disassemble the Bumble Bee ride and take it to Texas, they quickly realized that, since Santa’s Village was built on a hillside, every support post was a different height to keep the top rail level for the monorail to function. It was soon realized it could not be transferred to Texas where the ground was flat. They left and left the track in the sky at Santa’s Village.
As Bill Johnson told the story, when he was a young teen about 14 to 15 years of age, he got a job at Santa’s Village and was the brake operator for the Ferris wheel, which was one of the fastest in the country. He also ran the Bumble Bee ride.
As an adult, when he bought the park, he was thrilled the bumblebee’s rails were still in position and his imagination went wild. He figured he could use the track for guests to pedal bicycles and sail over the park. But making it happen took eight years to get the idea of riding a bicycle in the air, under the rail, to fruition.
Jim Grant from the Lake Arrowhead Municipal Advisory Council, representing county Supervisor Dawn Rowe, presented Bill and Michelle Johnson a certificate honoring this great milestone as no one has ever invented such a ride and then followed through on it from concept to reality. The certificate thanks the Johnsons for making play happen and “enabling our visitors to make great memories here in the San Bernardino National Forest.” She wished SkyPark many years of success, with the B-Rail and the entire SkyPark experience.
The project went through three engineering companies over the past eight years. The harness to keep the rider safe is not uncomfortable and even the platform has been reinforced for safety.
This unique ride is both exciting and exhilarating, and feels like cycling through the air, as the rail is almost invisible to the rider, above the bike. The excitement while pedaling above the park with nothing below gives a feeling of flying, like in the movie ET when they took off from the jump and flew through the sky.
Johnson explained at the dedication they needed a bicycle frame and adjustable seat post that would fit most people. Fat Chance Bicycles provided the fabrication design of those frames. The B-Rail bicycles have gearing like a mountain bike for ease of pedaling and speed. Most riders take between two to five minutes to complete the entire track loop.
After the dedication ceremony, the ride was opened to the visitors, and everyone from Captain Craig Harris of the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Station to political representatives to local contractors climbed up the metal steps to the platform to get strapped in to the safety harness and bike helmet, get the seat adjusted and pedal the geared bicycles to go either fast around the track or to pedal slower to enjoy the view and feeling of flight. There is no passing on the loop so racing is not the point of the ride; the spectacular view however encourages numerous trips around the loop. There are safety height and weight restrictions, including a minimum height of five feet, as the seat must be adjusted for leg length for this special and unique ride.
Johnson said after the first of the year, he hopes to add a timer with a weekly chart to show who has circled the track the fastest, like in a video game, since he knows many of the bicycle enthusiasts who ride the trails will want to compete in speed for the distance, and would like to see their names up in lights.
Capt. Craig Harris on the B-Rail ride. (Photo by Rhea-Frances Tetley)
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