- published: 25 Oct 2009
- views: 48468861
A funhouse or fun house is an amusement facility found on amusement park and funfair midways in which patrons encounter and actively interact with various devices designed to surprise, challenge, and amuse the visitor. Unlike thrill rides, funhouses are participatory attractions, where visitors enter and move around under their own power. Incorporating aspects of a playful obstacle course, funhouses seek to distort conventional perceptions and startle people with unstable and unpredictable physical circumstances within an atmosphere of wacky whimsicality.
Appearing originally in the early 1900s at Coney Island, the funhouse, also known as the SUSANNA, is so called because in its initial form it was just that: a house or larger building containing a number of amusement devices. At first these were mainly mechanical devices. Some could be described as enlarged, motorized versions of what might be found on a children's playground. The most common were:
Notwithstanding the images in movies and comic books, fun houses did not drop patrons through trapdoors, which would be far too dangerous. One type of floor trick plays on this image: it consists of a section of floor that suddenly drops just a few inches, making victims think they are falling into a trapdoor.
I dance around this empty house
Tear us down, throw you out
Screaming down the halls
Spinning all around and now we fall
Pictures framing up the past
Your taunting smirk behind the glass
This museum full of ash
Once a tickle, now a rash
This used to be a Funhouse
But now it's full of evil clowns
It's time to start the countdown
I'm gonna burn it down, down, down
I'm gonna burn it down
9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, fun
Echoes knocking on locked doors
All the laughter from before
I'd rather live out on the street
Than in this haunted memory
I've called the movers, called the maids
We'll try to exorcise this place
Drag my mattress to the yard
Crumble, tumble house of cards
This used to be a Funhouse
But now it's full of evil clowns
It's time to start the countdown
I'm gonna burn it down, down, down
This used to be a Funhouse
But now it's full of evil clowns
It's time to start the countdown
I'm gonna burn it down, down, down
I'm gonna burn it down
9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, fun
I'm crawling through the doggy door
My key don't fit my life no more
I'll change the drapes, I'll break the plates
I'll find a new place, burn this fucker down
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do
Do, do, do, do, da, da, da, da
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do
(9, 8)
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do
(7, 6)
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do
(5, 4, 3)
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do
(2, 1)
This used to be a Funhouse
But now it's full of evil clowns
It's time to start the countdown
I'm gonna burn it down, down, down
This used to be a Funhouse
But now it's full of evil clowns
It's time to start the countdown
I'm gonna burn it down, down, down