2020 A Year Of Transition For Ocean City’s Trimper’s Rides

2020 A Year Of Transition For Ocean City’s Trimper’s Rides
“The park was not profitable and in 2019 there was a change in the power balance,” Trimper's Rides President Antoinette Bruno said. “I pitched myself to the shareholders and said, ‘It’s time for a change, give me a chance.’ And they gave me a chance, and I will either fail or succeed.” Submitted Photo

Editor’s Note: The following story is part of a series on long-running, family-owned Boardwalk businesses.)

OCEAN CITY – From her office window, Antoinette Bruno can look out and point to the exact location where she held her first job at Trimper’s Rides.

During her adolescent years, she worked in a small trailer that operated a quarter pitch game. From there, she worked the “Guess Your Age and Weight” attraction, followed by a stint at the “Balloon Bust.”

Now, as the park’s president, Bruno said she is eager to continue the historic business her family started more than 100 years ago, all while bringing the park into the 21st century.

“Trimper’s wants our guests to come to this park and not only revisit their memories from when they were a child … but we want them to create new ones,” she said. “And we want them to be proud to walk through the doors and be proud to bring their grandchildren and want to spend hours in the park. If we’ve achieved that, then I think we’ve achieved our goals.”

Since the 1890s, the Trimper family has owned and operated Trimper’s Rides and other businesses at the south end of the Boardwalk, collectively known as Windsor Resort Inc.

In 1893, Daniel Trimper and his wife, Margaret, opened two hotels between South Division and South 1st streets. Following a major storm in 1900, Daniel Trimper remodeled his properties after the Windsor Castle in England. Together, the two hotels, which featured a theater and amusement park, became known as Windsor Resort.

In 1912, Trimper purchased a carousel from the Herschell-Spillman Company. The attraction was operated by a steam engine in its earlier days and rides originally cost 5 cents. Today, that same carousel continues to operate from the park’s carousel building and is one of the oldest operating carousels in the country.

Over the years, the Trimpers continued to add numerous rides to the indoor portion of the park. And in the 1950s, the family added outdoor attractions, with new rides being added year after year from the mid-1960s to the 1980s.

The family also built the Inlet Village shops and Harbour Watch restaurant in the early 1980s.

Despite its many changes over the years, the park has remained in the Trimper family since the its inception. Management of the park was passed down from Daniel Trimper to his son Daniel Trimper II. And in 1965, Daniel Trimper III – Bruno’s father – was handed leadership of the park, which he maintained until the early 1980s.

“My father ran the park until the 80’s and then he lost his leg,” Bruno said. “No one in the direct lineage wanted to run the park so Dan Trimper III’s cousin, Granville Trimper, took over.”

Day-to-day operations continued under the leadership of Granville Trimper’s family until last March, when the park’s shareholders – consisting of 49 family members – agreed to pursue a new direction.

“The park was not profitable and in 2019 there was a change in the power balance,” Bruno said. “I pitched myself to the shareholders and said, ‘It’s time for a change, give me a chance.’ And they gave me a chance, and I will either fail or succeed.”

While Bruno began her tenure as the park’s president in March, she said her ideas for what the park could become were years in the making.  While Trimper’s Rides continues to offer its iconic attractions – including the carousel, Pirates Cove and Himalaya – the park has eliminated its paper tickets and has introduced electronic Thrill Swipe Passes. It’s also added an exciting new food outlet – Nana’s Hot Chicken.

trimper

Trimper’s Rides is pictured this summer from the new Inlet Eye Ferris wheel. Photo by Chris Parypa

“Dan used to sit down with me and explain the profit and loss statement for the amusement park, he would explain to me how we’d make our money, and he taught me probably one of the biggest lessons that has become a very important lesson in my first summer running the park,” she said. “He said to me you can never make money if you don’t own the attractions … Over the last 40 years, the Park has been giving up the ownership of the attractions, and I believe that’s why the park was losing money.”

This year, the new management team spent $600,000 cleaning and renovating the park. Bruno said Trimper’s also acquired the Himalaya, a long-running attraction not owned by the corporation.

“Even in my first summer I’m making a purchase and bringing rides back to corporate ownership,” she said. “My goal is to buy a new attraction, at least one every season as we can afford to do so.”

Despite her absence from the park in recent decades, Bruno said her years of experience in finance, marketing and hospitality have prepared her for her new role as president. However, her first months of leadership did not come without its challenges, which included the COVID-19 pandemic and the loss of a park manager.

“In the hardest summer ever, I took over an $8.5 million business having never worked really in this industry since I was a child,” she said. “I had to figure it out, and I lost some key players at the very beginning.”

Regardless, Bruno said the team pushed through the late spring and early summer, taking advantage of the park’s closure to make improvements and implement social distancing and strict cleaning practices. Since March, Trimper’s has also added a concert series, weekly farmers markets and karaoke nights, among other things.

“Everything we’ve tried to do here is to invite the community into our venue and provide a safe space that people can have fun, that we can put smiles on peoples’ faces – because that’s our job – and create memories,” she said. “We’re all about creating memories.”

About The Author: Bethany Hooper

Alternative Text

Bethany Hooper has been with The Dispatch since 2016. She currently covers various general stories. Hooper graduated from Stephen Decatur High School in 2012 and the University of Maryland in 2016, where she completed double majors in journalism and economics.