Park Ranger

 Manufactured by Whittaker Brothers of Oldham, this safari trick ride was released in the early 1990s.  There were several different versions.  Firstly, it was available as either a single or double seater ride (with or without an animal passenger on one of the seats, in other words).  The animal in question was either a lion or tiger cub.  There was also a cub sat on top of the vehicle.  On the single seater version, the roof cub would always be painted as the opposite species to the passenger cub.  So tiger in the passenger seat, lion on the roof or vice versa.


Park Ranger - 1990s Whittaker Brothers Leaflet

The cubs always reminded me of Simba from The Lion King, although they were obviously not officially licensed as such!


Park Ranger (with lion cub passenger) - 1990s Whittaker Brothers Leaflet

The third jungle animal character featured on the ride is a giraffe sitting up on the back of the van holiday a 'L' plate.


Park Ranger (with lion cub passenger) - Location Unknown, April 1997

The ride played "Daddy's Taking Us To The Zoo Tomorrow" when in motion and had three push buttons for different sound effects; a roaring lion, beeping horn and laughter.


Double seater with tiger on roof - Merrivale Model Village, Great Yarmouth, June 2021.  This is the earliest version of this ride, complete with original soundtrack.


Single Seater (Lion Cub Passenger, Tiger Cub on Roof) - Barry Island Pleasure Park, June 2019.  This is a later edition with updated colours.

While the earliest version of the Park Ranger was painted in "camouflage" yellow, green and black strips with red highlights, later versions saw the entire van's colour scheme changed and the ride renamed "Big Top Circus" or "Toytown Zoo".


Big Top Circus - Early 2000s Whittaker Brothers Leaflet

The wildlife characters remained the same in Big Top Circus, but the van was now predominantly white with red and green details.


Toytown Zoo - Early 2000s Whittaker Brothers Leaflet

In Toytown Zoo, the sitting lion/tiger cub passenger was usually replaced by a teddy bear.  This van was painted in white and blue.


Old Mac's Van Double Seater (Left) and Single Seater (Right) - 1990s Whittaker Brothers Leaflet

Another version was "Old Mac's Van", a blue van with green and red details which could be purchased with an optional orange-spotted white dog passenger on one of the seats.  A cockerel rode on the back of the van in place of the giraffe and the tune it played was, unsurprisingly, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm".