Bumper boats are similar in concept to the much older and more ubiquitous bumper cars. Like bumper cars, the point of bumper boats is to collide with other boats. Bumper cars date to the early 1920s. Bumper car collisions tend to be more jarring than bumper boats.

Arrow Development Company, later known as Arrow Dynamics, was the original maker and patent owner of the bumper boats ride. Arrow was founded in 1946 by Edward Morgan and Karl Bacon as a builder of carousels and other rides. The company’s fortunes took off when Walt Disney hired it to build many of Disneyland’s original rides, such as Snow White’s Adventures and Casey Junior Circus Train. The company gradually became mostly a roller coaster maker over the years.