Children who find their way to the whimsical carousel perched above the Hudson River at the northwest corner of Riverbank State Park can hop on the back of a camel, flamingo or kangaroo and ride to the beat of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” or Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” The Totally Kid Carousel is not your standard horses-and-calliope operation.

Originally installed in 1997, its 36 colorful figures were drawn by elementary school students and transformed into three dimensions by Milo Mottola, a New York artist. The city’s Department of Cultural Affairs paid for the $688,000 renovation through the Percent for Art program, which commissions art for public spaces.

The city officially welcomed the carousel back with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 18, though it had already been operating on weekends – weather permitting – after it returned to the park in August. The Sunday before the ceremony, there was an anxious moment when the carousel got up to speed for a new ride, then decelerated to an abrupt halt. The pause turned out to be nothing – just an automatic stop because the weight wasn’t balanced well enough – but it momentarily revived worries about the carousel’s reliability. Mechanical problems plagued the carousel since its original unveiling, when the monkey figure fell loose at the ceremony and postponed actual operations for more than a year. For the past three years, it hadn’t run at all.

“It was not working well for a long time,” said Rachel Gordon, the state parks regional director who oversees Riverbank State Park. Those problems should be a thing of the past, she said, now that the carousel is turning with a completely new mechanical system. The whole menagerie was shipped off to Mansfield, Ohio, for a new frame and fresh paint from a company called Carousel Works .

The figures were in pretty bad shape when they arrived, said Kate Blakely, the director of marketing for Carousel Works. A decade of weather and thousands of young riders had cracked figures and faded colors far from their original hues. The company stripped the animals down to their fiberglass shells and tested their strength with X-rays and impact tests.

“Structurally they were still intact, it was just the finish that had eroded,” Blakely said.

The company repainted the carousel’s figures and decorative panels to match the original plans, with just a few tweaks. The animals once had crayoned lines over the base color to mimic the texture of the children’s drawings, but the waxy crayon caused the outer varnish to flake off. This time Carousel Works used watercolor pencils that look like crayon marks but won’t cause that problem. Mottola, the artist, was not involved in the restoration, but the company used his documents and photos.

Even professionals dedicated to carousels had never seen anything like the Totally Kid Carousel, Blakely said, and those who worked on it are glad to know local children are already wearing it down again.

“You don’t want a carousel sitting there that kids can’t enjoy,” she said.

Since the carousel’s return, that hasn’t been a problem. This past Sunday, kids pressed pressed jostled against the gate to point out their favorite animals, and parents leaned over the fence with cameras. Though the weather is getting chillier, the carousel will run its usual 1 to 6 p.m. schedule on weekends at least through October – and for the rest of this season rides are free.

Anny Farjado and her son Avery Lara, 9, were visiting the carousel for the first time since it returned to the park.

“We were just coming by to the park and we saw it open,” she said.

For a long time they’d only seen the metal gates down, with no idea when or if they’d see the carousel working again. Avery quickly made up for lost time. He took a ride on the octopus, spider and dragon before settling in on the yellow moose, sneakers propped up on the beast’s fiberglass head. The ride came to a stop and he turned to his mom watching from the gate.

“One more time?”