Antique Autos Part 1: Herbie

Easily one of my favorite film franchises of all-time is the Herbie The Love Bug series of films from Disney. I've seen plenty of Herbie cars in my travels, mostly cars used in the newer 2005 movie or the Disney On Ice production from the 80's. But to see a real honest to goodness Herbie used in one of the original movies is a real treat. So, when I learned that the REAL HERBIE was going to be in my neck of the woods I got pretty excited.

This past weekend I dragged my kids up to the Antique Auto Club of America Museum in Hershey, PA to see two authentic Herbie The Love Bugs used in the filming of the 1974 sequel Herbie Rides Again. The original movie, The Love Bug, was the highest grossing movie of 1969 and apparently stayed the top box office grosser of all time until a little film with some spaceships, robots and lightsabers showed up in 1977.

The AACA Museum has two Herbie cars on loan from the William E. Swigart, Jr Automobile Museum in Huntingdon, PA. They are on display until April 24, 2011. The first Herbie is in beautiful condition:

The original Herbie was a pearl white 1963 Volkswagen (VW) Model 117 Deluxe 2-door sedan equipped with a sunroof.


Also on display is this beat up Herbie:

The beat up interior

Poor Herbie, he's been through a lot.

And for extra nerdy fun, here's the registration for Herbie:

This is a sign that was used when Herbie made public appearances back in the day. Since the original four theatrical films, there has also been a TV movie in 1997 and a 5th theatrical production, Herbie Fully Loaded in 2005.

Herbie is awesome!

Check back later in the week with some pictures of another neat car on display at the AACA Museum.

Trip Report: Kings Dominion 2010

We made it out to Kings Dominion this past week. Anybody who reads this blog with any regularity knows that it's one of my favorite amusement parks. It's the park I grew up going to and so many things that I love about the amusement park industry I first got a taste of at Kings Dominion. Nowadays, I live much closer to Hersheypark but every couple of years or so, we made the 3 1/2 hour journey out to Doswell, VA to visit KD. Every visit brings a different set of mixed emotions.


The most exciting news...for me, at least, on this trip was I was able to go on rides that I haven't been able to for many years. Around the mid-90's, my careless lifestyle had caught up with me as far as amusement park rides were concerned and my size prohibited me from fitting into the safety restraints on most thrill rides. After a few trips to various parks where I wasn't able to ride roller coasters I pretty much closed the roller coaster riding chapter of my life and settled for the merry-go-round instead.


After having a heart-attack in November, I severely curbed my eating habits and added exercise into my life for the first time. I've been able to drop 70 pounds in the past 8 months and one of the most exciting benefits is that I had no problem fitting into any of the rides at Kings Dominion. I was able to revisit old friends like the Rebel Yell and the Grizzly. (I estimate I haven't been on any of Kings Dominion's coasters since 1993.) In addition to the Anaconda and the Hurler I also got on the Backlot Stunt Coaster and the Ricochet. All of them - GREAT RIDES! But I have to say that in my older age, the twisting and looping of Anaconda left me a little queasy.


Of course, being the cartoon loving kid that I am/was, one of my favorite rides in the park had always been the kiddie coaster Scooby-Doo. It's now called Ghoster Coaster, but no matter what you call it - I was elated to be able to fit into the ride's smaller cars and ride it with both of my children. (It was Tanner's first "big" coaster and he absolutely loved it!)


Elias also added a few more "big boy" rides under his belt. He loved the Avalanche bobsled ride and the Backlot Stunt Coaster, which is a bit intense but he conquered it twice! I also really enjoyed the ride. It's a roller coater with a little story and show attached to it, something Kings Dominion doesn't typically do. The cars of the coaster actually look like little sports cars (They were originally designed to resemble the getaway vehicles from the movie The Italian Job.) The train of cars blasts off from the station and swirl around three levels of a parking garage before dodging through traffic and several police cars. The train then comes to a stop in some sort of warehouse setting, where a helicopter starts to shoot at you. You then blast off again, into a tunnel for some fairly extreme twists and turns in the dark before crashing through a billboard and landing in a drainage ditch. Pretty fun little ride!


They still have the crazy upside down ship ride at the front of the park called The Berserker, and they still have their stand-up roller coater Shockwave. Both - rides I've never been on and will probably never get on! There's two newer steel coasters that I also opted out of: Dominator and Intimidator 305 which is tall. I mean, really, really tall!


Kings Dominion is still home to one of the best white water rapids rides White Water Canyon. And they still have their original log flume ride, Shenandoah Lumber Company, which has not been altered since it debuted in the 1970's. Nice touch!

Unfortunately, there is alot of the park that has been changed too much over the years. When Paramount Pictures took control of the park in the early 90's, they started to make sweeping changes throughout the park. Most of the changes were to brand the park with Paramount owned franchises and also to promote new movies and TV shows. This is the time in the park's history when the Wayne's World section of the park was introduced. A well executed addition, but a ridiculous idea for something that is so permanent like an entire themed area of the park.

Some of the natural beauty of the park has been lost over time as well. In some spots of the park there are too many things shoehorned into a small amount of land. Rides are squeezed in between other rides and there are way too many Games of Chance and Dippin' Dots stands. (Really, how many Dippin' Dots stands does one park need. Is it really that popular!?!) The Grizzly is a great wooden coaster that was originally designed out in the woods. The queue for the ride took you way back into the woods and you couldn't really get a good look at the ride until you were on it. That is a major design element of the coaster. That illusion is lost today, as the wooded area around the ride was torn down to make way for a go-cart track, an arcade and a Dippin' Dots stand!

A go-cart track in a world class theme park like Kings Dominion is a horrible idea! It was added under the reign of Paramount and I would hope the parks new owners, Cedar Fair, are considering removing it. First of all, it just cheapens up the park. Anybody can go 10 miles in any direction from their home and find a go-cart track. Second, the track just sits there unused because why would anybody shell over another $8.00 to go on a ride when they just spent $50.00 to get into your park and go on rides all day! I would really like to see Kings Dominion remove the go-cart track and add another ride or just plant some trees and leave the Grizzly back in the woods where it belongs.

This year also marks the first time in the park's history that the association with Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters has been completely eliminated. Paramount took over the park at a time when Hanna-Barbera was fading in popularity and Nickelodeon (a division of Paramount) was looking to further brand itself. Slowly the park lost the original Hanna-Barbera Land to Nickelodeon Central. Out went Scooby-Doo and Yogi Bear and in came Spongebob and the Rugrats. This year Kings Dominion removed the final elements of Hanna-Barbera and all the Nickelodeon and began to bring in Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Peanuts characters to Planet Snoopy. For me, the Hanna-Barbera characters have always been as important to KD as Mickey and Co. are to Walt Disney World. If I had to choose another group of characters to move in and take over hosting duties from Yogi and the gang I can't think of a better property than Peanuts. It's timeless and has a universal appeal to children and adults. I'm going to save further discussion of Kings Dominion's new Planet Snoopy section for the next post...

Here's a few more things I'd like to see Kings Dominion take care of to spruce up the park: #1 Work on the outside of the park. The drive up to the parking lot booth is nothing - there is no show quality what-so-ever. Some flags, some landscaping and some repaving would go a long way. Currently the parking lot rows are numbered in colorless A1, B7, C13 signs. The original KD had all the parking lot sections named after Hanna-Barbera characters. Let's break out some new colorful signs so the next time I visit I can park in Pig Pen 4, Peppermint Patty 16 or even just Snoopy 1.

#2 - Get rid of all the chain restaurants. This actually goes for alot of parks because I know Hersheypark does the same thing. Who goes to an amusement park and gets Subway or Chick-Fil-A or Panda Express!? Why is there a Cinabon and a Starbucks on King Dominion's International Street. Same thing like the go-carts, it looks cheap and it's not out of the ordinary. I can toss a pebble of my porch and hit 3 Starbucks, they don't belong behind a $50 admission gate.

#3 - Bring Back Entertainment. Kings Dominion now has three shows, one of which is just people singing in the street. Little ol' Dutch Wonderland is a fraction the size of KD and they have 5 times the entertainment options. Where's the country music show? Every park should have a country music show!

#4 - Don't add another bazillion dollar roller coaster until you fix up some neglected areas of the park. The former Wayne's World section is just kind of there. It's a bit empty and needs alot of attention. Also, the kids area needs alot of work - mostly in themeing, but there is some awkward space where stuff used to be that they need to fix up.

#5 - Don't rush everybody out at closing time. They were directing foot traffic through the front gates at closing time quicker than a Zu-Zu Pet fueled stampede on Black Friday. We were not allowed the luxury to shop International Street (their Main Street) at our own leisure. They seriously wouldn't let me cross the street to shop the other side! Hey Kings Dominion, the only attraction on International Street is "spending money!" You really should let people stick around and spend as much as they want. Disney World wouldn't dream of even hinting at kicking a single soul out the front gate until every wallet has been sufficiently drained!

Those are just a few of my suggestions. Kings Dominion: still a great park, filled with many memories and still able to make new ones! Check back tomorrow for a look at Planet Snoopy...

A Kingdom For Everyone

The other day I ran a search on this blog for local amusement park Dutch Wonderland and was surprised to find only a brief mention of a 2006 visit. That's hard to imagine because the little park really is one of my favorites. So today, Dutch Wonderland gets it's very own post! Opened in 1963, the park is one of the crown jewels in Lancaster County, PA's tourism industry. Situated among the beautiful Amish farms and outlet malls of Lancaster, Dutch Wonderland has grown into a full service amusement park which caters to families and little children. The park does have it's share of simple carnival kiddie rides that go around and around in a circle, but they also have a nice assortment of family rides that everyone can enjoy together. A good number of the rides are unique to Dutch Wonderland, either homemade experiences or old fashioned amusement park fare that has managed to withstand the test of time protected behind DW's castle walls.


In the earlier part of the last decade, Dutch Wonderland was purchased from it's original owners by Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company, the same fine folks who run Hersheypark as well as most of the town of Hershey, PA. (They are actually not the same company that makes all the candy.) When Hershey took over Dutch Wonderland they did a marvelous thing. Instead of jacking the place up to a totally modern theme park, they invested alot of time and money to bring the park into the 21st century without deleting the park's history and charm. (A fate Kings Dominion was not allowed!) The result is a park full of attractions high tech and low tech.

Some of the park's attractions date back to the first few years of the park, like the log boat ride in the front of the park - visible from the highway. The ride is now called Dragon's Lair and features a huge audio animatronic of the park's mascot Duke the Dragon, but the lagoon and the track the boats travel on were there when the park opened almost 50 years ago. Another nifty old attraction is called the Wonder House. In the house, guests sit on a bench in the middle of a little house that spins completely upside down again and again. Tables and chairs glide above your head and yet...riders remain perfectly still. It's a big thrill for kids who are brave enough to enter the spinning house.

For my money, you ain't got an amusement park if you don't have a train, and Dutch Wonderland has one of the neatest little train rides around. The Wonderland Special takes guest on a winding tour around the park. The train travels right through the Turnpike ride which is one of the nicest antique car rides you'll find at an amusement park.

DW is also home to two roller coasters, both small but both fun! Joust is the smaller of the two coasters, with a top height of only 16 feet. It's a steel coaster with a small drop and a few bumps and twists. It doesn't seem to intimidate to many kids. The park's other coaster is Kingdom Coaster and although there are no big drops on the other side of the 55 foot chain lift, this classic style wooden roller coaster does reach speeds of up to 40 MPH and does have some serious curves, jolts and even a decent amount of air-time. It was the first project for Custom Coasters back in 1992 and they are now the world's largest builder of wooden roller coasters. Our trip last week marked my son Elias' first ride on a real, honest to goodness roller coaster. He loved it so much we ended up riding 5 times throughout the day. Younger brother Tanner wasn't quite ready for Kingdom Coaster, but he did enjoy multiple rides on Joust including a trip in the very front car!

Now, everything worth seeing and doing at Dutch Wonderland doesn't have to move. There are some really neat old fashioned attractions here as well. One of the most popular is Bessie the Cow, who is available for milking all day long. It's not a real cow, and it's not real milk...it's water. But it's exciting for kids anywho to get a chance to almost milk a real cow. Kids also love buttons and there's plenty of chances throughout the park for kids to activate animated puppet scenes at the push of a button. Some of the scenes depict Amish life and others show elves making toys and candy. Dutch Wonderland's got it all!

Did I mention Thomas the Tank Engine is there too? Oh, and they have a kid sized water park...and a high diving show. And they have pin trading...and a really great gift shop. I'm telling ya...DW is where it's at! Here's Elias and Mommy with the Princess of Dutch Wonderland. How exciting is that!?

Dutch Wonderland is located on Rt. 30 East in Lancaster, PA. They are open daily through Labor Day.

Adventure Park USA

This summer I'd like to point you in the direction of a few neat destinations for a day trip or perhaps an afternoon of fun...this is assuming you live somewhere near the Wonderful World of Blog World Headquarters. First up:Adventure Park USA in New Market, Maryland.

I have been craving some amusement park action for a long time and we're still probably a month away from hitting up a full-fledged theme park, but this nifty little family entertainment center (which was about an hour and ten minute drive for us) really hit the spot. Now, every town has a place or two that offers miniature golf and perhaps a few other recreational activities. Adventure Park USA takes the concept of family amusement center and kicks it up a notch or two. They do offer some of the standards: two 18 hole mini-golf courses, go-carts, a big ol' climbing structure for the little guys and laser tag. They also have a rock climbing wall, an arcade and even bumper boats...which you usually only find at the beach. But this little park has a few more things going for it that separate it from the Putt-Putt down the street.

Adventure Park USA has rides! They have real rides too, not just coin operated kiddie rides and motion simulators. The park offers three kiddie rides: teacups and helicopters. There is also a nice little merry-go-round that the whole family can enjoy together. These three rides are all situated together giving Adventure Park USA the beginnings of a kiddie land section, or as they call it Funtier Land. (Cute, eh!?) Tickets for the small rides can be purchased for two dollars a ride or there are several combo deals available that can get your kids unlimited rides on all the attractions.

Perhaps most appealing in Adventure Park's line-up of rides is the Wildcat Roller Coaster. The roller coaster is the only thing visible from the highway and the clickity-clack of the chain lift and the screams of riders are the most dominate sound in the park. This particular roller coaster was originally built in 1976 and opened at Busch Gardens Willamsburg. When Busch removed the ride to make way for a larger attraction, the coaster ended up at Playland in Rye, New York. It operated there from 1984 until 1991. From 1994 to 1998 it ran at Steel Pier in New Jersey's Atlantic City. It then briefly appeared at Williams Grove Amusement Park outside of Harrisburg, PA before opening at Adventure Park USA in early 2007. It's not as big and fancy as any of today's roller coasters...but it's still alot of fun.

In addition to the rides, Adventure Park also stands out from other similar ventures with it's theme. Adventure Park takes it's Wild West theme seriously. The main building of the park resembles an old Wild West Main Street on the outside. On the inside, the theme continues with a rustic feel and enough old West memorabilia to fill Roy Rogers' ranch! Inside the park there are nice little touches like faux rock work and old mining equipment that continue the park's cowboy theme.

The grounds are also impressively kept. We're not talking award winning flower beds and breath-taking scenery, but the walkways are paved, the rides are permanently installed and there is nice landscaping everywhere you look. Alot of small amusement centers like this tend to just throw stuff where ever they can and don't take too much pride in showmanship or attention to detail but I was really impressed with Adventure Park's efforts to present itself like a theme park and not just a mini-golf course with some carnival rides.

A day at Adventure Park could get expensive, but I found their pricing to be very reasonable. If you plan on going, hop on their website and plan ahead what you and the kids would like to do. You can buy enough credits to do just what you want to do or they offer some combo deals if you really want to tear it all up. We had a blast, spent the whole afternoon there and spent less than $40.00!

Oh, and here's me on the Wildcat:

Side story: In 2000, I went to Williams Grove Amsuement Park and was eager to ride their collection of old rides, including this roller coaster which I remember enjoying similar versions when I was younger. The steel coaster was featured on Williams Grove's website. When we got to the very small park we couldn't find the coaster so we asked several park employees where the coaster was. Not a single one of them had any idea what we were talking about. They only knew of the one wooden roller coaster in the park and had never heard of this other coaster. Obviously, we found it odd that employees of a park had never heard of a roller coaster that they supposedly had. Needless to say, I never did ride that coaster that day, but 10 years later I ended up tracking it down and taking it for a ride! Good times!

Wacky Tacky Museum Finds

I don't think we've mentioned Geppi's Entertainment Museum here on WWoB before but we should have! It's a wonderful attraction located in Baltimore's Inner Harbor right outside of Camden Yards stadium. Inside you'll find the history of our country as traced through popular culture. There's everything from comic books, toys, dolls, books and posters all on display to take you on a tour from the very first newspaper comic strips all the way up to Spongebob and The Simpsons. I did a post about my first visit to the museum on a Disney website called The Blog Wore Tennis Shoes. Last week I took the kids there to see all the Super Hero stuff. But instead of posting pictures of old comic books and valuable antique toys, I snapped a few pictures of some wild and wacky crap that they have on display there...

Before cable TV and videos, one of the only ways kids could revisit movies over and over again was through a Storyreader Record Album. Everyone had a Star Wars or Muppets record when they were younger, but not many kids probably had this recorded dramatization of the classic 1964 science fiction epic Santa Claus Conquers the Martians! This is one of those movies that many people will put on their list of "movies that are soooo bad they're good"!?! Well, I've seen Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and I can tell you that the film is just plain bad. It is so bad that you can't stop looking at it...kind of like a car accident...but by no means is it a good film. This was actually one of the first movies I bought on VHS when I was younger. I had read about the movie in a book and some years later found it around Christmas time at the mall. Ten bucks was a lot of money for a 13 year old in 1986, but it didn't matter to me - I just had to see this movie! Perhaps it's better if you just hear about the film on a record than actually seeing it!

Here's the actual Playbill program for another legendary production, the stage version of the Superman story! It's a Bird It's a Plane It's Superman was a flop of a Broadway musical that opened on March 29, 1966 and closed on July 17, 1966. The whole idea is so ridiculous that, like Santa Claus and his martians, the show has taken on a life of it's own in later years. I always pushed for this to be our spring musical in high school but we always did little known shows like My Fair Lady or Camelot! Another play I've always wanted to do is called Pinocchio Don't Smoke That Cigarette, but that's a story for another time...

Besides the occasional "Weird Al" Yankovic song, novelty records don't get much respect. However, things were different in the earlier days of rock n' roll. Some silly songs became so popular that merchandise was created to cash in on the songs popularity. (A few weeks ago we featured the board game version of Hello Muddah, Hello Fuddah.) In 1958, a gentleman named Sheb Wooley went all the way to the number one spot on the Billboard charts with his ditty titled The Purple People Eater. Here's a cool little plastic hat that you can slip on and become a Purple People Eater yourself! They must have sold plenty of these because the song stayed on the charts for 6 weeks! Can you imagine a month and half of hearing that song on the radio every hour or so!?

Down The Rabbit Hole

A few weeks ago I told you about our trip to the fantastic Storybook Land park just outside of Atlantic City. I promised a more in-depth look at one of their more unique attractions and today we're going to make good on that promise with a photo tour of their Alice in Wonderland walk-through attraction. The attraction was designed and built in-house, meaning Storybook Land didn't hire an amusement park ride company to come in and create Wonderland. It's a homemade affair. When you approach the attraction, you're greeted by the White Rabbit several times as he's looking at his watch and realizing how late he is. You follow him into a tunnel...

...and kids are invited to slide down the rabbit hole into Wonderland!

(There's also a ramp for Moms & Dads!) Once down the rabbit hole there's a series of brightly colored caves and tunnels. As you follow the path, the story of Alice in Wonderland unfolds on the walls around you.

To say the art work is inspired by Walt Disney's 1951 film adaptation is a slight understatement. The scenes and characters depicted on the walls are clearly lifted right out of the famous cartoon. That's not to say that the artwork isn't beautiful. The whole attraction (as well as the park itself) looks like it just got a fresh coat of paint the morning of our visit!

Several spots along the path have small windows where displays of dolls, antiques and stuffed animals illustrate the story in another medium. In this Tea Party scene you can make out the Disney version of the White Rabbit on Alice's petifore, as well as some antique Disney Alice in Wonderland china.

Kids love a good tunnel their size. Adults can choose another path which doesn't involve eating a cookie to shrink down to the size of a three year old!

The finale of Storybook Land's Alice in Wonderland experience is the escape from The Queen of Hearts in a maze of card soldiers.

The path leads out from the cave into a huge maze of playing cards. The maze is quite large, but the wrong turns are short so you never really get lost. My kids had a blast running through the deck of cards and thinking they were completely lost.

Storybook Land's Alice in Wonderland is a completly original and charming attraction tucked into the middle of a charming little park. It's a shame more amusement parks don't have similar low-tech experiences for families.

Two Off the Bucket List

I'm a huge fan of Roadside America, the quirky and odd little tourist attractions from a bygone era when the "getting there" was half the fun. I've read about these types of attractions for years, I've seen countless documentaries on them and I've even hunted some of them down myself...not to mention the ones I pestered my parents to take me to when I was younger! I was thrilled yesterday to finally cross one off my list that I've actually driven by many times but have never stopped at. The Haines Shoe House in Hellam, PA is a giant shoe shaped home that sits on the side of Rt. 30 on the way to Lancaster. I'd say we go by it at least every couple of months or so but today we were out and about with no particular agenda and we decided to stop and see the giant shoe is all about!

I have to say, it was a very soleful experience. The Shoe House was built in 1948 by Mahlon Haines, a local resident and shoe salesman who eventually opened a whole chain of shoe stores in PA and Maryland and became a millionaire in the process. He built the giant shoe as an advertising gimmick, he also built it as a fully functional house although he never lived there. He was, however, a very generous man and offered the Shoe House to friends as a Honeymoon suite. We toured the home, which didn't tie us up too long. The house is five levels and includes bathrooms, a kitchen, bedrooms and everything else you'd need to feel comfy in a giant shoe. Inside, all the rooms are decorated with loads of shoe knick-knacks and furnishings that people have sent in over the years.

In case you were wondering, this 61 year old gigantic shoe does not smell as one would think.


A few weeks ago I had the chance to lay my eyes on another huge Roadside America legend that I had only read about. Standing at six stories tall and just outside Atlantic City, NJ is Lucy the Elephant, another building built to look like something other than a building. Lucy was built in 1881 as a gimmick for a new real estate venture, when that business failed the giant pachyderm was used as everything from a hotel to a bar! You can climb a very small spiral staircase in Lucy's rear legs to a large room in her tummy. From there you can peer out her eyes or take another flight of stairs up to her howdah and look out over the Atlantic Ocean. There's even a little eatery next door called "I Love Lucy's", get it?
As soon as we got there, the battery on my camera died. I was only able to snap this one picture with my son in front of Lucy to prove that we were actually there! (He's eating a Lucy chocolate lollipop!)

If you want to read more about either of these attractions we suggest visiting your local library, or head on over to the official Roadside America website and visit the Haines Shoe House page or the page about Lucy the Elephant.

Storybook Land

A couple of weeks ago my mom and I took the kids to a little fairy tale theme park called Storybook Land, located just 10 miles west of Atlantic City, NJ. It turned out to be a beautiful day with mild weather and a very light crowd at the park. Storybook Land is, of course, similar to Maryland's beloved Enchanted Forest. Storybook Land is actually two months older that Enchanted Forest, and has been going strong since 1955. The grounds are beautiful with flower beds everywhere, nice landscaping, and walkways that are paved and kept clean. Everything at Storybook Land is cared for with great attention and it shows. All the buildings and attractions appear to have received a fresh coat of paint the morning we visited. And although most of the rides are simple portable rides, each is housed in it's own pavilion with permanent fixtures and top notch show quality. This obviously is not an amusement park for thrill seekers, but if you've got kids between 2-10 this little gem is worth the drive from the Baltimore area. (It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get there.) Let me show you around:

As you enter the park you are greeted by this gigantic statue of Mother Goose. One of the nice things about Storyland is that everything there has a story behind, and this ol' lady is no exception. She was brought to Storybook Land from a park in Ohio in 1985, but she started life at Fantasyland park in Gettysburg, PA. I live within 20 minutes of where this park used to be and I've attempted to do research on the park and find out more about it. But unlike Howard County's Enchanted Forest - which is a sacred memory for many folks who grew up in the area - Fantasyland does not seem to be remembered as fondly. Mostly because the park was built on/near battlefields which many folks in these parts find unacceptable. So much so, that the park closed in 1979 when the land was purchased by the State Parks Dept. and all the pieces were sold off. Nothing remains of Fantasyland, except it's parking lot which was used for overflow parking to the Gettysburg Welcome Center. But back to Storybook Land...


Storybook Land has a small train that runs through the park, similar to the train you'd find in most small amusement parks. The neat touch here is that near the back of the park, the train rides through a large shed where hundreds of toys are on display. It almost looks like Santa's workshop. It's a really cool out of ordinary surprise.

Storybook Land is home to a nice antique car ride called Olde Tymers. The cars are connected to a track so there's actually no steering like at most parks, but the grounds that the ride covers are beautiful both with flowers and with auto related antiques. Another unique experience.

In one of the front corners of the park, there are several Christmas themed attractions grouped together. Santa has a large home here, where he visits children on select visiting during the summer and then daily at Christmas time. Santa's reindeer are all on display, as well as a Christmas shop and several windows full of animated Christmas figures. The kids really flipped out at a chance to go inside a real igloo (even though it wasn't real). But the North Pole in the background is actually frozen solid!

They don't have birthday packages at Storybook Land, but they do have this giant birthday cake pavilion for you to snack under. The cake was bought from a nearby park and for Storybook Land's 50th birthday the top two layers of the cake were added. Every year they change the number candles on top of the cake to reflect the age of the park. It's a great example of the care and pride that are put into this park.

Of course the meat and potatoes of any good storybook park is the Nursery Rhyme and Fairy Tale displays, where classic rhymes and stories are brought to life in living dimensions. Storybook Land takes the concept a little further than most parks of it's kind as a large number of the displays are either animated or interactive. Here's Storybook Land's Hickory Dickory Dock. Inside the clock is a small mouse which runs (along a chain) up one side of the clock and down the other. It's a nice little touch that really excited the kids.

They also went above and beyond with their Jack and Jill attraction. Kids can climb the hill to fetch a pail of water at the well. Then they can take a spill with Jack and Jill via a nifty slide down the side of the hill. A sandbox at the bottom prevents any broken crowns!

Here's the boys in the Christmas section of the park enjoying some old fashioned Christmas window displays. Each display is loaded with buttons for kids to push and activate the different animations. It's a very nostalgic setup reminiscent of the displays department stores used to pride themselves on around the holidays.

The Three Bears house also features the Three Bears mailboxes, which happen to be beehives. Another nice little touch from the folks at Storybook Land!

One of the neatest attractions at the park is their walk-thru Alice in Wonderland experience. We thought it was so cool that we're saving it for another separate post here at WWoB.