» »Unlabelled » A walk down nursery rhyme lane in Storybookland
Saturday, February 20, 2016

Between Christmas and New Year's my gang visited my wife's grandmother and aunties on the Jersey Shore. These ladies are known affectionately to us as "The Jersey Girls." It was a nice visit for everybody, and they even fed us Italian cold cut subs from Sack O' Subs.

If you are at some point in your life offered these subs (known there as "Regular"), it would be well worth it for you to make the drive to Atlantic City. Or, I'll go - if you're willing to share.

Part of the plan had been to visit Storybook Land on the way home, but the day was getting on. The sun was down, and the temperature dropping. So I posed the question as we approached, shall we stop?

The answer: "Heck, yes."

Storybook Land, 10 miles from Atlantic City on Rt. 40, is one of many fairy-tale-themed children's amusement parks built in the mid-50s. Ellicott City's The Enchanted Forest, now closed, is one of its peers. We stopped, and we were not sorry.

Late December is the end of Storybook Land's season. It is mainly devoted to Christmas lights and decorations, and there was no shortage of wattage. There were lights on trees, foliage, the rides, lining the paths, in the shape of various animals in the yard, creating simulated cannon fire, lights everywhere.

Happily, that's not all there was. The rides were also running.

We passed by a 20-foot-tall Mother Goose and jumped on a small Ferris wheel. I asked the operator about must-do rides, and he said the roller coaster and other cool stuff was at the back of the park.

But it turns out that cool stuff was in abundance. Like a faux steam train that took us around the park. Like Humpty Dumpty, pre-fall. Or the rock-a-bye baby cradle, on the treetop. Or the rub-a-dub-dub three men in a tub. There was Peter Pumpkin Eater who had a wife and couldn't keep her. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. There was the crooked little man and the crooked little house, and an extremely abbreviated display of what looked like Disney's Small World ride. Many of the displays had narrated, low-tech, animatronic characters reenacting the fairy tales represented. All you have to do is push the button.

My 5-year-old was fascinated by these.

One of the better ones was Little Red Riding Hood. That's a tough story to tell when the bedroom scene is the only one shown. The thinly disguised wolf is in the bed with RRH standing right beside. The narration abruptly ends with Red Riding Hood vowing never to talk to strangers again.

Really?

That's the moral of the story?

The Sleeping Beauty story consists of a man doll with a pointy hat continually bowing down to kiss the sleeping girl, but instead bonking his head on the bed just short of the goal. Sadly, the girl remains asleep. But not according to the narrator, who claims everyone lived happily ever after. And Sleeping Beauty vowed never to walk in the woods again.

What?

Again, is that the lesson I was supposed to learn?

Another display had a baker repeatedly picking up and putting down a sack of flower, I forget why.
But I noticed he was bending at the waist, a case of lower back strain waiting to happen.
It's all so extraordinarily cheesy, and therefore so innocent and heartwarming.
We loved the place, and hope to return on a day when we're not freezing our butts.

How about when the park reopens in March?

I should mention that it cost us $20 a head, and that friend Joe was simultaneously enjoying Hershey Park for half of that. But I bet it wasn't as cheesy or good.

We departed and started looking for one of those legendary New Jersey Rt 40 diners. Except I missed a sign somewhere and we ended up on Rt 322, The Black Horse Pike.

Curious, I stuck with it.

Not much in the way of diners for 20 miles until you come to the Harley Dawn Diner. My observations:
The dining room was about 10 degrees too cold. My breaded fried tomatoes and my wife's hot open-faced turkey sandwich were spectacular. Our efficient, chatty waitress reminded me of Karen Allen.

Nice meal.

But next time I'll do a better job of finding Rt, 40.

Posted by at 11:26 AM

0 comments:

Post a Comment

:) :)) ;(( :-) =)) ;( ;-( :d :-d @-) :p :o :>) (o) [-( :-? (p) :-s (m) 8-) :-t :-b b-( :-# =p~ $-) (b) (f) x-) (k) (h) (c) cheer
Click to see the code!
To insert emoticon you must added at least one space before the code.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)