Delaware: Funland

I said I was going to get back to this someday, and why not get back to it before the summer is over? Especially since I need to gather my thoughts better on the other topic I wanted to do today.

Funland is a small amusement center located on the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach. It's been there for as long as I remember, and is still there today. It opens from sometime in May and closes in early September. It contains rides, video games, and prizes you can win.

In the early days I was still a kid so I mostly focused on the rides. A lot of the kid rides were the type where you got into a vehicle and rode around in a circle. Some of them, like the firetrucks and the space ships had ropes/buttons that you could manipulate to cause as much noise as you could. Everytime you go to Funland you can hear the buzzing of the space ship ride. My sister and I rode these a lot when I was still small enough to do so. It wasn't long before I had to give up these rides but my sister was so small my mom had to hold her while she was on the carousel. One of the best kid rides was the swings ride. Sadly, that was built around 1988/1989, just when I was starting to get too big for some rides. In fact, around that time a jungle jim was built, and it would have been my favorite ride if I wasn't around the size that was too big for the ride. I held a grudge for that. (Worst yet, apparently in recent years they added an adult version of the jungle jim. Now I'm too old (and self-conscious, really) to go on that.)

Luckily there are several general audience rides. There's a helicopter ride where you pull back on the handle to go up. There's a home video of me pulling back and forth on the bar where my parents joke that my weight is causing the ride to malfunction. There's a tea cup ride near one of the entrances, which has the wheel in the middle you can spin. We also have a home video where my parents joke about my sister barely being able to hold on. Next to that is a Gravitron ride which I have yet to go on. Since my parents wouldn't let me go on, I now see it as a mystical ride where who know what goes on while the space ship spins around. I should go on it one day. I should bring my wife or fiancee if I ever have either of those.

A couple rides I've gone on but usually avoided were the paratrooper ride and the wagon ride. The latter isn't listed at Funland website so it might not be there anymore. The wagon ride was a ride where you get strapped down and the wagon you're in rotates while the ride revolves. I was too chicken for this ride but my parents managed to get me on it a couple times. We have a video of me bouncing the foam safety bar a few times till it hit me in the chin. I never liked when the wagon rotated in a way where you go head first. That was much scarier than when you rotated back first, somehow. I've gone back to it a few times, including once with my favorite cousin. The paratrooper was scary to me because I don't like heights. It also goes backwards before it's done, which was scarier than going forward.

The bumper cars are located next to the tea cups and can be seen from the boardwalk. There are three tires in the middle of the room and you have to go counter-clockwise. During the early days my sister and I would share a car since she was way too small to drive one herself. (I can't remember if dad used to also drive around with us when we were really little.) The bumper cars had annoying straps that you had to wear around your waste instead of your shoulder. I always hated it when we had to wear them around our waist, especially since I already had a big stomach around the time.

I don't know why, but when I was in a bumper car I actually started thinking it was more fun just to drive and avoid hitting and getting hit as much as possible. One of my favorite memories and one I wish was on camera was of a time some teen lost his baseball cap which led to a major pile-up around one of the narrow sides. While most people got stuck, my sister and I squeezed by them and the tires and we both laughed as we had no one in our way. When we got to the other narrow side the operator finally turned the ride off and yelled at the guy who lost his cap.

Now that I think of it, I think my dad did ride with us at first. He had to, since I remember that the first time I rode a bumper car alone, I got upset when my car didn't operate. Someone had to tell me that about the floor pedal.

The most famous ride is the Haunted Mansion. It's only open at night, when the boardwalk is really crowded, so I've only been around a few times to actually be able to go on it. I have a couple times, and it's a fun ride, even if I don't remember much. I'm a bit of a chicken, but there's only two things that could really scare me on a ride like this. The first thing is either spiders or webs, which could be the deciding factor if someone was trying to convince me to go on a ride. The second is sudden loud noises. I'm a sucker for a cheap scare like that, so I actually tend to cover my ears on haunted rides. (One time my sister, our favorite cousin and I were on some other haunted ride, and he made fun of us because my sister was covering her eyes and I was covering my ears.)

It's a shame that I don't remember too much about the ride. What I mostly remember is that you can see people ride by on the roof of Funland and the outside of the mansion. Inside I can remember only two things. The first is the skull room, where you see several dozen floating skulls. I love that room. The second part is the end. You start descending down a dark passage where the only thing you can see is a monitor. Some scary old guy talks about whatever. Just when you reach the end of the hallway, the ride jerks so you're now facing a truck while a loud horn blows. This part will get you on your first ride and I had to get ready for this everytime I rode this afterwards.






Don't you hate it when they say, "A work in progress..."?