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.