Hampton Landmarks

If you've ever stayed at a Hampton Inn than you know that they decorate the property with numerous black and white photos of everyday American life. Not only are there photos on the walls, but they use them on room keys, room number plates, elevators...anywhere they can. It's kind of like staying in a giant Jones Soda bottle. The photo of the photo above was taken in an elevator at the Hampton Inn in Portage, Michigan. (I didn't snap it...I just found it on Facebook.) The picture is, of course, of The Little Red School House at Maryland's own Enchanted Forest. Pretty neat to see the little park represented all the way out in Michigan. The picture shows the school house being refurbished and repaired for it's new home at Clark's Elioak Farm. Ya see, Hampton Inn has a program they call Hampton Landmarks where the company (Hilton) donates time and money to fixing up local historical landmarks. It turns out Paris' daddy forked over a nice chunk of change to help get the Enchanted Forest back on it's feet. Like I said, it's pretty neat to be out in Michigan (or anywhere away from home) and see a little piece of the Enchanted Forest taking an elevator ride with ya!

Enchanted Wonderland

Today, another theme park attraction based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This one is gone, but not forgotten!
The super awesome Enchanted Forest, which I grew up just down the road from, was also home to a unique Alice in Wonderland ride. The Teacup Ride - as it was officially called - is pictured above. The photo was in the parks brochure along with the description: See how the adventurous Alice in Wonderland becomes ensnarled in her many fabulous adventures deep underground. Visit this subterranean fairyland when riding the Teacup Ride to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and into the Court of the Queen of Hearts.

The Teacup Ride was essentially a train pulled by a giant teapot. Guests could sit in oversized teacups or there were also benches available for those who couldn't handle the thrill of sitting in a big cup. The tea party train would take a brief trip through the park before entering a dark tunnel. Eventually, the train would stop and guests would disembark the train and follow the story of Alice in Wonderland through a walking tour.

The walking portion of the attraction featured scenes from the story recreated in huge three dimensional dioramas. Some of the scenes you would walk right through. There were other portions where you traveled through tight cave corridors and along bridges through cavern like scenes. I remember walking through the courtroom scene which was both scary and intimidating for a kid. The huge card soldiers stood on both sides of you, and the wicked Queen of Hearts was staring down at you above the room's exit. The day-glow lighting and musty, creepy atmosphere probably didn't help things either! In all honesty, this attraction (along with a few others in the park) down right scared me and I can remember skipping it on a few visits.

The ride closed before the rest of the park met it's fate. The Teacup Ride did not pass safety inspections and was closed for the 1994 season. Most of the figures from inside the ride are lost but pieces of the Teacup Train have been restored and are now a part of Clark's Elioak Farm.

Here's a recent photo of my boys and I sitting in one of the Teacups from the ride:

And here's the Teapot, which housed the engine and the driver:
Both of these are part of The Enchanted Forest Maze attraction at the farm.

And finally, here a wonderful photograph of the teacups sitting in the closed park deteriorating. This photo was taken in 2005, shortly before or right around the time the Enchanted Forest was starting to be saved:

Reference and Photo Collage credit: Nan Sherman's Websites America
Also read: The Enchanted Forest Saga and Riding Through Wonderland.

Nursery Rhymes With Elias and Tanner

This one's been sitting around the WWoB office in draft mode since July so today we're dumping it on ya. It's just some pictures of my kids with various nursery rhymes at the Enchanted Forest. Enjoy!

Elias falling down the hill with Jack and Jill. (He didn't break his crown!)

Hey Diddle-Diddle, they don't have a cat or a fiddle just a dish who standing with a spoon.



It's surprising the tortoise won considering he had two kids on his back!

Jack by nimble

Jack by quick

where the heck

is the candlestick?


Three Ugly Ducklings

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.

The Enchanted Forest Saga

For those of you not from the area or just out of the loop, let me bring you up to speed on my beloved Enchanted Forest. The small amusement park opened in the summer of 1955, just shy of a month after the opening of Disneyland. Even though the Enchanted Forest was built on a mere fraction of Disneyland's budget and it covered only 30 acres as opposed to Disney's 160, it was the coolest place in the world to any child who stepped foot inside the park. It had a castle, it had rides, it even had Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. To a young child, the only thing missing was Mickey Mouse himself! And better than Disneyland, Hersheypark, or even Walt Disney World...The Enchanted Forest was located in the same county I grew up in, not more than 15 minutes from my house!

The Enchanted Forest was low-tech but beautifully maintained. There were displays of all the popular fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters. There were rides like the Alice in Wonderland ride where a train of tea cups took you inside a cave to follow the story of Alice on foot. There was a Jungle Land ride, and a boat ride through Ali Baba's Treasure Cave. In the back of the park was a giant mountain with a sliding board that made it's way all over the side of the mountain. The place was cool and you can see plenty of pictures of how it looked in it's hay-day at a website called The Imaginary World.

The park closed in the late 1980's and the land was sold to a development company. The company quickly leveled half the park and it's parking lot and built The Enchanted Forest Shopping Center. Now, on the same land where you could once meet the Three Little Pigs or eat lunch at the Robin Hood Cafe you can get your clothes dry cleaned, rent a video or stock up on pet supplies. The park's iconic castle entrance still stands at one end of the shopping center along with Old King Cole waving shoppers in off Route 40, but what was left of the amusement park sat behind a fence falling into disrepair for many years.

In steps Clark's Elioak Farm, a small petting zoo just miles away from the original Enchanted Forest site. A few years ago the farm started acquiring some of the pieces from the Enchanted Forest. First they got Cinderella's Pumpkin Coach which was easy to move as it has wheels. They restored it, gave it a fresh coat of paint and put it out on their land for the kids to play in. The move attracted quite a bit of press for such a small operation. Slowly, the folks at Clark's started moving more pieces from the old park to their new operation. The company that now owns The Enchanted Forest land gave Clark's permission to remove whatever they wanted except for the king and castle out by the main road. Next thing you know, enormous structures like The Three Bears House and The Old Lady in the Shoe's Shoe were being dug up from their original spots and restored to beautiful splendor at Clark's Elioak Farm.

Every year there is something new at Clark's and this year they've gone all out and have almost completed their collection of Fairy Tale displays from The Enchanted Forest. Except for a few major structures and the rides, Clark's has managed to capture the spirit and wonder of the original park that opened over 50 years ago.


Here's Hickory Dickory Dock, an original piece from 1955 that's been refurbished, repainted and is making it's debut at Clark's this summer. This...and many other pieces...are all part of a new attraction at the farm called The Enchanted Forest Maze. The maze ads quite a bit more land for visitors to explore. The maze is essentially a forest of over 800 Evergreen trees with storybook friends hidden along the way.

What's really cool about The Enchanted Forest Maze is that it literally puts you in the middle of a forest. At times the greens are thick, and you have to push branches out of your way to make it through portions of the trail. At other times, you feel completely removed from the outside world - lost in a maze of trees. It's a very cool experience. There is a foot worn dirt trail that you can follow or you can break off and go in any direction you like. There is also a maze guide and activity book that you can purchase to enhance your experience.

This large piece is the Rock-A-Bye Baby tree and the house where Sleeping Beauty hid until her 16th birthday. They had moved this giant structure to the park last year, and it was sitting off to the side awaiting attention. It now stands in the middle of the maze with a fresh coat of paint waiting for kids to play inside it. They really did a beautiful job fixing it up. You can see the cradle with the baby in it hanging from the branch.

The Sombrero was always an odd fixture at The Enchanted Forest. It doesn't seem to pertain to any particular story or nursery rhyme but it was always there sitting in a back corner of the park near the very popular Willie the Whale. Last year the Sombrero was standing near the donkey in the petting zoo area, this year is been spruced up and placed inside the maze. They took the liberty of adding to the fence around the base of the sombrero and it's now home to a pretend donkey. Nice touch, the kids got a kick out of seeing him in there.

One of the structures that couldn't be moved from The Enchanted Forest was the Witch's Candy House from the story of Hansel and Gretel. At the old park, the Hansel and Gretel house served as the park's Birthday Party room. It was a full sized building where kids could celebrate the cake and presents portion of their birthday party. (I never knew anyone who had a party at the Enchanted Forest and quite frankly I'm still a little bitter about it!) Anywho, as it was one of the only pieces that Clark's couldn't move to their farm, so the local artists who volunteer their time built a new one from scratch. It has some of the same elements as the original, but it's much smaller and doesn't house birthday parties. You can look inside and see the witch trapped in a candy jail cell. It's very well done. Visitors to the original park will remember the little gingerbread man to the left of the house. There were at least 100 of these gingerbread men, brown and pink, that lined the property of the original forest along Rt. 40. and into the parking lot. Several of them can be found, completely restored, all around Clark's Elioak Farm.

Along with the 15 major sites along the trail there are four hidden characters that are listed only in the Maze Guide book. These little critters are hidden deep inside the maze and you really need to look hard for each of them. My kids had so much fun hunting for them and got so excited when they found one. This one pictured above, Gert, was tucked away in a tiny far off little spot. It was actually quite challenging to find her. I thought this was a really cool new addition to the Enchanted Forest experience and one of the new aspects that creates new memories for a new generation of kids.

Moving outside the maze, there are still plenty of other Enchanted Forest goodies to visit. One of them is The Merry Miller's House. It's a small house with a paddle wheel on the back that sat along the small creek running through the Enchanted Forest. Clark's built a small body of water to display some of the water based items from EF and The Merry Miller's House is among them. Many of the original Enchanted Forest house had scenes inside them which featured simple animation or a recording of some kind. (Several places featured the music from a Disney film of the same name!) Clark's not only restored The Merry Miller's House, but they restored the Miller himself who dances around in a circle inside his house singing a song. The recording of the Miller's song is a recording from the original park that was taken from a video tape that a park employee recorded in 1987. This video tape has been used to reference the way things looked when the park was in operation and a copy of the tape is available on DVD in Clark's gift shop.

If you're in the area, pack up the kids and head on out to Clark's Elioak Farm. It will bring back a flood of memories and create new memories for your kids. If you don't have kids, you should still go to the park....check out all the Enchanted Forest history that's on display in the gift shop and visit all the buildings from your childhood memories. Clark's is really doing a great job of keeping this Howard County landmark alive and well.

more...
Clark's Elioak Farm
The Wonderful Enchanted Forest
Enchanted Forest Preservation Society

Maryland's Amusement Parks

I was introduced to the Images of America series of books last summer when I picked up a copy of their book about my hometown of Columbia, MD. The books in this series are great because they are heavy on pictures and light on words - spoken like a true American, eh!? MARYLAND'S AMUSEMENT PARKS by Jason Rhodes (Arcadia Publishing, 128 pages) gathers together images from the dozens of amusement parks that once called Maryland home. There was Kiddieland in Montgomery County, Gwynn Oak in Woodlawn, Carr's Beach in Anne Arundel County, Tolchester Beach on the Eastern Shore, and Electric Park near Reisterstown. You've probably never heard of any of these parks, but most of them were major centers of amusement with big thrill rides and all the other types of rides you'd see in today's theme park.

The book dedicates a chapter each to two of Maryland's most famous parks. Glen Echo Park was a big deal back in the day. It is located in Montgomery County and even though the rides are gone, the park is still open and used as an Arts Center. Glen Echo was one of those parks that was the first in the area to get all the new rides. Check out this ride called "The Tub." Other parks called it "The Human Roulette Wheel" which is a good name for it because it looks like you're gambling with your life if you step foot on the thing. Have you ever seen something more dangerous!? They could have called this ride "The Inevitable Lawsuit". If this ride were around today, not only would you be strapped into the thing with a 12-point harness, it would be themed to Shrek and have a giant Donkey vomiting on you during the ride.

Maryland's other cherished amusement park was The Enchanted Forest. An entire chapter in this book is filled with photos of this great park that I loved visiting as a child. There's tons of great pictures of this Howard County classic. Here we see Little Toot passing through Mt. Vesuvius. Mt. Vesuvius was a giant mountain that sat in the back of the park. The only way to get to the mountain was to take a raft over to Robinson Crusoe Island, avoid being eaten by goats on the island, and take the bridge across the water to the Mount. Once there, you got to ride the awesome-est sliding board ever built. That thing went all over that mountain and it was just about the coolest thing ever built inside an amusement park. I can remember running back up the ramp on the side of the mountain over and over again to ride the slide.

Not surprisingly, there is a housing complex where most of the park was. If you know where to look, you can still see Mt. Vesuvius rotting away behind a chain-link fence in the distance between two houses. And yes, I do go look at it every once in a while!