09.07.06 What’s the Best Rejuvenile Amusement Park?

Disney is unparalleled in its ability to summon our childlike capacity for make believe (to say nothing of unlocking our insatiable desire for merch). The roller coaster mills at Six Flags are a direct route to the childlike thrills of being jostled and whirled and overwhelmed.

But my pick for the best rejuvenile amusement park experience is way more low-rent. For my money, the best environment to revel in your rejuvenile self is the small, often-crumbling playland – the sort of run-down place created a generation ago by a wide-eyed cranky entrepreneur and now barely maintained as a setting for birthday parties and puppet shows.

Just back from terrific Labor Day weekend visiting friends in the Bay Area, where we sampled the local kid/rejuvenile attractions, including the miraculous San Francisco “tech and art” museum called Zeum, a gigantic playground and art walk outside Petaluma and Oakland’s always enchanting Fairyland.

Like a lot of other low-rent kiddie amusement parks, Fairyland is filled with creepy concrete statues of classic kid lit creatures. There’s a puppet theater and a mini Ferris Wheel and an astonishingly slow train called the Jolly Trolley. I visited a similar place in New Orleans that may or may not have survived the devastation last year. Anyone know of others? I love their pre-safety code hazards, their sweet outsider-art depiction of classic children’s icons and their shabby, nostalgic glory.

One thing I can’t abide: the unnecessary restrictions on adults. Grown-ups are expressly forbidden on slides and play structures. I got all hoity-toity and rode the Dragon Slide as a protest. Let ‘em drag me out in cuffs; this rejuvenile will fight for the right to scab my knee with the rest of the kiddies.