Fairyland

Fairyland is a weird, run-down mini-amusement park set on the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland. It's a rickety assortment of rides and play structures themed around various classic children's stories, built in 1950, and definitely showing its age. Fairyland is shabby, sort of surreal, and often a bit on the dangerous side, and if you've never been there just picture 10 acres of this:



I took Parker there today to attend Abby's 3rd birthday party, the daughter of someone I work with. They had a nice tent area set up, with pizza, and juice, ice-cream cake, and about a bazillion little kids.



There was a puppet show of Aesop's fables, which was about 20 minutes long, and Parker was totally rapt through about 16 minutes of it, which was about 14 more than I'd given him credit for.



We climbed over to adventure island.



We rode the children's merry-go-round twice.



We took two turns on the Jolly Trolly.



And it was basically a splendid time all around.