Today marked the 100th anniversary of my home park, The Oaks Amusement Park. Sadly, they didn't make much of a fuss about it, apart from offering discounted ride tickets. 100 years!

Here is a good page about the history of The Oaks. Here's another one. Here, here and here are some earlier Danny's Land posts. The Oaks has a little museum dedicated to its history but it's almost never open, and it focuses mostly on the roller skating rink.

SNUB OF THE (HALF) CENTURY:

This year, in an awards ceremony at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, the Themed Entertainment Association gave their THEA Classic Award (the industry equivalent of an Oscar) to the theme park that has provided half a century "...of inspiration, quality, creativity and entertainment..."

De Efteling in the Netherlands!

OUCH! That's gotta hurt! Particularly when one of the people who nominated De Efteling was Tony Baxter, vice president of the Disney design department.

Fabio Roller Coaster Video

It's time to bring back that old chestnut, the "Fabio gobsmacked by a goose while riding a roller coaster" video. The old link in my old post expired, so here it is, a NEW LINK with an AVI file...

Now, bear in mind, you don't actually get the money shot here -- you get Fabio before and Fabio after, but you don't see the moment. But still. Dang.




THE STORY BEHIND THE VIDEO:


March 30, 1999
Fabio Rides Roller Coaster, Gets Smacked in the Snot Locker by an Errant Goose.

April 1, 1999
Fabio Makes David Letterman's Top Ten List.

April 2, 1999

Fabio Says, “Never Again! Think of the Children!”


Here is a recent quote about that terrible and yet strangely amusing day in roller coaster history from an online chat with Fabio on USA Today:

Shiprock, New Mexico: Hey Fabio, I heard that some bird was flew into your face, while you were riding some rollar coster? Did that do any damage and did you have to get plastic surgery?

Fabio: No, it didn't damage me. I'm just fine. This roller coaster went by a pond where there are hundreds of geese that nest there and this was opening day so these geese didn't have time to get out of the way, and when the roller coaster hit the water they killed several geese. I heard they were having major problems with the geese. They spent milions of dollars on this roller coaster and they didn't put nets around the coaster to protect the geese or people. They closed the ride fast. So it wasn't a case of some random goose that flew by, they built the ride right through a geese habitat. You would see geese flying through the path of the roller coaster, they're migrating birds. In the winter the geese weren't there so they just built right across the geese's area so when the spring came around, they had that problem with geese getting in the way of the ride. Had it been a child that had been hit that hard the child might have been killed.