I forgot, it also had a Dairy Queen which was the biggest draw.
There are still a few operating camera obscuras (obscurae?)
https://www.atlasobscura.com/lists/camera-obscura-places
There used to be one in the Pavilion at Salem Willows in Salem, Massachusetts. I’m trying to find out if any of its parts still survive.
When I went on a rare trip to El Paso a couple years back I stopped to take a break at that DQ and have a look. They don’t charge extra to look at it any more.
One that still exists in Whangārei, New Zealand is the very cool Timatatanga Hou (“new beginnings”) camera on the banks of Hātea River
And one in the Castelo de Sao Jorge in Lisbon, Portugal. We thought it was fascinating.
We went there only once. My dad realized he couldn’t actually drink enough free beer to zero out the price of our combined admission. There was a boat ride and a bunch of exotic birds, but what I remember most was the hanging monorail tour of the brewery.
I saw an advventure park/arcade sort of place that advertised “the human crane experience”. I figure that means you wade into knee-deep water and then stand on one leg.
I’ve been looking for cool stuff to do in the Salem area recently.
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned Astroworld (Houston, TX). Or maybe I missed it upthread. Anyway, we used to go there quite regularly, but now it’s just a big empty space across the highway from the Astrodome and the NRG stadium complex. It’s kind of depressing for me whenever I pass through Houston.
You can also add me to the list of folks who had visited Opryland and Dogpatch USA back in the day. And my wife and I stayed in one of the cabins on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for several nights only a couple of weeks before the wild fire swept through and wiped out that area last year.
Which reminds me: Astroland in Coney Island closed down in 2008 and was replaced by Luna Park (not to be confused with the original Luna Park, which closed in 1944).
Luna Park is also in Australia, Melbourne and Sydney. I wondered if they were related and; inspired by the original US park.
I made several trips to the Pate Museum of Transportation when I was a kid. Lots of old cars and WWII to Vietnam era military aircraft, a minesweeper, a Gemini capsule, and a working periscope. Loved the place. Unfortunately after Pate died it ran into money problems and had to shut down.
The Military Vehicle Technology Foundation in Portola Valley was a fantastic private collection of 200+ armored vehicles and associated hardware. I visited a couple of times before the owner died and everything was sold off. The photo below was the visitor parking area. The buildings behind it and another one across the driveway were completely jammed full of tanks and other military vehicles.
The majority of the collection was bought by the Collings Foundation and is now on display at the American Heritage Museum.
I went there both when I lived in Brooklyn and when I brought the kids in the early aughts. Of course we got dogs at Nathan’s as well.
Re: post #1 about Seattle’s Bubbleator - we “rode” it as a family in 1962 (basically it was a large elevator between the ground floor and the next floor up in the Science pavillion). It was later disassembled and placed in storage until 1985, when a Seattle man bought it, and moved it to his new house in Des Moines, where it became a greenhouse.
The complete history: The Bubbleator at Seattle Center carries its final passengers on October 1, 1980. - HistoryLink.org
The whale in Montreal’s Lafontaine Park. You could walk into its mouth. It lasted until the 1980s. A blue whale statue that used to be found in Jardin Des Merveilles, a former children’s zoological garden has been located in Parc La Fontaine , in Montreal, Canada. Apparently, the whale housed an aquarium inside it, and it remained so until the Jardin Des Merveilles was closed in the late 1980s. : r/submergedanimatronic
Uncle Beazley, the fiberglass triceratops, is no longer on the National Mall in DC. But he’s not really gone. They moved him to the zoo in 1994.
I remember watching his show on TV the first time it was shown.
I loved Pea Soup Andersen’s. I was sad when it closed.
Saw @DrDeth mentioning P.O.P. I was never able to go there, which I was extremely disappointed about. Our next door neighbors got the concessions contract when it was being auctioned off, and I worked for them that weekend making hot dogs. The closest I got. Of course, when it closed, they found out that the hanged man outside one of the rides was an actual corpse!
He also mentioned Santa’s Village. I thought it was completely gone. I still remember the “North Pole” they had.
I dislike peas.
It was- just okay.
There was one of the same size at Erie Zoo in Pennsylvania. There was a plexiglass viewport but it was always dark when I saw it in the late 70s/early 80s. I can’t find what was supposed to be behind the glass, and this reddit thread confirms that it wasn’t very viewable in the 2000s either. But at least it has a picture of the whale.