Last Friday, my friend Tony and I got on a discussion of old, defunct amusement parks, namely, Angela park.

http://defunctparks.com/parks/PA/angela/angela.htm

It was located in Drums, which is a few miles from where I work, and it was where I spent much of my childhood in the 80’s. I browsed through the site and the memories flooded back. The ghost house, the helicopter rides that went over the whole park, the tunnel of love.

These amusement parks did have most of the same qualities too. They all had one dark ride (like the ghost house, tunnel of love, etc). They had old, creepy merry go rounds. They had those rides that went over the whole park. And they had a lot of really cool hand painted statues that just give off an aura of years gone by. These statues are probably passed by by most without a second glance, but years and years before the mass produced society we live in today was born, there were unknown artists sculpting and painting these by hand for a living.

All that being said, this entry is about the art of amusement parks and fairs, as the title suggests. Most of the parks that I visited as a child are gone, so these things are lost to time, unfortunately. One of these parks still remains. A little place that used to, in the 80’s, be referred to as Knoebels Grove.

I don’t know why I go to amusement parks, I get sick on pretty much every ride. I was asked to go there with a few of my friends, and I went there, armed only with my camera and a lot of free time, considering I went on about four things the whole time. So, I decided I was going to search for as much as this old “art” as I could find.

The ghost house was the first ride we went on, and there were a few games that were right by the entrance. Here is the first specimen that I encountered. A hand painted sign for the tic tac toe game, featuring Knoebel’s mascot, Kozmo.

If you can’t tell what that is, a hand is coming out and grabbing his TOE. get it?

After this, we headed over to the phoenix, which, along with the ghost house, is the reason that Knoebels did not go out of business like all of the other parks in Pennsylvania.

Next to the phoenix is a really old music… thing. I actually don’t really know what to call this, but it’s hand painted and has been there forever. It’s very different from the statues, but I thought it was worth a mention, none the less.

Here is a detail:

After this we made our way to the area where the train is that takes you through the park. This guy was pointing me to the Cookie Nook, where I could get tasty treats:

I followed this little penguin’s instructions and found myself at a BREAD SHAPED BUILDING! Normally a bread shaped building would be my favorite place in the entire world because they’d sell… you guessed it…. BREAD! And I LOVE bread! … but this place does not sell bread. I’m actually not sure what this building is, but attached to it is the Cookie Nook that this penguin tricked me into going to.

After this, we searched for the pavilion where my friend Gill’s company was having their picnic. This isn’t really art related, but… I discovered that the people who designed the picnic pavilion didn’t really know their alphabet.

The bottom left quadrant is close to correct, however … U does not come after O, guys.

Anyway, after that it was on to the international cafe. They sell everything from mexican food to buffalo chicken sandwiches to alligator (i’m not kidding) They had some really neat and really “corny” artwork.

Get it, “corny” artwork? lolol.

This one was above the one food place inside of the cafe:

These puns are just… top notch.

I got some pasta from the italian place, and this horrifying thing was there to greet me:

I took a picture of the above image because I really really reminds me of old advertising characters … and I really think that that is an art style in itself.

Here is another horrifying chef that I found that was back near the entrance:

Here is a very horrifying one. This doesn’t really fall into amusement park art I don’t think. This falls into “scary coal mining museum art” because Knoebels has an Anthracite Museum right next to the international cafe.

There are really no words for this. Well, except for HORRIFYING:

After all of this, my friends went on the twister. This is a new rollercoaster, but it has the same sort of old timey statue built right into it.

While they were on the twister, I walked around and took some more shots. Here’s Kozmo again, this time on a globe.

After this, I wandered over into the kiddie ride area. I thought that I’d find a lot of stuff there, but I found just two, and they were both the same. There were two soldiers, each guarding a bridge. Here’s a detail, because I really like them.

All right. I’ve saved my favorites for last. I dont’ even know where to start. These are just… so amazing I had to actually have my picture taken with most of them.

This… is… well… hm…. really scary:

These two are actually from a different trip to Knoebels this summer, which is why I have a different shirt on. I didn’t want people to say “hey, why are you wearing a different shirt?! something is not right here!” …

This is near the arcade in the middle of the park. I believe there is a sign that says “please put trash in me” … but my reaction is to run away horrified.

These are my favorite two, hands down. I’ve blogged about this first one before, but I’m going to post it again. These are panels on the baby changing station at Knoebels. This scares me more than ghosts. Or spiders. Or ghost spiders. So, without further ado, I present to you… the changing station babies:

All right, well, that concludes this post, so I will leave you with this. While I was waiting for my friends to finish their final ride on the phoenix before they left, I found something really interesting.

Some class somewhere made an exact replica of the phoenix and it was in a glass case. That’s actually pretty cool, but I was more interested in the little figures that were placed next to this replica, who were supposedly “enjoying” this ride.

I came up with a story of what happened, but I’ll allow you, the reader, to draw your own conclusion and write your own story:

Until next time ^_^

WTF?! I’ve never seen anything like this! It’s apparently called something like a red and blue leaf hopper or something. I was looking for four leaf clovers before, and he was sitting right on one of the clover leaves, just to give you a sense of how small these are!

Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of “Sara sees a really awesome place on channel 16 and goes there immediately because it has the word ‘crystal’ in the title of it”. Today’s episode is about a little place in Lakeville, Pennsylvania called “Crystal Cabin Fever”. Frozen sculptures as far as the eye could see? A giant ice slide? A full scale cabin made entirely of ice?  The story I saw on the news was just so compelling, I had to go see it for myself. Also, Larry wanted to try out his GPS.

When we got there, we found out that the entire exhibit was in a GIANT barn, and they could have very little lighting so the ice wouldn’t melt. That being said, my photos are very dark and of sub par quality because the lighting was just too poor, and it looked REALLY bad if you took it with a flash. … anyway.

It was ten bucks to get in, and they gave you free hot chocolate. That was pretty great, considering it was FREEZING in there. I regretted not wearing boots the minute I stepped into the door.

After we paid, we rounded the corner and were greeted with this site:

The woman inside of the above picture will give you some indication of the scale of this thing! The craftmanship and details were just amazing. I can’t fathom how long something like this would take!  Here is a detail of one of the logs that made up the cabin:

Outside of the cabin there was even an outhouse. This is not very practical!:

Here’s Larry, my boyfriend, sitting on the bed in the cabin. I sat on one of the chairs that was on the opposite wall and it was FREEZING!

Below is a detail of the ice that was just above the door. The light  was hitting it in such a way that it had all rainbow colors in it. I thought it was really striking and beautiful:

There were signs strewn about this place, and each and every one of them were carved into ice. I think they were either sponsors, or the people who actually carved each section, but I am unsure. Here is one:

In the middle of the room there was a stage with sculptures that looked like they had just been finished and were almost ready to be placed out or something. Here is an owl from that section:

Here is an ice angel, also from the stage that I mentioned above:

An ice moose was right behind the cabin. These were very dark because there was only a very small amount of light in this area:

In ET, his heart would glow. In Crystal Cabin Fever, the animals’ butts glow:

This swan was my favorite piece in the entire place. There is something about the smoothness. I know that a swan is really one of the most stereotypical ice figures you could find, but alas, it was beautiful:

After we finished looking at the ice sculptures, we went to the end of the barn to find something really quite “cool” …. lolz, bad pun… ugh. … Anyway, there was an ice slide. The whole thing was entirely made out of ice, and MAN was it fun. Here is a picture of the side of it:

I am really not that internet savvy, but I uploaded a video of the slide in action and placed it on youtube. The link is below. It also features me going down the slide. I apologize for my annoying voice and for the shaky camera work when I’m going down the slide with the camera in advance. Here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaCjkE97jso

After we had gone down the slide a few times, it was time to get our free hot chocolate. We were very much surprised to see that the entire concession stand was ALSO MADE OF ICE!

After this, we traveled to Adventure Games. I seriously couldn’t feel my feet all night, but I am so glad that I went. I will go next year if they do it again, and this time I will remember to bring boots so I can go down the slide a million times instead of just two.

Hope you guys like the pictures. You should all go see this next year! Until next time!

11. Dragonflies wings are apparently made of crystal.

10. I can’t stop taking pictures of animals.

9. Chipmunks may look cute, but they are dirty, filthy thieves. Here is one being all cute:

Awwww… look at how great, let’s kiss and hug him, right?

Well, on to exhibit B. :

Ps - did i mention this is NOT his food? Look at those cheeks! He’s shoplifting! and he’s not doing a very good job of it either!

8. Felix felicis from the harry potter books DOES exist.

7. Thaxter Tewksbury is the best name EVER. Seriously. this guy was on ghost hunters, and he has the best name EVER! Thaxter Tewksbury, if you ever find this site, I am not making fun of you, you have a brilliant name!

6. When traveling to Japan, always bring back boob related things for Larry, such as this “bust pudding”

5. Things are oftentimes hidden in fireworks. This one looks like an old video game logo, or the extra life from Super Pitfall:

See if y ou can figure out which one is the firework, and which one is the logo! It’s a fun game!

This one looks like some sort of demon’s eyes.

I’m afraid of it.

4. This is where spongebob definitely belongs.

3. Clients don’t know what the #@$% they want.

This came from a client. This is an actual job that they wanted us to print. Can you guess what the heck they want? See the stuff scribbled out? They wanted to KEEP that. Yeah. that’s right.

\

2. This will never stop amusing me.

I got a new Volkswagen beetle in April, and this summer it hit 1337 miles. I actually pulled over to talk this picture.

1. If you’ve been working on something since 7th grade, you should NEVER EVER EVER EVER give up on it.

This is an illustration from my new comic that I will be working on this winter. I have pushed it aside for way too long. I have the outline completely written for the most part, and will begin work on it soon. It is called Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Around Here. I hope everyone like it once I get it on my site. It’s been nearly 17 years in the making!

Anyway, THOSE, in a nutshell, are eleven things I learned this summer ^_^.

For some reason, the Cranberries song, Yellow Skies Forever, always has to be playing when I roll into Ocean City, New Jersey. It’s just such a “going to the beach while the sun is setting” song. I have theme music for everything in my life, really.

I want to start this blog entry by thanking Dan Guzek and his family for letting Larry and myself stay with them last weekend. It was seriously a very awesome thing to do, and we had a wonderful time, and you are all about to find out from this journal entry.

We left last friday, right after larry got out of work. It was about 10 pm when we got there. When I was a kid, I don’t think that Ocean City seemed as far away. I have been there twice in the past 2 years, though, and it seriously seems like it takes forever. There is a roundabout right before you get into town though, somehow making the whole trip worth it.

Dan and his family rented out a house and he said that it was a really nice, spacious place, and he was right! The place was seriously beautiful! It had 4 bedrooms, 2 half baths and 1 full bath, a tv with a dvd player, and wireless internet access. I have to say, talking on instant messenger to jamie on saturday was possibly the weirdest thing i’ve ever done at the beach.

Anyway, here is what the living room looked like:

After we got there, we went out on the boardwalk immediately, considering the boardwalk is open until 12 on weekends, and friday night is technically considered a weekend. A lot of the shops were closed, but we did hit some arcades, and I played The Simpsons arcade game, while larry and dan found out via Let’s Go Jungle that they are “lovers, but only in appearance”. We also were introduced to the wonderful frozen treat that is polish water ice! I got mango flavored, and it was amazing! I also was having terrible trouble with my wisdom teeth that weekend, and the ice helped with the hurting sensation.

We went to bed and dan woke us up REALLY early the next morning. It sounded like it was raining outside, but it stopped as soon as we got up. We walked to the boardwalk and it was WAFFLE TIME! We ate at this place called “Bob’s Grill”, which was a place I used to go with my mom and dad when we used to go to the beach together. It sorta brought back a lot of sad memories about my mom, but I made new memories with dan and larry, so it was all right in the end. Here are larry and dan on the boardwalk in front of bobs:

After this, we went on the beach, and that was probably one of my favorite things we did all trip. There is nothing better than waking up early and going on the beach and seeing all of the creatures and shells that washed up. We also did a fair share of running around like idiots, which is always good. I was so happy, i kicked my shoes off in a fit of joy.

Dan also kicked his shoes off in a fit of joy, and then took a break to stare at the ocean’s relaxing waves.

also, I have to say, I cannot take credit for some of these pictures, because larry took a lot of them too. Here he is, doing what he does best:

When we were walking around, we did find a lot of shells, but we also found this:

Here is the detail, too:

I had never seen anything like this before. I thought it was most likely an alien or something, but then tedd from work ruined the fun by telling me that it was something called a “sand crab” and that he used to go to the beach and dig them up when he was a kid. It has some sort of eggs all over it, so we’re thinking that either it was eating the eggs, or that it was a female who was laying her eggs.

After the beach, we went back to the house and got the sand off of our feet. I almost typed “feets” … I has sands on my feets! help!

Anyway, we then went back out on the boardwalk, and it was oldschool mini golf time! I LOVE the oldschool obstacle mini golf courses where you have to hit a ball into a duck’s mouth and then it goes through a series of tubes, possibly scoring you a hole in one! Goofy Golf is by far the best one of these on the Ocean City boardwalk, but Tee Time gives it a run for it’s money as well. We played a LOT of mini golf. ALOT. I won a free game at Tee Time, which was really cool. Also, RIGHT before Larry and I had to go home, we both won free games at Goofy Golf, so we ended up playing again, since we were leaving that day.

Some of the obstacles and statues at those golf courses are just great. Here are a few from goofy golf. This one reminds me of those giant dinosaurs in california that they go to visit in the movie “The Wizard”. Also, check out that whale next to the dinosaur… wait… that’s me! ARGH!:

I am not too into monkeys, but this guy was my friend. His name is Carlos. Why does every name I come up with have “Karl” or “Carl” in it. I wasn’t even trying to do that, and it happened!

It’s funny, because when I was a kid, this next one was definitely there when I was a kid, except he was holding a pizza and he was definitely michaelangelo rather than raphael. Also, for some reason he’s snowboarding. I don’t think that turtles snowboard.

See if you can guess what this next one is.

Give up? It’s a pink hot dog dog in a hot dog bun. It definitely didn’t look like that though.

After that, the hippo ate the hot dog dog, along with dan.

The Tee Time mini golf place didn’t have obstacles that were nearly as funny, but … well, it made up for that with the signs that were hung around it telling you what to do and what not to do:

I don’t know about you… but I would NOT let that guy give me golfing lessons. And I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s horrifying:

After mini golf, we went to this cool water park. I obviously don’t have any pictures from inside there, but it was still a really good time. There were these really high slides called the serpentines… I started to freak out a little because I am extremely afraid of heights. Dan and Larry got me up there and I went down the slide and it was great, and after that it wasn’t as scary.

Also, there was one ride called “the lazy river” where you just float and relax. We were doing just that, and it was so nice… when a stampede of wild children appear out of nowhere. They were seriously out of control and I feared for my life. They entered the one tunnel and it was an explosion of tubes, rafts and body parts or something like that. Finally, they got tired of being behind us and pretty much ran us over. None of the lifeguards were effective in stopping them at all. It was nuts.

After that we walked around and went to some shops and I got some pizza with ziti on top of it which was AMAZING. I had some friends hanging around me when I was eating. I named this one Jake:

I’m a sucker, and he did end up getting some pizza from me. I tried to feed the birds peanuts though, and they were having none of that. They’ve gotten spoiled from all the junk people give them.

We walked around and played a little bit more mini golf, and then we returned to the room for a bit. Dan’s family cooked us a nice meal, and that night we hit the boardwalk yet again! This time we went to a lot of arcades. I played so many old, good games that I felt like it was 1989, and it was wonderful! They had 6 player xmen, which i didn’t get to play. We did play turtles in time, turtles, simpsons, pump it up, and the fastest ms. pacman i’ve EVER played. I suck at ms. pac man, but i was actually really good at this because of how fast it was. I was so excited! Here’s me getting pwned by metalhead in Turtles in Time. I had to be donatello, who is my second favorite character, because raphael was completely broken.

Here is larry playing the fast ms. pac man:

Seriously, that pac man was probably the best game I played the entire time, and I wish i were playing it now. If i could have anything, it would probably be a ms. pac man game for my house, so i could put it on that fast setting all the time.

After all of this, we walked around for a while and found an amusement park called Wonderland. I don’t know what it is about amusement parks on the boardwalk, but when I think of them, i picture old, run down haunted-looking amusement parks. This one was very much full of life. Still, i’d love to see one of those run down haunted amusement parks one day and solve mysteries with a talking dog. But Scrappy can’t come. Anyway, here’s a picture of Wonderland at night:

They also had a carousel, and seriously, the horses on those are scary looking. Especially the one at knoebels, but this one was pretty scary too. I always think about that Dane Cook skit where he talks about punching bees in the face and how they aren’t scary, but how it would be horrifying if giant flying killer horses were flying through the air kicking you in the face. I think they’d look something like this:

Anyway, that’s about it. We got some ice cream, sat on the boardwalk and talked for a little bit, and then we went home. Seriously, the next morning, i felt like I got run over by some sort of large vehicle. I had a really good time. I don’t usually get to go on vacation like this, so it was really exciting to finally get to go somewhere and…. well… i was going to say relax… but i didn’t do too much of that. I basically ended up running myself into the ground even more than i do when I was here. But it was fun, so it doesn’t matter. Anyway, I hope you guys like the pictures.

Until next time!