Wonderland

(a.k.a. That is sooo Coney Island (that's a blast from the past especially for Sam's sister!)
So Saturday was Atticus’ last day of vacation before he was back to school and we thought we’d make up for a somewhat lame break (actually he was content to laze about, but Jon and Sam felt persistently guilty about the lack of planned activity during his break) we decided to go out with a bang. We decided to head over to Wonderland, an amusement park that is pretty close to our neighborhood. We pass by Wonderland several times a week and have never gone (Sam has been passing by the strange and colorful castle gates over the last three years, and never crossed through their cartoonishly inviting arches- so it was time).
Wonderland was… well, it was something. First, one of the first things you see upon entering is this broken down ride. Notice the flames. We don't know if this is supposed to be ironic or not.

But, okay- whatever – we aren’t expecting it to be glitzy. This is good old fashioned kitschy fun. So we bought our tickets (60 taka to enter, but then everything costs a ticket (or two), which is 20 taka…carnivals are a universal rip off it seems). Then we headed out to find a ride that was running (and that didn’t seem like a death trap). We rode the first (and at that point, only) ride that was running (a swinging circle thing) and had a perfectly fun time for the three minutes the ride lasted. So what’s next? There weren’t a lot of people around, and that includes workers, so we sort of strolled around looking at the rides that all seemed to be either broken, under construction, or just un-staffed for no apparent reason. They were filming a music video around the place, which was sort of funny to watch, although not exactly mesmerizing. Then we saw the skee-ball. Oh, we can do skee-ball...
The best part about the arcade was that the way it worked was by giving the worker a paper ticket, then he would tear off the end and give the stub back, and then he would just manually turn on the machine. In the case of skee-ball, he counted out 8 balls and pushed them forward, sat on a little box next to lane (only one at a time worked) and you got to try for the big prizes:

3rd place (200 points) = a pencil case
2nd place (250 points) = a badminton racket (only one though)
And 1st prize (300 points) = a frying pan! What kid doesn’t want a frying pan??!!

Actually, Sam did want a frying pan, and if Jon loved her more he would have won it for her, but instead he only got a pencil case for Atticus. Oh well, the worker was pretty excited about the pencil case win.

Afterwards, Jon tried his hand at a carnival shooting game. It consisted of teddy bears holding hearts that said Happy Birthday hanging from strips of toilet paper on a moving wheel thing. Then Jon was given a pellet pistol and the goal was to shoot the toilet paper and rip it so the bear came off. The gun jammed at every shot, and Jon never hit the paper anyway. The image of Jon taking aim and shooting at little teddy bears with a pistol was the best part of it. Enjoy:

Ah well, next we went on the bumper cars, but it was only us – Sam in one car, and Jon and Atticus together in another, and it was a little lame to play bumper cars with only two cars.

Then came the strangest of all. The ride was called Jurassic Something and we got into a little jeep seat thing (typical of these rail-line rides where you go through a tunnel and look at things). Then we went into a dragon’s mouth into a dark room (no, despite the ride's name it was a clearly a dragon and not a dinosaur), where a broken projector played something incomprehensible and a broken film reel flashed for a minute before shutting off, then we came out the other side (from beneath the dragon’s tail), and went back around again into the mouth tunnel. This time the lights kicked on a there was a caveman scene. Then we got out of the little jeep seat, walked through a door into a cave, where disco music played loudly and it was pitch black except for flashing red and green disco lights. The previoulsy somewhat sullen worker began to dance frantically and another kid and a giant teddy bear came in and started dancing. We figured 'ok, it’s a dance party now,' so we danced. Sam took a picture with the flash, and this is perhaps the most wonderful thing of Wonderland. You couldn’t see any detail in the really dark room, but check out the bear costume in the light of the flash. This is the stuff nightmares are made of.

After a little bit of a dance party we got back in the jeep, came back out the dragon’s tail-end and went on our way. Even Atticus was at a loss for words, which is a rarity.

We went on a few more rides, including the Western Train, where we saw depictions of the coliseum, Africa (?), and China (?). We have no idea why it was called a western train. It was only one of the many wonders of Wonderland. Se here are few more pics from the day. We can’t say it was a bad time – fun was had, but it was mostly just bizarre feeling. In the first picture below, Jon's face kind of sums up our expression thoughout much of the day.