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There have been so many fantastic ‘firsts’ since coming to live in the great US of A, but one of the most unnerving was at my first Orange County Fair, where my carniverous husband returned to the caveman within when confronted with an entire table of turkey legs…viewer discretion advised when looking at the photo below, as it is not a pretty sight. I was reminded of the interesting phenomenon of ‘Fair Food’ on another blog earlier today, and it prompted me to go and dig out some of our pics of the fair last year - such fun and a real experience in Americana. More recently we visited Disneyland - a first for me - and that was absolutely fantastic. I had been debating whether to go to Knotts Berry Farm or Disney and in the end I’m really glad that we chose Disney, as although I don’t doubt that Knotts is brilliant too, I admit to being a bit of a nerd when it comes to those humungous rollercoasters and preferred the sound of a chance encounter with Eeyore followed by an Indiana Jones ride and Splash Moutain - although even that was a bit scary at points, notably the 50 foot drop into a large plunge pool…Space Mountain was everything I had heard it would be, and I would have gone again had the line not been over 2 hours long by that stage. The Fast-Pass is a stroke of genius and meant that we got to do all the rides we wanted to during the course of the day. Another incredible thing was seeing ‘ASIMO’ the robot strutting his stuff - Honda’s Humanoid Robot. He can walk, dance, ascend and descend stairs and even run - it was really hard to believe that there wasn’t a wee person inside that little robot body. All in all it was a brilliant day and we even got a free pass to go back to California Adventure park within the next 30 days, so maybe I’ll pluck my courage up and get to go on one of those terrifying rollercoasters after all.
2 Responses to “Turkey Legs, Eeyore and A Running Robot”
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camerapilot Says:
March 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pmYes, The Great American theme park phenomenon……
These parks erupted out of orange groves. Disney of course was the most amazing. No one had seen anything like it.
Growing up in Laguna there was the sea to the west and if you looked inland there was nothing but orange groves, bean fields, the USMCAS/United States Marine Corp Air Station. That was your world but, if you traveled farther up the 5 Freeway, your world changed.
Disneyland stole the thunder from Knott’s Berry Farm but Knott’s offered something that was more from the past and not the future.
The parking lot at Knott’s first of all was a large grassy area amongst rows of eucalyptus trees. It was common to see families park, pull out a blanket while dad would walk to the restaurant and order chicken dinners and pie, bring them back to the car and eat them on the blanket and take in the smell of citrus in the air from the ever present orange groves. That’s not prose, that’s a fact. There was a reason they called the county……Orange.
Disney was high tech. and Knott’s was handmade. It started as a roadside fruit stand and Mrs. Knott made jellies and it took off from there.
The eye catcher and the heart of Knott’s was the western town. You could see a railroad train get robbed, a big gun fight would ensue and the bullet riddled robbers would be loaded up into wheelbarrows and rolled away. Unfortunately this kind of entertainment was deemed “Politically Uncorrect” somewhere in the 80’s so it stopped, but the town remained. It was all hand built too by Mr. Knott and another man who legend has it was a fugitive on the lamb.
So that’s a thumbnail sketch of what theme parks used to be like during my youth. It was so very innocent and make-believe was practiced by all of us, including our parents.
Oh, and one more thing. Knott’s Berry Farm was free. -
camerapilot Says:
March 1st, 2008 at 6:10 pmExcuse the spelling.
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