Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania: Fairyland Forest (Closed)

Conneaut Lake Park did not open for the 2007 or the 2008 season for financial reasons.

We made an exciting discovery this weekend! While visiting Conneaut Lake Park, an 110 year old amusement park in northeast Pennsylvania, we decided to take a walk into the RV park across the street called Camperland. Camperland's fenced-in grounds formerly housed an attraction called Fairyland Forest! As the name implies, Fairyland Forest was a Mother Goose/Brothers Grimm-themed park filled with fiberglass sculptures and costumed characters, similar to the one at Idewild Park in Ligonier, PA. Fairyland Forest closed down in the late '70s or early '80s. I visited once when I was very young and the place has haunted my memories every since.

I had heard that when Fairyland Forest closed, many of the park's pieces were auctioned off. However, on our walk into Camperland, we discovered that a few things remain, including a still-functioning windmill, some brightly-painted bavarian style buildings that house restrooms and a camp store, a tree-house, and best of all . . . a large, smiling fiberglass whale next to a swampy, fenced-off pond.

Conneaut Lake Park is a real roadside treasure in and of itself. Admission and parking are free, and it's cheap to ride the rides, which are for the most part quite retro and charming . The giant, bobbing, disembodied clown head that guards the entrance to Kiddieland has been there for decades. The Devil's Den ride takes you through the dark past black-lit paintings of monsters and a whole lot of ABC gum stuck to the walls. The Ultimate Trip ride is an indoor scrambler. They turn off the fluorescent lights, turn on the strobe lights, disco lights, and black lights, they blast the 80s rock music, and all the while, you can admire more "scary" black-light paintings on the wall. In the arcade, you can arm-wrestle a machine that looks like a Masked Mexican Wrestler, but be careful and read the warnings so that it doesn't break your arm!