Oak Ridge, New Jersey: Fairy Tale Forest - Closed

Fairy Tale forest has been closed for a while. Take this one off your vacation lists...

A BBQ restaurant has opened up in the main building here, but everything on the exterior is the same. [Kerrie, 02/16/2011]

After a long drive with our three-year old, buoyed by expectations created by our (now obviously) out-of-date guide book, we arrived at the disappointingly closed Fairy Tale Forest. From the front it still appeared to have been as quirky and enchanting as we had hoped, but from the rear it was as sad and pathetic a picture as could be possible: clear cut forest, lines of tan and brown self-storage barracks, muddy bulldozer tracks ending in a jumbled assortment of disheveled story book characters.

Some of the attractions still stand on the other side of a new fence but we didn't get a chance to even look from the storage parking lot because a man drove up in a mint green vintage auto and started to harass us for just being there. He claimed to be an employee and perhaps scaring away fairy tale onlookers was his primary job. But the degree of his anger was unsettling and led me to think there was more behind the story than I could guess. He was not willing to share any information, despite my best efforts to communicate through his animosity, and he certainly did not create the environment we were hoping to provide for our daughter. So we drove off in an extreme state of disappointment. Through the rear-view mirror I looked at the cheap metal sign at the entrance of the self-storage facility. They had attached an image of a pink shoe copied from the fairy tale shoe house at the entrance of the park and named the place "Shoe Box Storage." [Tim Kerner, 07/14/2005]

[RA: Fairy Tale forest has been closed for a while. Take this one off your vacation lists...]