There is still plenty of remaining kitsch value; the new owners haven't completely renovated the place. It's still called "Dutch Wonderland," in a historically misguided attempt to marry the Disney World concept to Amish Country. And plenty of buildings and props are still there that I remember dotting the landscape 15+ years ago. I was struck by how tall the trees had gotten, since when I was there last it was largely an empty flat field, but there's time for you. It's still a small, low-impact amusement park with a severe case of Theme Creep (the property simply can't decide if it wants to be themed to medieval times, pioneer days, outer space, Mother Goose stories or quaint Amish farmland).

So today it became Clark's First Amusement Park, to his later shame.

The park was briefed in the first edition of the wonderful Roadside America book thusly:

"[The] Dutch Wonderland amusement park, built in 1963 ... is encircled by a sluggish old-fashioned monorail. The loop ride features a scenic trip to the parking lot to check on your car. The vast gift shop offers smutty Amish souvenirs and endless novelties exploting the imprudently named nearby town of Intercourse, PA."

That was written in 1986, deep in the park's near-death period. The gift ship, while still trafficking in ridiculous Amish paraphrenalia, has drastically cut down on the Spencers Gifts style junk. (We did find some funny-sad fake road signs.) But the monorail ride still wends its way out to the parking lot, which I do find hilarious. The Roadside America website today claims that this may be the last theme park monorail still in operation, Disney not included. It does not discuss how the monorail is little more than a slow-moving mobile sauna, offering guests the chance to sweat off a couple pounds while checking on their minivans.

But on to the Firsts!

First Water Park
Obviously a newish addition to DW, it nevertheless follows the park's form of being cramped and off-theme. In order to give the park some merchandisable characters, Duke the Dragon was introduced several years back (along with a Princess and a tertiary Knight character). This is the medieval theme at work, yet Duke's Lagoon is mostly a cookie-cutter Crazy Water Pipes kind of place, with random sea animals providing additional water spout points.

Not that Clark cared. These are the sort of things I notice.

First Time Running Around Shirtless Among About a Million People
His favorite part of the water park was those intermittant spray streams that come up out of the pavement. Although the funny part was that, as soon as the spray stopped, he would leave and head off to something else, rather than sticking around to watch it turn on again a few seconds later.

First Time Applauding a Diving Show
I seem to recall DW having actual dolphins once upon a time. Now the aqua-amphitheatre is home to a fancy diving show, telling the story of a Frog Prince competition.

First Theme Park Ride
It's one of those slow bulldozer kiddie rides, probably called "Duke's Dozers" or something, in another display of non-sequiter theming. His partner there is our pal Karissa, who was willing to guide Clark through the process even though she knew this was a drag of a ride.

First Carousel
Or is this a merry-go-round? I can never keep that straight, simply because I don't care enough to.

This was good fun, although it was difficult to get him to look towards me, since the interior of the ride is so resplendent with mirrors and twinkly bits.

First Time Fake-Steering a Fake-Jungle Cruise Ride into a Real Parking Lot
This is Dutch Wonderland's other ride that takes you out into the parking lot, the Dragon's Lair. You even get to visit Route 30 so you can figure out where you're going to stop for dinner later.

I love this one, because it is easily the worst ride ever. You pile into a boat shaped liked a giant log, and it takes you on a long zig-zag through a pond with absolutely nothing in it. Seriously. There may have been a hippo in there somewhere, but it is long gone. You're pretty much just watching the cars at the nearby traffic light, until you pull alongside a giant cave/mountain scene with an odd dragon head erupting from the top. The dragon is, oddly, a scary dragon... but it has been painted in the friendly purple of mascot Duke. Then you see a same-colored egg - implying that Duke is female? - and you turn a corner where some poor high school student asks if she can take your picture, and you're docked.

But there are layers to this one that enhance the experience, and that only a longtime Dutch Wonderland fan would know. See, this ride used to called Fred Flintstone's Cave Cruise. Or something like that... I'm definite on the Fred Flintstone usage, but I suspect there was something punny or even more alliterative on the second part. Anyway, the "dragon" used to be a genuinely scary tyrannosaurus (or, as scary as you could get at DW), which explains why this "Duke" is so realistically styled with angry eyes and big pointy teeth. And there were fiberglas Flintstone-esque cave people positioned on the mountain set, because the whole effect was supposed to be prehistoric. Which also explains the log-shaped boats.

I don't know for sure when Fred left the show. Probably when somebody from Turner came up from Atlanta to visit relatives.

It is a truly terrible ride, and one that every DW visitor has to do, even if they don't get it on the ironically hilarious level.

First Time Touching Popeye
But whoever owns Popeye needs to get up there, pronto. This... homage? sits along a desolate riverside walking path, just south of the famous Hobo Shack (I'm serious; there's a sign). This is one of many bizarre old structures that made no sense to me in the '80s and continue to confound guests twenty years later. If you keep on the path - and you will - you'll also come across a fascinatingly random pirate figure, whom I contend is one of the old Flintstone-era cavemen statues repainted with an eyepatch.

Clark was actually really into those dopey statues, going "Ooooh! Ooooh!" while I could only think "This is weblog gold!"

The capper to the whole experience is the giant garden on the north end of the park. Built on an island and surrounded by TWO slow-as-molasses boat tours, this is a quiet, almost abandoned section that nobody ever bothers to visit because there's nothing there. Just trees and flowerbeds and - in the grand Dutch Wonderland tradition - a couple of forlorn old masterworks of hand-crafted fiberglas, this time showcasing portions of rides that no longer exist. There's a train, a swan boat, and a whale car, and corresponding plaques have the nerve to talk about these items in reverent, storied paragraphs. The whale ride was shut down in 1965, but a single car lives on to warn future rides of their tenuous place in the annals of theme park history.

Hope you also had a Dutch Wonderful day.