Amusement parks

I never considered amusement parks as something missing from our lives, never considered that in Denmark we would finally have the opportunity to take our kids on nausea inducing rides, never thought that I would have to face my own fear of rides, and never imagined I would watch as Gus hurtled by me on a drop so steep it went beyond vertical (97 degrees).

On the weekend we went to our third amusement park in two months, Gus and Jesse’s first three amusement parks. Our destination yesterday: BonBon-Land. I have since seen it on Times list of Top 10 Weirdest Theme Parks. The story, as it was told to me by Hans, our friend and tour guide (though it was his first time too), is that of a candy maker who decided to open a theme park to go with his line of colourfully named candy.

The candy names are of course in Danish but the pictures on the bags at the gift shop (Paradise) help; there you can buy Dog Farts, Seagull Shits, Rotten Fish, Junkyard mix, you get the idea. They are just names though, the candy is supposed to be good. We were searching for some Dirty Diapers but couldn’t find any so we went home with a mix of gummy candies (gummy bum, gummy breasts, gummy pile of doodie), and a junkyard mix of hard candies, most of which have been spit out in the trash owing to their saltiness.

To go with the strange candy names the park surrounds you with cartoonish animals that look like they are made of paper-mache, many of who are engaged in activities befitting the candy names they are there to reflect. One of the first things we encountered upon entering the park was a giant dog clearly working to relieve himself of gas, on a particularly tame ‘roller coaster’ we had time to notice the pile of doodie under the giant dog in the middle of the ride, and a water ride took us through a rat-infested junkyard.

So a review of amusement parks is in order: Tivoli, the second oldest amusement park in the world (1843), Legoland, whose name says it all, and BonBon-Land, a tribute to a candy brand glorifying all things taboo. Which one comes in at the top of the list? If you ask Gus and Jesse they’ll tell you to go to BonBon-Land.