Dutch Wonderland a county fixture

CHRIS LEFEVRE remembers how thrilled she was to see the castle when she was a kid.

It was that one special summer day every year when the family headed over to the Dutch Wonderland amusement park.

The doldrums of summer were over, at least for a day.

You entered the giant castle and a whole new world awaited, filled with giant slides, merry-go-rounds and bumper cars. There were games to play and prizes to win.

And maybe, if you were lucky, you'd get to eat funnel cake or cotton candy.

LeFevre spends a lot of time at the amusement park these days, but it's her two boys, Brendan, 9, and Reagan, 6, who eagerly await the castle out on Route 30, just east of Lancaster.

"We have season passes," LeFevre explained as she waited for her boys over by the Fun Slide on a recent sunny August morning. "We only went once a year when I was a kid and it was a big deal. I remember getting so excited just driving by the castle. It was like our mini-Disney World."

At amusement parks, summer days are turned into adventures, where kids scream with delight as roller coasters dip and dive, where they can meet a princess, splash down a slide or ride a train.

And they can be intensely nostalgic places, because for every group of kids running toward the next ride, there is a parent or a grandparent remembering their own days at the park when they were kids or when their own kids - parents themselves now - were little.

Kim Buckies, of Manheim Township, who was waiting by the Fun Slide with LeFevre for her girls, Lydia, 9, and Emma, 6, always takes her kids over to the area by the creek, where Chief Halftown (a Philadelphia TV celebrity whose show ran from the early 1950s to the late 1990s) used to hang out by his teepee.

"Oh, that was a magical area," she remembered with a smile. "And the flume and the solo slide - I just loved them."

Many visitors are from out of town, especially later in the season, but they, too, have their memories.

"We were here about 20 years ago," said Tom Christman of Brick, N.J., who was visiting Dutch Wonderland with his son, Thomas, and grandson, Gavin.

The Christmans would visit Lancaster when his two boys were young and the amusement park was always on the agenda.

Eventually, they graduated to Hersheypark, but the nice thing about Dutch Wonderland, Christman said, was that when they were little, the boys could ride just about every ride in the park.

And now, with Gavin set to turn 3 in September, it was time to carry on the tradition.

"It's his first visit," Christman said as he watched Gavin get his picture taken over by the giant fiberglass pretzel. "We've got all the classic photos of my sons from when they were kids, including this one."

The pretzel has been a favorite photo stop for visitors practically since the park opened in 1963.

"It hasn't changed very much and that's one of the draws," said Dan Reagan, of Newark, Del., who came with his family when he was a kid.

Today, he was visiting with his son Connor, 7, on a field trip with his summer camp and pre-school, Tender Loving Kare.

"I do remember everything being bigger back then," he said with a smile.

Reagan was taking his son and his friends to all the spots he liked as a kid, including Bossy the Cow, another favorite photo stop, where kids can milk the cow, and to the Wonderhouse, where you sit on a bench and the house revolves around you, kind of like the scene from the "Wizard of Oz" during the tornado.

The ride has been at Dutch Wonderland since 1964, featuring the words "Ach, now come in onc't" at the entrance.

It certainly isn't as high-tech as many of the other rides at Dutch Wonderland, but it's a favorite.

"We will never get rid of that ride," said Bethany Alwan, marketing director for Dutch Wonderland. "People would get too upset. We moved the pretzel a couple years ago and people were saying, 'I can't believe you got rid of that!' "

Alwan said in the height of summer, about 5,000 people come to the park each day. Generally, she said, the rides appeal to kids 8 and younger.

"For a lot of kids, it's their first amusement park, maybe their first roller coaster," she said.

Unlike bigger parks, Dutch Wonderland doesn't have long lines and there are plenty of areas where visitors can rest.

That's something Jayne Brown, of Little Britain, appreciates. She brings her three kids, Alanna, 5, Cassidy, 3, and Giavonna, 10 months, to the park about once a week.

"It's a nice distraction during summer," she said. "The water rides are nice because they don't have to be able to swim. And there's lots of shade, which is huge."

Dutch Wonderland was founded 47 years ago by Earl Clark, a local farmer turned entrepreneur who realized the potential of Lancaster County tourism.

There were only four rides in the 14-acre park when it opened. Three of those rides are still in operation: The Wonderland Special train, the Antique Cars and the Lady Gay Riverboat.

Through the years, the park has grown. Today, there are 33 rides on more than 40 acres.

Hershey Entertainment & Resorts purchased the park from the Clark family in 2001 and has done some major expansions.

Duke the Dragon became the park's mascot and Duke's Lagoon, a large water area, was developed in 2003 and expanded in 2006.

But Alwan said there hasn't been any pressure from Hershey to lose sight of the park's past.

"We never felt that pressure from Hershey. (We are) dedicated to keeping the park the way it is," Alwan said. "There are things we just won't sacrifice to put in the next big ride. We are really big on the tradition the Clark family instilled in the park. It's a slower pace."

There's even a memory lane, where parts of some of the now retired rides are on display.

A little boy, about 10 months old, happily sat on his mother's lap on a seat from the Old 99 Train, doing what kids have been doing for 47 summers: poking, pushing and pulling all the bells and whistles.

He laughed as he did it, no doubt making a memory for his mom.

Who knows. Maybe 30 summers from now, he'll be doing the same with his own kids on a hot August day.

Jane Holahan is a Lancaster Newspapers reporter. Contact her at jholahan@lnpnews.com.