An amusement park devoted to offering a great deal of enjoyable to kids celebrated its a centesimal birthday with a take a look at the previous. Kiddie Park marked its April 10 anniversary with the dedication of a time capsule, a brand new Kiddie Park Fiesta medal, and a preview of recent party packages.
Tim Morrow, San Antonio Zoo president and CEO, stated these and different festivities are the least that zoo officers can do to thank the group for its assist over the many years. San Antonio Zoo moved to take over Kiddie Park in 2019 and relocated the house and its rides and video games — together with the Ferris wheel and hand-carved Herschell Spillman carousel — close to the primary zoo entrance.
“It was susceptible to closing and going away without end or transferring to a different metropolis, and we labored with [then-owner Rad Weave] to maneuver that over right here,” Morrow defined.
Kiddie Park was initially situated at Broadway Road and Mulberry Avenue, in one other nook of Brackenridge Park simply north of downtown. Kiddie Park officers renovated the house in 2009 and had hoped to increase the park’s footprint, however have been challenged by modern-day points similar to parking.
Morrow stated the zoo deliberately put aside the Kiddie Park outdoors zoo grounds to proceed providing free admission. Kiddie Park rides are $3 every, and there are wristband packages to get pleasure from a number of rides and refreshments.
“We wished issues to really feel the identical for individuals who have beforehand visited. Even a number of the rocks that we’re standing on right here have been introduced over from the unique Kiddie Park,” Morrow stated.
Morrow stated colleagues from throughout the zoo have been joyful to collect varied artifacts to place right into a time capsule buried in the course of the celebratory occasion. The objects inform a narrative that stretches outdoors metropolis limits.
“Walt Disney got here to see Kiddie Park when he was constructing Disneyland to get inspiration and issues like that, so it simply has an unimaginable historical past past San Antonio and being the nation’s oldest kids’s amusement park,” he stated.
Morrow stated preserving park parts, such because the carousel, was important to encourage nostalgia for previous guests and a way of surprise and journey for at the moment’s younger visitors and future generations. He pressured the necessity to protect and even revive now-closed native landmarks.
He lamented the lack of two bygone Brackenridge Park sights — Playland Park, a kids’s amusement park that closed in 1980, and the Sky Trip, which operated for greater than 30 years earlier than shuttering in 1999.
To assist hold these reminiscences alive, Kiddie Park is asking the general public to share recollections and pictures by means of an internet portal. Choose submissions can be shared on social media.
“We can’t let Kiddie Park go away, and I feel all people has had or been to a party at Kiddie Park,” Morrow said. “I got here as a baby within the Seventies. My children have had birthday events right here. In 100 years, we’ll in all probability have 4 or 5 generations of individuals celebrating birthdays at Kiddie Park.”
