Children's Fairyland and the Magic Key

Today we had some more Oakland, CA adventures with Aunt Barbara.

USA barely beating South Sudan doesn't bode well for our upcoming Paris Olympics basketball experience.

We visited another farmer's market. This one I think was walkable from Barbara's house.

I got to try another 45 varieties of peach while I was perusing.

Ern is a big fan of the farmers' efforts.

Children's Fairyland opened in 1950 and is "one of the earliest "themed" amusement parks in the United States." "The park is also home to the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, the oldest continuously operating puppet theater in the United States."

A very unique part of the park was the magic key thing. You buy this plastic key, sold separately of course, and can then use it to activate little audio story box things around the park. Ernie didn't really have the attention span for it but I think they were cool.

"Walt Disney toured many amusement parks in 1950, including Children’s Fairyland, seeking ideas for what turned out to be Disneyland. He hired the first director of Fairyland, Dorothy Manes, to work at Disneyland as youth director, in which position she continued from the park's opening until 1972."

Storybook Puppet Theater was showing a rendition of Wizard of Oz.

I was sitting here watching a puppet show with Ernie when the news dropped that President Biden would not run for reelection.

"Numerous artists have contributed exhibits, murals, puppetry, and sculptures to the park. Some of the better-known artists are Ruth Asawa and Frank Oz, who was an apprentice puppeteer in the park as a teenager."

There was a separate "old woman who lived in a shoe" entrance that was kid sized. Adults had to go the long way. Rude.

One of Ern's favorite games is to push other people over and make them go boom.

We met up with cousin Brendan to have some ice cream at local institution Fentons Creamery. Luckily for many and unfortunately for us they were having a promotion where you could get a sundae for a penny. The line was crazy long and I was pretty stressed out trying to keep like 8 people happy at the same time.

Finally we bailed and had some weird dairy free ice cream at a place nearby. I still feel guilty about this day in May 2026 because I feel like I only had a very short time with Brendan and I was too stressed to interact with him very well. Oh well.

Local farmers are going to notice a dip in fruit sales when Ernie leaves California.