Conny Land, where everything broke

East of here, just before the German border, surrounded by fields and more fields and a few grazing cattle, you'll find a tiny amusement park called Conny Land.  Although it was small, it looked intriguing, and I'd had it on my list of things to do with the kids for some time.  I decided we'd better do it before next week, when we go to Disneyland and ruin all other amusement parks for them, entirely.

Dennis thought I was a little nuts for taking the kids so far away, but most things take an hour to get to by public transit, anyway, and this trip was just 90 minutes.  The kids were awed into silence and good behavior by the large number of heavily armed Swiss troops that joined us on our train car, so I happily snuggled up with my thermos of coffee and a book for the entire trip. Sometimes I don't miss my car at all.

Unfortunately, because the park is in the middle of all those fields, it's only accessible by Post Bus, and so our trip had to be carefully timed: the buses only run about once an hour.  But we had no trouble finding our bus, and the kids started squealing as soon as they saw the roller coaster and flashing signs from the window of the bus.  "Wow! Thanks, Mom!"  And we hadn't even gotten started.

But just after we'd entered the park, one of the two front wheels snapped off of my stroller.  I've asked a lot of that stroller over the last four months, loading it with groceries and kids and books and stuffing the basket with coats and pushing it miles and miles, and not always over the friendliest terrain. So I understand: it had had enough. But this was a very inconvenient time for it to decided to break.  I could still push it on three wheels without unpacking all of the food and extra clothes I'd stuffed in it, but putting Joey in it was out of the question.  And this meant I'd need to waste most of tomorrow hauling the kids out for stroller shopping, unless....I quickly texted Dennis, asking him to meet me at Toys R Us after work, for an emergency stroller run.

That taken care of, we could relax and enjoy the rest of the day. Ella and Alex ran directly for a flying swing ride right next to the entrance, but Alex came directly back in tears. You had to be eight years old for this one.  Ella looked concerned and was running after him, but I waved her back up so that she could take her ride.  She was awfully sweet and sympathetic toward Alex, though, and let him pick the next two rides.

They ran to the bumper cars, with Joey in hot pursuit, calling "Me too! Me too!" I asked the attendant if I could take Joey on with me, and he shrugged.  If I was crazy enough to take a two-year-old on the bumper cars, he certainly wasn't going to get in my way.  So Joey and I practiced our dodging skills, and he laughed and laughed at Ella and Alex as they got all tangled up.

This one has always been Ella's
 and Alex's favorite

"Little Joe"

One funny thing that I noticed about the park: although it was such a small operation and couldn't have been more different, there were shades of Disneyland all over.  Most brazenly, they were piping Disney music throughout the park all morning. (In the afternoon, the switched to the techno.)  I can't believe they get away with that.

Almost Mickey

When I was reading about the park online, I noticed that they were promoting the park as a venue for weddings: "The dream of all wedding couples becomes a reality! In Connyland, you have the opportunity to celebrate your wedding and make it feel like you are on a beach in Florida! Being surrounded by dolphins and getting married in Europe's biggest and most beautiful open-air dolphin lagoon will transform your big day into an unforgettable experience."

The line was much, much shorter for this ride than
we could ever hope for at the Dumbo ride

There were some other wonderfully odd things about this park, but my favorite was the Dino Attack ride, a dark ride where you weave through a room full of dinosaurs in your Jeep...armed with a gun for shooting at lit targets on all the dinosaurs.  Ella originally demurred, deciding that the ride looked too scary, so she waited just outside with her book.  And Joey and Alex, for a moment, really didn't know what to think about all the big dinosaurs, either.  But I reminded them of how they dealt with a dragon last weekend, and that was all they needed: Rawr!

When the boys exited tear-free, Ella realized she might have missed a good thing, and so we returned to the line and rode again, and again.  The boys preferred to sit in the back seat of the Jeep with me, roaring at the dinosaurs, while Ella defended us all.  She reported that she shot twenty-five dinosaurs for us. "I'm really good at this," she mused. "Maybe I should be a hunter when I grow up."

Quite a bit of the park involved animals: they had a dolphin show that we saw the end of.  When Ella learned that she wasn't actually going to get to swim with the dolphins, she lost most of her enthusiasm for the show, but the boys were all wide-eyed wonder and joy as the dolphins leaped and played.  And they also had trained parrots and a two seal shows, and pony rides, and then a little pen for goat petting and feeding with most ingenious method of giving children access without risking the goats sneaking out through the gate: there was one slide in, and another going out.

The kids are in there somewhere.

But we really didn't spend much time with any of those animals: there were too many rides to play on.

I remember when I was a kid and our family went to amusement park rides: I always felt so sorry for my mom, who skipped all the rides because she has such a sensitive stomach.  Somewhere along the way, I became every bit as motion sensitive, to the point where I had to ask Ella to take Joey on that elephant ride for me. 

"Air Joe"

But here's the thing I never would have believed when I was 8: I don't mind in the least. To my delight, the kids disappeared into the habitrail for an hour, and you have to be under 14 to play in it.  Every once in a while they stopped with words of sympathy, or to make sure I was okay.  I promised them I'd be fine...and, then I laid back in the sunshine with my coffee and my book and quietly chortled at the happy turn of events.

Joey eventually got tired of running around, and he and I drifted over to an annex of the habitrail that was lined with air cannons and piles of foam balls.  For a good long while, Joey was the only one in the cage, and he had the best time collecting balls and shooting them across the room. But it was too good to last, and all of the sudden the room got very crowded, and someone took over his cannon while Joey was braving the crossfire on a ball-gathering mission.  Rats.  But Ella and Alex joined us soon after, and the three of them pounced on and guarded a cannon, sharing nicely...until, all of a sudden, they weren't.  And I realized, as I hauled my three bickering kids out of the room, that it was noon.  Oh, yeah. Maybe we should see about lunch.

Long about then, I called Dennis to see if he'd gotten my message, and we made plans to meet up for stroller shopping, he saying he'd mail me a bus and train route to get me there.  But, a half-hour later, when I hadn't gotten the message, I suddenly realized that my phone was broken.  It would turn on for a moment, and then restart itself, and restart itself again, and again.  Oh. Crud.

Thank goodness for zoom lenses. Also,
I think this proves I'd be an excellent
super spy.

So there I was, almost to Germany, with three kids, a broken stroller, poor language skills, and only the haziest of ideas about how to get home, possibly by retracing the route that took us there. And, even if I could find my way home, I knew Dennis would worry about us in the meantime.

Well, first things first: I wanted to check the bus schedule.  Except, the park was no re-entry, but I could scarcely make out the sign for the post bus, and the zoom on my camera took me the rest of the way there.  The earliest bus didn't leave until 5:12, which would mean we might not make it home until 7:00.  I knew there were better, faster, earlier ways to get back, but I just had no idea what they were.

So, doing my best to keep it together, I followed my kids from ride to ride, silently cursing, frantically pushing buttons on my phone and trying to will it into good behavior.

And, somewhere in there, the second front wheel of my stroller broke off.  Ye gods!

But crisis brings inspiration, and some corner of my brain remembered a very antiquated pay phone next to a bathroom we'd stopped in.  I'd smiled to myself at how funny and outdated it looked. Luckily, I was able to coax my own (much less useful) phone to life long enough to scribble down Dennis's number, and, thank goodness, he answered when he called.

When I hung up, I had a transportation route, with a 4:34 departure, a plan to meet Dennis in Dietlikon for dinner and shopping. I felt much, much better.

We celebrated the kids' patience and good behavior with popsicles, and they snuck in a few last rides before we left the park and crossed the street, a good fifteen minutes early, to wait at the Post Bus stop. We were taking no chances. Luckily for me and my poor stroller, there was a twenty-five minute gap to get from the bus stop to the train track. The kids were ebullient from all of the fun they'd had, so, really, the trip back was as pleasant as the trip there had been.

And, when we pulled up in Dietlikon, Dennis surprised us by being there, at the track, with a new stroller. So we happily, quickly, reboarded our train and rode home for our dinner, the kids chirping to their dad about what a wonderful day it had been.  And really, yeah, it was.  I'd totally do it again.

But next time, I'll plan my escape route before we leave.