Thursday, August 25, 2016

Storyland in New Orleans



I still have a number of posts sitting in the queue from trips long ago, like this one about Storyland in New Orleans from over a year ago. I had never heard of this section of City Park until the Executive Director at UCDA clued me into it. What a kitschy gem this place turned out to be! At the entrance you find no less than Humpty Dumpty himself!



While it may lack the sophistication and polish of a Disney Park, it is every bit as charming, and judging by the plethora of happy squealing kids running through while I was there, it was just as entertaining. In fact, maybe even a little more so because of its simplicity and the ability to interact with fewer rules and regulations.



You can climb aboard Peter Pan/Captain Hook's pirate ship yourself, and see them forever frozen in a duel high up in the crow's nest:



This fortress/castle makes a beautiful centerpiece to the park:



Some of the characters in Storyland are patterned after the Disney interpretations; some are less obvious, like this tribute to the Little Mermaid:



The cottage of the Seven Dwarfs:



Snow White:



Her "makeup" has seen better days:



Inside this little structure, it would appear that the artists of Storyland are much less worried about the reach of the Mouse's attorneys. These paintings of the characters from Alice in Wonderland are spot-on to their Disney counterparts.





Rapunzel:



Cute to see Jack in the Beanstalk on an actual fence:



Grandma's House:



The frightful sight you see when you open her door!



This is the cow that stepped over the moon.



Loved this dragon slide; it took a long time to get this shot without the tiny little varmints who were gleefully playing here.



The permanent home of Three Little Pigs:



The pigs themselves:



The home of brick (complete with the Big Bad Wolf about to get burned up in the chimney!):



The house of wood:



and the house of straw:



Mother Goose watches over the proceedings from overhead:



Not too far from the old woman who lived in the shoe:



There's even a Monstro here:



Complete with Pinocchio (still in puppet form) sitting on top:



While this place may not exactly be compliant with all the rules that the Mouse House adheres too, it is still a very cool place for the young and young at heart.

More Storyland at my main website.

4 comments:

Chuck said...

This place looks like a lot of fun. Reminds me of Fairy Tale Town in Sacramento, Children's Fairyland in Oakland, and the now-lost Storybook Gardens in Wisconsin Dells. Glad to see another survivor of the 1950s-60s Mother Goose park wave still hanging on and in pretty good shape.

Fifthrider said...

I cannot get over how clean and well maintained that place is. Anytime I see any such place you can tell it looked great while new but years later is run down. Not here. This still has a shine to it. ( I'm talking to YOU, Legoland. You people need to fix that faded, cracked pile of bricks you call a park. )

Anonymous said...

Nice post, looks like a fun place. I'm glad there are still some places like this left in the world.

JG

UCDA Home Office said...

Awesome as always.