Mad Tea Party
Children’s Fairyland
Oakland
May 4, 2024
My friend Dorothy was stuck in the slide at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her voice.
“I’m stuck in the slide!” she cried out.
We were at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, joining other adults eager to frolic at the normally kids-only park at Lake Merritt for a “Mad Tea Party.”
The event seemed made for kids at heart, like me. So, on a chilly Saturday evening at the park, we donned our finest tea party attire, sipped some wine and cocktails, and milled about the event as a DJ played dance floor tunes and vendors sold scones and food truck fare, loving the vintage vibes and children’s fairytale theme,. Since no actual children were allowed at this event, we were finally given free reign to play to our heart’s content.
Since the antique rides were originally made with little ones in mind, adult bodies didn’t always fit; though Dorothy is a petite woman, the slide she went down ended in a tiny room with wood gates that a child might easily slip under to exit. A grown adult, not so much.
With a little maneuvering, Dorothy managed to escape. Meanwhile adults in all manner of cosplay — DIY steampunk suits, Alice in Wonderland-themed dresses, cat costumes — gamely tried to wriggle themselves down other slides, ducked their heads through tunnels and mazes, and squeezed through the tiny gates of the toy train cars that wheeled slowly around the park.
Bay Area locals have enjoyed afternoons as kids attending story time or playing in Fairyland, a low-rent, miniature pre-Disneyland with its non-copyrighted fairytale characters decorating antique rides in the middle of the town.
Not having visited Fairyland as a kid, but loving the quaint, mid-century charm of the park and its dark rides, I always wanted to check it out. Adult friends without kids have shared the same sentiment. I watched as a group of friends in frilly dresses with giant hearts on their skirts filled out their Cheshire Cat Scavenger Hunt sheets near the Merry Meadow. More people found themselves stuck in the same slide Dorothy had wedged herself out of. Onlookers giggled at the sight of other adults stuck in tiny rides. It was playtime for the adults.
With drinks in hand, guests took selfies and admired each other’s outfits as they roamed the park. On the dance floor, I spied the Mad Hatter and a few other costumed partygoers busting a move to old classic club hits, with something for each decade of the demographic in attendance.
As the sun set and the dancing picked up, glow-in-the-dark lights illuminated the giant mushrooms, life-sized fairytale characters, and antique rides. It was a veritable wonderland at night, deep in the heart of Oakland.
A guest in a striped cat suit with painted-on whiskers marveled at the scene. “Wow… Can you imagine if we were on psychedelics right now?”
