Adventure Landing as seen by the Wake County Tax Assessment department.
It hit me harder than it probably should have: a nearly forty year old mini amusement park abruptly closes up shop. I probably never visited more than a dozen times in the thirty-four years I’ve lived her, so that’s … what, once every three years? They sure weren’t making money from my visits, but I have to say that every time I visited they sure were making money. There were always kids flooding the arcade, the lines to ride go-karts were constant, and you could always count on waiting for players when you worked your way through the mini golf courses.
In fact, the day they announced they were closing, I reminded a colleague of the time many years ago when our employer took the whole team out to ride go-karts at Adventure Landing as a wacky reward for getting our product across the finish line, so to speak. I had no clue when I brought this up that Adventure Landing had already called it quits.
The family had many good times there. I will always treasure the afternoon or two where a young Travis and I spent swinging bats at their batting cages. Sometimes we would even hit the ball! It’s the time spent that matters, anyway, and those are moments that tend to stick with me forever. Adventure Landing also hosted many kid birthday parties for both Hallie, Travis, and their friends. On one memorable Travis birthday, Travis invited his school principal and to my amazement and amusement he and his family attended!
Getting smoked by your kids on the go-kart track before they could even legally drive was a tough lesson for me, too. Both kids point to their time on the track there as helping them learn how to drive.
Crowds aren’t really my thing and I can’t take the barrage of sensory overload that is an arcade (in spite of working in one early in my career), but I never had to be asked twice if the kids asked if we could go to Adventure Landing.
I have always believed that places soak up the emotions that were once expressed there. Sadness lingers in places of tragedy, yet the opposite is also true: laughter never really stops where fun was had. In that respect, Adventure Landing was overly blessed by one of the most beautiful sounds in our world: a child’s laughter.
In a time when the world seems to be darkening, and hate (and apathy, and ignorance) appears to be on the rise, it saddens me that a place once safe from those worries has left us. We could certainly use more places where getting along, having fun, and playing are the rule of the day. Though it may tempt the pirates of Adventure Landing one last time, I’ll say I will treasure the times I spent there, watching my kids grow up one mini-golf hole or arcade token at a time.
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