The New Jersey amusement parks we lost and the ones still making memories

My earliest memory of anything resembling an amusement park is the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.

Mom and Dad would take us down the shore and the Steel Pier was its own world — rides, shows, spectacle, and most unforgettably, the high diving horse. An actual horse that climbed a platform and dove into a tank of water while a crowd stood below with their mouths open. I was a little kid from Mays Landing and I had never seen anything like it. I still haven't.

Then came Storybook Land in Egg Harbor Township, where every South Jersey kid went on their first school field trip. Fairy tale characters, little rides, a gentleness to the whole place that made it feel like it was built specifically for you. Years later I took my own kids there. Some places earn their longevity.

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As a middle schooler, Great Adventure was everything. Rolling Thunder, Lightning Loops, the Runaway Train — nothing in the world was more thrilling than those rides on a summer day in Jackson. And as a young adult, nothing was more romantic than riding the Giant Wheel at Wonderland Pier in Ocean City at the end of a boardwalk date night, the whole island laid out below you as the sun went down.

I took my own kids on that same wheel years later. My son looked out over the edge and said in his little kid voice: "I'm a wittle scaed."

Wonderland Pier closed forever on October 13, 2024, after 94 years. Owner Jay Gillian cited Sandy, the pandemic, and a minimum wage increase that doubled his payroll costs, leaving the business $4 million in the hole. The Giant Wheel still stands on the Ocean City skyline for now, a bittersweet reminder of what was there. Ocean City is still fighting about what comes next.

The New Jersey parks we lost along the way

Wonderland is the most recent loss but it is far from the only one.

Brigantine Castle operated from 1976 to 1984 — a five-story haunted attraction built on a pier over the Atlantic Ocean, drawing over a million visitors a year. It ended because of a fire at Six Flags Great Adventure in 1984 that killed eight teenagers and triggered new safety standards. An engineering study found the pier was structurally unsafe. Rather than pay for repairs, the owner closed. The castle burned during demolition in 1987. If you grew up in South Jersey or Philadelphia in the late 1970s, you remember those TV commercials like they were yesterday.

Action Park in Vernon ran from 1978 to 1996 and was so genuinely dangerous that locals called it Traction Park and Class Action Park. At least six people died from ride-related incidents. It had the only loop waterslide ever built, closed after one month because riders were arriving at the bottom with lacerations. It closed under the weight of lawsuits and liability.

Adventure Village sat right next door to Storybook Land on the Black Horse Pike in Egg Harbor Township from 1959 to 1969. Wild West theme, pig races, stagecoach rides, a simulated sheriff's shootout. Ten summers and then gone. The buildings stood abandoned for decades before finally being demolished in 2009.

Palisades Amusement Park in Cliffside Park ran from 1898 to 1971, a full 73 years of memories for North Jersey and New York metro families, before the land was rezoned residential. Immortalized in the Freddy Cannon song that played on every radio in the region, it was the Shore for people who could not make it to the Shore.

Palace Amusements in Asbury Park operated for a hundred years before closing in 1988 and being demolished in 2004. Its famous Tillie mural — the grinning face that became the symbol of Asbury Park's rise, fall, and comeback — was saved and lives on.

Olympic Park in Maplewood opened in 1887 and ran until 1965, one of New Jersey's oldest trolley parks. Generations of families made the trip before the automobile era changed everything and the crowds slowly stopped coming.

The ones still standing

Here is what makes New Jersey different from everywhere else. Storybook Land is still open after 70 years. The Steel Pier is still there. Six Flags Great Adventure is still the crown jewel of NJ thrill rides. Casino Pier in Seaside Heights survived Sandy and rebuilt. Morey's Piers in Wildwood still delivers the best boardwalk value in the state on a free beach.

The parks that survived did so because they adapted, reinvested, and held on through everything New Jersey threw at them.

The ones we lost live in the specific way that only childhood memories do — perfectly preserved, exactly as we left them, and impossible to fully explain to anyone who was not there.

My son is not so little anymore. But I still hear that voice sometimes.