Just about every child can tell you that
if you go to Southern California you can
find fun family theme parks, but do you know
that Southern California doesn’t have
the only ones? There are not one, but two
fabulous family theme parks in Northern California’s
Santa Clara County. You have probably heard
of one of them, but you may not know about
the other.
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Visiting
Great
America &
Bonfante Gardens
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The more well-known park is Paramount’s
Great America. Located in Santa Clara, this
park has been offering family fun for decades.
It offers scream-inducing rides that will
thrill the most daring teenage boys, sweet
rides that please the most delicate of toddlers,
and thrilling, but not-too-scary, rides for
the school-aged children.
If you are unfamiliar with the park, I recommend
getting a park guide at the gate, then boarding
the Delta Flyer for a leisurely ride above
the entire park. You’ll get a feel for
the layout of the park so you can plan which
area to visit first.
For those of you who are the most daring,
try the Drop Zone Stunt Tower, where you can
experience a 22-story free fall. Just watching
this ride makes my stomach hurt. The Psycho
Mouse looks harmless, but my daughter and I
soon learned that this ride offers a thrilling
coaster ride where you feel you’re going
to fly off the track at every turn. Experience
the Vortex, a stand-up roller coaster, or The
Grizzly, an old-fashioned wooden roller coaster.
School-aged children will beg to stay longer
at Nickelodeon Central. Here they will enjoy
Sponge Bob’s Boatmobiles, The Wild
Thornberry’s Rain Maze, Dora’s
Dune Buggies (now this one is more my speed),
Rugrats Runaway Reptar Roller Coaster, and
The Wild Thornberry’s Treetop Lookout.
School-aged children love the stage show,
Slime Time Live.
The tiniest children will love KidZville.
Here your little ones can enjoy tame rides
such as the KidZville Airport, an airplane
which gently swings back and forth. Our favorite
ride in KidZville is the Junior Jump Club,
which is a bench seat that gently rises, then
bounces all the way down. The best thing about
KidZville is that although the rides are tame,
they are big enough for adults to accompany
their little ones comfortably.
Children can meet their favorite cartoon characters,
including Blue, Sponge Bob Square Pants, Little
Bill, Jimmy Neutron, Dora the Explorer, Cosmo
and Wanda from the Fairly Odd Parents, and
characters from Scooby Doo, The Flintstones,
Yogi Bear, and The Jetsons.
Paramount’s Great America also offers
rides for the entire family, such as the Logger’s
Run, a log ride that shoots down a waterfall,
resulting in a drenching of the screaming passengers.
Our family’s favorite ride is the Rip
Roaring Rapids, or as my 5-year-old son called
it, the Rip Roarin’ Rabbits. On this
ride, your family sits in a circular tube boat
which floats down a river complete with rapids.
For added laughs, spectators can put money
into high-powered water machines located next
to the ride and squirt the riders with water
as they float by. A favorite ride for families
is the Columbia Carousel. This elegant, colorful,
double-decker carousel is the first ride you
see as you enter the park.
In addition to rides for the whole family,
Great America offers stage shows, a 3-D show,
lots of food, and fair-type carnival games.
The brand new Crocodile Dundee's Boomerang
Bay is an Australian–inspired water
park which offers 11 water slides, a giant
water–powered playhouse, and a children's
splash area.
Some words of advice for families: Because
Paramount’s Great America is so popular,
it becomes very crowded during the summer,
especially on weekends. If you can’t
visit during the week, bring your patience
and be prepared to wait in long lines. If you
have children of different ages, I recommend
bringing a spouse or friend so one of you can
take the smaller children to one area while
the other takes the bigger children to a different
area. If the weather isn’t hot, I also
recommend saving the rides where you get wet
until you are ready to leave, or bring along
extra dry clothing in a waterproof bag. The
admission price includes almost all the rides
and attractions; however, bring extra money
for the pricey, but yummy food, carnival games,
and a couple of rides which cost extra money.
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| Bonfante
Gardens offers a variety
of vantage points for
which to view magnificent
gardens. Here guests
enjoy Rainbow Garden,
sponsored by Goldsmith
Seeds, on floating garden
baskets and "paddle
duck." |
Photo
Courtesy of Bonfante Gardens |
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The newer Paramount Park, nestled in the hills
of Gilroy, is Bonfante Gardens. It is definitely
worth visiting. If your children are preteens
or younger, your family will love this park.
Michael Bonfante was the owner of the successful
company, Nob Hill Foods. He sold the business
in order to pursue his 25-year dream of opening
a horticulturally-based theme park. He rescued
a group of forgotten formerly world-famous
trees from the Santa Cruz mountains and had
them transplanted in Gilroy, where Bonfante
Gardens is now located. These trees, known
as the Circus Trees, were grafted by Axel Erlandson
in the 1920s so their trunks took on unusual
shapes such as baskets, hearts, lightning bolts,
and rings – incredibly, 74 trees in all.
After his death, the trees also began to die.
Santa Cruz Architect Mark Primack led the fight
to keep some of them alive, even risking arrest
in order to go in to water and feed them. Fortunately,
Michael Bonfante heard about the Circus Trees
and purchased them. The surviving trees are
now thriving throughout Paramount’s Bonfante
Gardens.
Viewing these trees is reason enough to visit
Bonfante Gardens, but there is much more
to enjoy. Throughout the park, families can
enjoy breathtakingly lush gardens, rides,
attractions, and yummy food.
Many of the rides have been named after foods.
Children enjoy riding on the Artichoke Dip,
Strawberry Sundae, Banana Split, Apple and
Worm, Garlic Twirl, and Mushroom Swing.
The preteen children will enjoy the Quicksilver
Express, a thrilling mine-themed roller coaster.
The whole family can enjoy a leisurely train
ride around the park in Coyote & Redwood
Railroad, or a trip on the Sky Trail Monorail,
which even goes through the glass-enclosed
monarch garden. One very popular ride is the
South County Backroads. This ride consists
of vintage cars that children can drive. They
can’t steer off the track because the
track has a cement strip that the car straddles.
Riders can decide whether to get in line to
ride cars from the 1950s or the 1920s. Also
popular are the duck and swan paddle boats.
My children’s favorite attraction at
Bonfante Gardens is Splash and Squirt, where
water shoots up from holes in the ground. On
our next visit, we are going to be sure to
have bathing suits for the children, and we
are going to allow much more time to spend
in this area.
New for 2004 is Wild Wings, a 30-minute family-friendly
show featuring 20 different birds from around
the world.
If you visit Bonfante Gardens in late July,
you can also take in the world-famous, annual
Gilroy
Garlic Festival.
Our family was at Bonfante Gardens the entire
day and encountered only one wild adolescent.
When all the surrounding families ignored
him, he simply left. One of my many favorite
things about Bonfante Gardens is that the
lines are shorter than at the larger parks.
Even when there are lines, the surrounding
gardens provide lots of shade. We found that
the crowds thinned around four in the afternoon,
after the families with smaller children
had gone home.
If you want to experience beautiful scenery
and thrilling rides while avoiding the wilder
clientele of the larger theme parks, give
Bonfante Gardens a try.
I highly recommend Great America and Bonfante
Gardens, a fabulous pair of Paramount Parks.
Paramount’s
Great America and Bonfante
Gardens both have excellent
websites where you can find
out everything you need to
know to plan a visit, including
maps, ticket prices, special
offers, where to stay, directions,
special events, and helpful
tips. 