{"id":143013,"date":"2026-01-21T11:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T11:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/143013\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T11:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T11:34:11","slug":"oaklands-childrens-fairyland-inspired-disneyland-and-tickets-are-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/143013\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland’s Children’s Fairyland inspired Disneyland \u2014 and tickets are $19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since the beginning, guests at Children\u2019s Fairyland have been welcomed by a sculpture inspired by the nursery rhyme \u201cThere Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe,\u201d now a pink, oversized ankle boot with a crooked roof and eye-popping, candy-like buttons. Today, the shoe is raised on a concrete, plant-adorned platform, but it originally sat flat on the ground, forcing grown-ups to duck to enter the park. <\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The entrance to Children\u2019s Fairyland is a nod to \u201cThere Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Michaela Vatcheva \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

That was more than just a quirk of design. It was a mission statement. <\/p>\n

The 10-acre garden wonderland, nestled around Oakland\u2019s urban sanctuary of Lake Merritt, has maintained one core rule since it opened its gates on Sept. 2, 1950: \u201cNo child without an adult, and no adult without a child.\u201d For Fairyland aims to show the world through the eyes of a young\u2019un \u2014 a place filled with curiosity, but also perhaps a bit off-kilter, where one can walk into a whale and find a fishbowl, slide down a dragon and get lost in an \u201cAlice in Wonderland\u201d maze of cards. <\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Share via Close extra sharing options <\/p>\n

And yet, for more than 75 years now, Fairyland has had a grown-up sized influence. Fairyland is considered the first \u201cstorybook\u201d-style park in the country, launching a national fad. Legend has it that Walt Disney visited Fairyland while Disneyland was in the planning stages and was so taken with it that he poached some staff. Fairyland\u2019s \u201cmagic keys,\u201d which unlock audio tales throughout the park, were an innovation felt across numerous industries. And the park has been instrumental in the puppet space, home to what\u2019s said to be the oldest ongoing puppet-focused theater in the country. Those at L.A.\u2019s own long-running Bob Baker Marionette Theater today cite Fairyland as an inspiration.<\/p>\n

It is Fairyland\u2019s thesis that continues to feel revolutionary. And that\u2019s a belief that the way to understand, learn and grow is via the stories we tell one another, and those narratives need no fancy tech or digital accouterments. <\/p>\n

\"Kymberly <\/p>\n

Kymberly Miller, CEO of Children\u2019s Fairyland, says she\u2019s working on a plan for the park\u2019s next 75 years. <\/p>\n

(Michaela Vatcheva \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cFamilies want simplicity,\u201d says Kymberly Miller, Fairyland\u2019s CEO. \u201cThey want to come in and be like, \u2018I feel really safe here.\u2019 It\u2019s a contained space. It\u2019s big but it\u2019s small. Kids can run around and make up things to do with the canvas of Fairyland.\u201d<\/p>\n

To enter Fairyland, and it\u2019s estimated that about 150,000 people do each year, is to not just set foot into a handcrafted fantasyland but to also step back in time. It persists at a time theme parks have increasingly targeted a young market with a host of upscale tricks. Legoland, for instance, will this March open a new land in Lego Galaxy with a family roller coaster as its signature attraction. Also this year, the Universal Kids Resort is slated to open in Frisco, Texas. It\u2019s a smaller Universal Studios geared toward a younger audience but featuring cinematic brands such as \u201cShrek\u201d and \u201cJurassic World.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Children's <\/p>\n

Children\u2019s Fairyland from above. The park is situated around Oakland\u2019s Lake Merritt.<\/p>\n

(Michaela Vatcheva \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

The nonprofit Fairyland is downright quaint in comparison \u2014 tickets are under $20, with steeper discounts for Oakland residents. Surviving societal, technological and bureaucratic shifts, it\u2019s become the little park that could, its durability a statement of defiance in our fast-paced, divisive world. <\/p>\n

And its story begins once upon a time. <\/p>\n

\""Children's <\/p>\n

\u201cChildren\u2019s Fairyland\u201d was inspired by a kid-focused zoo in Detroit and has long featured animals for little ones to meet. <\/p>\n

(Children\u2019s Fairyland)<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s Fairyland was the vision of Arthur Navlet, a retired owner of Oakland\u2019s largest nursery. On a visit to the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit, Navlet and his wife were smitten by the park\u2019s children zoo, which, as detailed in the book \u201cCreating a Fairyland\u201d by Randal J. Metz, a former Fairyland art director who currently leads the park\u2019s puppet program, exhibited the animals amid fairy tale-like enclosures. Navlet had an idea for a fanciful park in Oakland, and took the concept to the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, a long-standing civic-focused group dedicated to preserving and sustaining Lakeside Park. <\/p>\n

With the organization, and soon the city, behind him, Navlet tapped painter and sculptor William Russell Everitt to create the Fairyland look. It wasn\u2019t always a smooth partnership. Everitt, for instance, created a model of an English cottage that Navlet thought was a bit too realistic. Everitt, writes Metz, took a baseball bat to the tiny sculpture and stormed out of the room. But he didn\u2019t quit the project, and future designs were full of oblong shapes, zig-zagging roofs and slanted walls, designs that were playful but also a nonsensical view of reality. <\/p>\n

And thus the Fairyland-style was established. Copy-cats soon followed around the country. In California alone, Fairyland helped inspire the likes of Fairytale Town in Sacramento and Fresno\u2019s Storyland. Fairyland, meanwhile, kept innovating. <\/p>\n

\"Children <\/p>\n

An audience watches \u201cKing Midas and the Golden Touch\u201d at the Storybook Puppet Theater at Children\u2019s Fairyland in Oakland. Children\u2019s Fairyland has had a grand influence on the puppet arts. <\/p>\n

(Michaela Vatcheva \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

\"Kids <\/p>\n

Kids take in a puppet show at Children\u2019s Fairyland. The park runs multiple shows per day.<\/p>\n

(Michaela Vatcheva\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey started adding puppetry and magic and all these things kids absolutely loved,\u201d says Metz. \u201cThat started here at Fairyland. There was no other place that was doing that at the moment. After Fairyland opened in 1950, Life magazine did a big full-color spread, and then all over the United States people wanted to build Fairylands.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Fairyland started a national trend, perhaps the most famous person to visit the park was Disney, who, says Metz, arrived at Fairyland on Easter Sunday in 1954, a year before Disneyland opened in July 1955. While the Walt Disney Family Museum and other Disney historians say there is no official record of Disney visiting the park, local newspapers of the era documented his appearance and many, including Metz, take it as fact that Disney spent an afternoon at Fairyland. <\/p>\n

\"Willie <\/p>\n

Willie the Whale at Children\u2019s Fairyland, one of the park\u2019s most famous installations. <\/p>\n

(Michaela Vatcheva \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Metz writes in his book that Disney was particularly taken with Fairyland\u2019s mini post office, which allowed children to send letters straight from the park. Disneyland to this day has mailboxes in the park. Many draw a comparison to Fairyland\u2019s Willie the Whale and Disneyland\u2019s Monstro at the start of the Storybook Land Canal Boats, as both aim to swallow guests. The parks also share a love of garden-strewn pathways and an emphasis on breaking up environments with trees, mixing fantasy and nature to create a calming, safe-feeling environment. And Disney, of course, hired Fairyland\u2019s director Dorothy Manes to work on Disneyland. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe was one of the few women in administrative leadership,\u201d says Cindy Mediavilla, a retired lecturer from UCLA\u2019s department of information studies and author of the book, \u201cThe Women Who Made Early Disneyland.\u201d <\/p>\n

To Mediavilla, she is an overlooked Disneyland personality, working to set up tour school groups, help define children\u2019s activities and be an advocate for Disneyland\u2019s overly congenial hospitality. \u201cShe was credited with coming up with response to people who come up and say, \u2018We love Disneyland. Thank you so much,\u2019\u201d says Mediavilla. \u201cShe was credited with coming up with the phrase, \u2018It\u2019s been my pleasure.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

She also helped maintain Disney\u2019s direct line to Fairyland, as Disney in 1957 would once again poach from Fairyland, this time puppeteer Bob Mills to run Disneyland\u2019s budding marionette program. Fairyland\u2019s importance in the area of the puppet arts would be hard to overstate. Celebrities in the space, such as Frank Oz, apprenticed at Fairyland, and Metz continues to run multiple shows per day, both revivals and original creations. <\/p>\n

\"Burt, <\/p>\n

Burt, with master puppeteers Lewis Mahlmann and Frank Oz at Children\u2019s Fairyland. <\/p>\n

(Children\u2019s Fairyland)<\/p>\n

Metz\u2019s workshop is directly behind Fairyland\u2019s puppet stage, and it\u2019s a mini marionette museum, filled with books, pictures and, of course, puppets. Behind his desk hangs a Pinocchio puppet he made for the Walt Disney Co., and retired puppets from Highland Park\u2019s Bob Baker Marionette Theater can also be found in Metz\u2019s nook. It\u2019s a treasure trove, as intermixed with Fairyland\u2019s puppets will be those from Walt Disney World\u2019s Epcot, such as a fiery red Pantalone from the theme park\u2019s Italy pavilion. <\/p>\n

\u201cChildren\u2019s Fairyland, for a lot of puppet theaters, including Bob Baker Marionette Theater, is really the one that we look to,\u201d says Winona Bechtle, Bob Baker\u2019s director of partnerships. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you build out a space and experience around a puppet show?\u201d Bechtle continues. \u201cOf course, they\u2019re different than us, as they have the infrastructure of the amusement park around them, but it\u2019s a full-scale immersive experience that takes you beyond a small stage in a church or a community theater. When you\u2019re at Fairyland, there\u2019s a pomp and circumstance to entering the park, approaching the theater and taking a seat. Us, as puppeteers at Bob Baker Marionette Theater, continue to remain inspired by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Randal <\/p>\n

Randal J. Metz, director of the puppet program at Children\u2019s Fairyland. It\u2019s \u201ckiddie tech,\u201d says Metz, when asked about the power of Children\u2019s Fairyland. <\/p>\n

Not all of Fairyland\u2019s innovations stuck. In its early days, the park hoped to establish a \u201cpet lending library,\u201d and briefly advertised that guests could borrow rats, guinea pigs, lizards, snakes, foxes and more for a two-week period. It\u2019s safe to say it didn\u2019t get off the ground, although Fairyland today does house donkeys, goats, chickens and bearded dragons, among other animals, for children to meet. <\/p>\n

And yet Fairyland\u2019s magic keys, introduced in 1958, would inspire not just other parks but museums and zoos around the country. The conceit sounds simple today: Kids are given a small plastic key, for which they insert in a box near an installation and then are regaled with music and a short nursery rhyme or folktale. It was the brainchild of Bay Area television host Bruce Sedley, who also fashioned himself as an amateur inventor. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the icon of Fairyland,\u201d says artist Jeff Hull, an Oakland native who once acted at Fairyland as a child performer and has created numerous immersive art projects, including \u201cThe Cort\u00e8ge\u201d <\/a>last fall in L.A. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou put the magic key in these boxes that look like storybooks and now you\u2019re hearing an audio track that corresponds to an installation? That in itself is immersive art,\u201d says Hull. \u201cThat\u2019s storytelling. That\u2019s an installation as performance. That\u2019s the recipe for what so many people have continued to do and expand on.\u201d<\/p>\n

To now walk among Fairyland is to feel as if an arm is being extended, an invitation to play, to be silly and to wonder. Children\u2019s Fairyland is full of hand-painted delights. Stroll a path and look down and spy some smiling sunflowers hidden in the bushes. There are fun house mirrors, a whimsical train, a mechanical Geppetto waving in a workshop and a cat ready to set sail atop the mast of a ship. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s even a mini chapel \u2014 yes, a chapel \u2014 complete with stained glass windows initially designed by children, for those who need a meditative break from running the grounds. A vintage Ferris wheel, themed to \u201cAnansi\u2019s Magic Web,\u201d is an opportunity to rediscover the folktale via the attraction\u2019s netting-like design.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A Ferris wheel inspired by \u201cAnansi\u2019s Magic Web\u201d at Children\u2019s Fairyland. <\/p>\n

(Michaela Vatcheva \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Maintenance is a large expense for the park, as most sets need to be repainted yearly due to a combination of environmental and hands-on wear, but the park is also vibrant and in conversation with nature. The striking red-and-bronze sculpture of the smiling Ching Lung the Happy Dragon, for instance, circles around and through a towering tree. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe very strongly in \u2018kiddie tech,\u2019\u201d says Metz. \u201cWe wanted everything to be hands-on. When children are excited about a set at Fairyland, we try to let them imagine they are in it. Henceforth Alice in Wonderland\u2019s tunnel, and going through the cards and pretending you\u2019re one of Alice\u2019s people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carissa Baker, a Los Angeles native who is now an assistant professor of theme park and attraction management at the University of Central Florida, says that Fairyland created its own stamp on children\u2019s architecture and fairy-tale imagery. \u201cNow, we look at the elaborate spaces of theme parks, and we have all these elaborate forms of fantasy environments,\u201d Baker says. \u201cBut I kind of see the seed of these fantasy environments in a place like Children\u2019s Fairyland.\u201d <\/p>\n

Miller has been overseeing Fairyland for about five years, and she talks of setting the tone for the park\u2019s next seven decades. First, she\u2019s been working on expanding the park\u2019s access. Those, for instance, who receive any sort of financial assistance can visit the park<\/a> for $5 per person, a program started in 2023 that now serves close to 20,000 people. Next up is building structures to house the park\u2019s eight-person maintenance team to better manage repairs and upkeep. <\/p>\n

\"Children <\/p>\n

Children play at Children\u2019s Fairyland.<\/p>\n

(Michaela Vatcheva \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Broadening Fairyland\u2019s story content is also a goal. Later this year, Fairyland will debut a puppet program inspired by Native American folklore as Metz and Miller seek to continue to diversify Fairyland\u2019s offerings. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s people whose stories are not being told in the park,\u201d says Miller. \u201cMost of the stories told here are Northern European in nature. So it\u2019s really my job to unpack some of that with staff and figure out how to create more access.\u201d<\/p>\n

And long-term, Miller would love to add some fresh fairy tale installations. That would require successful fundraising endeavors, but Miller stresses any future additions would be in line with what already exists, meaning a focus on imaginative play rather than \u201cdigital expression.\u201d <\/p>\n

Old fashioned, yet inventive and timeless. That\u2019s the Children\u2019s Fairyland way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the beginning, guests at Children\u2019s Fairyland have been welcomed by a sculpture inspired by the nursery rhyme…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[71717,24264,3409,2305,7363,3588,1341,71715,4080,71718,71716,143,145,144,1833,71719,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-143013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-arthur-navlet","9":"tag-book","10":"tag-child","11":"tag-children","12":"tag-country","13":"tag-disney","14":"tag-disneyland","15":"tag-fairyland","16":"tag-guest","17":"tag-magic-key","18":"tag-metz","19":"tag-oakland","20":"tag-oakland-headlines","21":"tag-oakland-news","22":"tag-park","23":"tag-puppet-space","24":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}