There’s Always Funderland

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hometownMembers of Irish boyband Hometown on the ‘Cyclone’ at Winter Funderland

A tradition almost as old as Father Christmas himself.

A must in the Irish festive calendar for the last 41 years, Winter Funderland returned to the RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 last Friday and will run until Sunday January 11.

Joanne writes:

Adding to the exhilarating Winter Funderland line-up, for the first time ever Fossetts Christmas Circus have joined  the entertainment alongside iSkate, Irelands premier ice skating rink. ALSO three brand new attractions, child friendly ‘Dumbo’, ‘Magic Circus’ and the thrilling ‘Ultra Buzz’.
Winter Funderland will of course also  feature thrilling rollercoasters and a giant ferris wheel alongside well known ‘white knuckle’ rides like ‘Extreme’, ‘Snowdrop’ and ‘Take Off’. With top of the range attractions catering for all ages ‘Bounceworld’, ‘The Fun Factory’ and the ‘Crazy Worm’ rollercoaster will be sure to capture the hearts and imagination of those younger family members.

Marvellous.

We have ONE (yes just the one) Winter Funderland family pass (for Four people)  – worth €83.50 – to giveaway.

To enter, Just complete this sentence.

When I think of Funderland i think of__________________________

Lines MUST close at 12.15 13.15

Winter Funderland

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60 thoughts on “There’s Always Funderland

  1. singingdetective

    When I think of Funderland I think of my stomach dropping and my food flying as the city whizzes by on the Drop Zone.

  2. Mikeyfex

    What I like about theme parks and these types of things in Ireland is that they don’t need to be lightning fast, turn-you-upside-down-and-inside-out, intricate, sophisticated pieces of machinery to give you the feeling that you could die at any moment.

    The irish roller coaster’s most thrilling part is the fact that it just takes you into the non-lethal-but-severely-injured zone in terms of the altitude and they turn on the incredibly realistic sound effects of screw threads twanging and pipe work settling. It’s a different, unique type of fear. Kudos to those guys. :)

  3. Gdo

    Who are cyclone and why is that guy in the air?

    Also, does the world really need another crap Irish boy band?

  4. All the good ones fly south for winter

    When I think of Funderland I think of the voice that says faster faster then I think of your Ma.

  5. euro88

    spewing shepard’s pie all along the side of my mate’s da’s volvo on the way home.

    my ride? the waltzers (is that what they were called? the patheticist thing ever)

  6. Mr T

    When I think of Funderland i think of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly’s Dad’s endless attempts to get it moved to the Northside

  7. zackersetu

    ….of those ads they ran on TV about it being the ‘funnest’ place on earth. As a child growing up in Kerry (yes all the way down in Kerry), I always used to think .. that is too far away… I’ll never see Funderland. (then tiny violins used to play and choirs sang something soft and sombre).

    …going for the x-factor sob story / adversity story route … is it working??

  8. Ciara Cummins

    When I think of Funderland I think of all the years that I spent there on Stephen’s Day with my dad and sisters. Absolute craic!

  9. Hank

    When I think of Funderland i think of being a young kid and seeing the guy who played Stephen Brennan in Glenroe as I returned from the toilets.
    Red in the face and trembling with excitement, I mustered the courage to blurt out “Hiya Stephen”.
    The fecker just gave me a dirty look and ignored me..

  10. Pale Blue Dot Cotton

    When I think of Funderland and see that it would cost €83.50 for a family to attend, I think of an overpriced racket with mediocre rides and wonder why they didn’t have the animal cruelty circus added sooner.

    1. smoothlikemurphys

      Incorrect – it costs €83.50 for four people to have unlimited goes on the rides for a four hour period.

  11. Pete Crenshaw

    When i think of funderland i think of the car journey home, all the windows rolled down with the lovely smell of popcorn scented sick coming from my clothes…..oh the memmories…

  12. Dubrugger

    When I think of Funderland i think of those big red candy soothers. They got stuck to everything and dripped red goo everywhere, your father would be cutting lumps of your sisters matted hair off it.
    I don’t think they had a flavor, they were just big red lumps of sugar. Perfect to induce a sugar fulled LSD-esque trips in young children at a fun fair.

  13. Freddy B

    When I think of Funderland I think of hours spent on the rides with my Mum and sister, while my Dad ‘minded the bags’ as he was too scared to go on the rides.

  14. ZeligIsJaded

    When I think of Funderland, I think €83.50? WTF. You could get 6 scum-burgers from the Xmas Market on Grafton St. for that

    1. All the good ones fly south for winter

      Yeah, it’s a fun fare not one of your Saturday night “dates” in the park

  15. Nessy

    When I think of Funderland i think of the feeling of dread at having to get two buses, one of which is my arch-nemesis, the #18. The long hour(s) wait for the probability of the bus not showing up and if it does it’ll go by as the driver’s attempts to see you and your arm flapping, bus pulling techniques are futile and in vain. The early morning rise will be for nothing as by the time you hail a bus, the queues would have formed without you. Sad and dishevelled, you find yourself on the bumper cars taking out your anger on your fellow Funderland guests. You are the reason people cannot bump each other

  16. serveandreturn

    When I think of Funderland I think of the taste of Quality Street and honey glazed ham in the same mouthful…it’s a necessary part of Christmas! Ho Ho Ho!

  17. Karen Treacy

    When I think of Funderland I think of an act of kindness by a Carnie – I went home with a huge Tweetie Bird – on being told that by St John’s Ambulance volunteers that as I was 8 weeks pregnant I couldn’t go on any decent rides. The then bump is now 15 & wants to go to Funderland with her own friends.

  18. the good helen

    When I think of Funderland i think of how my son (aged 4 and a half) would think all his christmas’s and birthdays have come at once. It wouldn’t be all about the big rides, but more about the tea cups and maybe winning a big soft cuddly toy and also about watching the bigger kids screaming their heads off in fear (he lovesssssssssssssss watching other people’s fear he does).

  19. Der

    When I think of Funderland I think of that time I’m weed myself on one of the rides… and got away with it. A truly magical place!

  20. Caroline

    When I think of Funderland I think of my mum bringing us there when I was 6. We stared slack-jawed at a juddering silver rocket and, after a brief conferral between siblings on our return home, decided that Santa was going to bring us “a spaceship” the next year. My mother’s queries were waved away: we would pool our Santa privileges – an act of solidarity the man could not quibble with – and the spaceship would be delivered to the back garden. Then, after early-morning goodbyes, we would set off together, alone. Journey time: indefinite. Destination: the stars.

  21. Elvira

    When I think of Funderland, I think of less stressful times, butterflies in my tummy, battling to the death in the bumper cars, ROLLERCOASTER!!!!!, breath frosty leaving in the freezing dark and wishing I could do it every day.

  22. Mort

    When I think of Funderland I remember a bit of vomiting, losing one of my Air Max and walking home with a plastic bag on my foot, smoking Johnny Blue, spending a fortune (£20) on the claw game trying to win me bird a Mogwai (Gizmo) Teddy, going up to groups of girls from other parts of the city to ask them to get off with me mate, running out of money and trying the get “lends” of me mates, naggins, 5 spots, bagsying the end off someones can of coke, scary older boys, useless public transport, non existent jacks, smoking more cigarettes, faster faster faster, queueing and skipping, the odd scrap, being really hungry and I guess the rides. Pretty much the best craic a teen could have in South Dublin.

  23. Disgrace

    When I think of Funderland, I think of Rice Pudding and Carrots – a special dish that I like to have on the morning of my yearly pilgrimage to the RDS.

  24. Selfie Sensation

    When I think of Funderland I think of the exotic German facial hair and hairstyles exhibited by the people who worked there and how it all blew my mind back in the early 90’s

  25. lolly

    When I think of Funderland I think of…..1997 when my mam let 11 year old me and some friends away for half and hour to take in all of the lights and loud music. One of my pals asked this freckled faced young pup to ‘meet’ me (aka shift) – after some (a lot of) convincing I went behind the waltzers with him for some privacy and as I leaned in for what was to be my first ever french kiss he laughed, pointed and shouted ‘not in a million years!’
    It’s been 17 years and gotten many the laugh when recalled at parties, but I feel I need to face the place that physiologically tormented me for the majority of my teens.

  26. Clampers Outside!

    When I think of Funderland i think of I think of the Ghost Train circa 1978.

    It was a small, short, yet deceptively tardis like track that went round what appeared to be a circular route, with an exit tunnel on the right and entrance tunnel on the left. Excited, at just being there, and not knowing what was ahead of me I boarded. I boarded the train. I boarded, the train of death.

    It jerked. It spluttered. It’s electric motor straining to pull the four or five brightly coloured Noddy like cars through the tunnel mouth uglified with a large jaw and teeth of some imagined beast within. Metal wheels scraped, and slipped and just before you think they’d seize the cars fell into a rolling gear as they lemminged there way into the mouth of doom. The track dipped into the darkness. Up to this point, I had been sitting comfortable, alone, in the front car with nothing to distract me from the sights ahead….

    To this day, I have no idea what I saw, none. The horrors that lay within were not for remembering, not for recalling, not for mentioning to another soul…. for it was on exit the experience became manifest in the face of this young lad, me, Clampers.

    Now standing, gripped to the shiny chrome handles of the car, white knuckles forward, mouth agape and eyes wider than a deer in headlights. The cars stopped. Kids disembarked, laughing. I stood motionless. A dead man’s grip as tight a seven year old could, my face drawn of colour. And then it started.
    Open mouthed, wide, wider, silent and still. I took a slow deep draw of breath, I screeeeeeamed! Maintaining a pitch that could have cut glass and most certainly caused Mammy Clampers instantly to snap from chuckles of delight to concerned fright! Distraught and upset, no amount of comforting or offerings of sweets, Cidona or floss could pacify the young Clampers, my young self. My young, innocent distraught self.

    I have never returned to Funderland, despite now living in Dublin nearly twenty years. I often wonder, is that same ghost train still there…. I guess I may never know.

    1. Spaghetti Hoop

      AGHHHHH…getting felt up in the Ghost Train!…had forgotten all about that horror of horrors…thanks a lot Clampers!!!! ;)

      1. Clampers Outside!

        Heh :)

        I groped Thelma Mansfields boobs… accidentally, ahem, when working on a ghost train in Leisureland Galway. I thought she was going to kill me at the end of the ride, but no, she said it was great craic and went around again with the kids :)

  27. Spaghetti Hoop

    When I think of Funderland I think of vomit and subsequent abstention from anything that moved. I would camp out at the hoop-la stall while my friends flung themselves around in the sky. Most times I would win cuddly toys but they weren’t much good and a bit of a pain to carry home on the 18 bus. Eventually I stopped going. Went to the fuppin’ races instead – far more craic and better prizes.

  28. David

    my mate breaking his wrist on the boxing machine, and then re-breaking it every time he had a drink for the next 6 months, as he kept smacking people across the head with his plaster cast.

  29. andyourpointiswhatexactly

    When I think of Funderland i think of nothing, as why would you ever bother leaving Cork to go up to Dublin when we had the Merries?

  30. JDC

    When I think of Funderland i think of all the mysterious piles of saw-dust all over the place. Just don’t stand on one.

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