Model Nadia Forde at this year’s Winter Funderland
Christmas without Funderland?
Unthinkable.
Christina Mahon writes:
Winter Funderland is back with a bang for 2015 in RDS Simmonscourt! In it’s 42nd year, Winter Funderland has become a firm favourite in the Irish Festive Calendar for families and thrill seekers alike.
Over 9 acres of fun filled terrain, with Fossett’s Circus, a giant Ice Skating Rink, a Continental Christmas Crafts and Food Market, a Santa Clause Experience and lots of new thrill seeking attractions, Winter Funderland is not to be missed this year.
Joining all of the ‘old favourite’ attractions, Winter Funderland has added new rides like the Break Dance, the Frisbee and Wave Swinger, along with the Funderland Loop – Ireland’s only looping rollercoaster!
To celebrate the 2015 opening, Winter Funderland and Broadsheet have teamed up to give readers the chance to win two family passes to attend Winter Funderland this year. The family ticket is for 4 people (includes tickets to the circus, ice skating and all day unlimited on rides and attractions). To enter, just complete this sentence.
‘I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was_________________’
Lines MUST close at 5.10pm MIDNIGHT!
I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was pretty unmemorable
I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was puking up on the ghost train.
‘I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was looking forward to my mothers reasons for why were couldnt go this year….’
plus very many reasons
‘I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was madouvit on yokes’
I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was walking in the front door to the combined scent of popcorn, candyfloss & puke!
I don’t know.. I’ve never been!
I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was having to get my braces cut loose from my girlfirends after our first kiss on the Carousel over 30 years ago. If I win I’ll bookface her to see if she wants to relive the memory.
The last major dream I can recall involved me winning two SleepAngel pillows, but everyone knows dreams don’t come through… or do they?
I don’t think anyone gets the prizes from the competitions on BS… it’s probably in the small print that it’s just for the crack.
Not true, I have got the prizes I won (a t-shirt and crisps)
craic
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…
( I wrote this last year :) )
I’m in Galway all Christmas…. btw…
I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was in 2015 when I won a family ticket on Broadsheet.ie for Winter Funderland. Sure the wife & my daughters had an absolute blast. The best fun however was had by myself as a child from the past.
– Fergus the magic postman (from the future).
‘I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was watching a young kid at a stall hit the target with a crossbow. The chap running the stall took the crossbow to reload it, turned his back and bashed the already wonky crosshair sight further off centre. He gleefully handed it back to the kid who then proceeded to hit the bullseye once again and win the prize.’
I have to say my most memorable funderland experience was when i was 14 year old. I got on the ghost train with friends, boys and girls, and jumping off mid ride with my friend(girl) to innocently hide and frighten our friends. Only the ride stopped the lights came on and we were dragged out while the operator of the train went mad screaming “Iv had enough of you dirty little Bastards using this as a bedroom”. The Friends slagging us was fine, but it was turning towards my friends laughing as we were thrown out only to see my friends older brother looking less than pleased.
Finally finding parking, walking over to get in the ticket queue, realising that it was a couple hours long
‘I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was finding out what the piles of sawdust all over the place were for’. It’s a minefield in there.
My most memorable Funderland experience was killing myself laughing at this pair of ejiets who were trapped in a snog with each other as their braces got caught up in each others. All this excitement to the soundtrack of some young fella (about 7 or 8 I would say) screaming his lungs out.
Ah. Good times.
meta , i like it
I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was getting my first shift on the teacups only to end up puking not very long after. It was also my last shift for quite some time.
My most memorable Funderland experience was hanging upside down 100 feet in the air on some ominiously named ride with a bunch of spike haired goths in the 1980’s, shouting the words to the “Our Father” backwards much to the annoyance of everyone around me.
This is all I remember
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49aLQJ05tJI
My most memorable Funderland experience was in my dreams, I was walking up to go on the waltzers, and I was turned away for being in my pyjamas… I have never been you see… don’t cry for me Broadsheet readers… Just give me the tickets and make my year please?!!
I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was WHEN I WAS ON MUSHIES TRYING TO KEEP IT TOGETHER BUT ALL THE LIGHTS WERE MELTING AND I THOUGHT I WAS GONNA THROW UP
SOME WHACK OFF THEM. CANDY FLOSS DIDN’T HELP.
My most memorable time at Funderland was when I WAS ON ACID. IT WAS REALLY ALTON TOWERS BUT I HADN’T A CLUE. I GOT IN THE TEA-CUPS THING AND YERMAN PUT IT AT TEN TIMES THE NORMAL SPEED I DIDN’T KNOW THERE WAS CANDY FLOSS.
Winner
holy cr@p .. i was trying to think of a memory, and i remembered being lost and then a man asked was i ok, and he found my mam for me. im really angry at her now. im guna call up and give out to her. anything couldve happened. .. jesus
You’re not the first 15 cents to get lost.
My must memorable Funderland experience was back in 2002’s first days, handed the lad a fresh from the press tenner, got change from a fifty
Bate that lads
My most memorable Funderland experience was forcing my kid brother to go on a ride that he was scared pooless of. Him then doing a continuous projectile vomit over everybody around us, except funnily enough the two us. Learned a valuable life lesson that day, never force people to go on rides they don’t want to.
I have to say my most memorable funded land experience was getting sticky fingers….after I puked all over myself on the waltzers.
I was 6 (ye dirty feckers!!)
It’s a fact that these competitions are always won on the basis of length, detail and cloying sentimentality of response (the more emigration, dying parents and paddywhackery that can be worked in the better). Don’t expect to see the Broadsheet Prize for pithy copyrighting at the Kinsale awards.
Having said that, I’ll give it a go to allow them the opportunity to redeem themselves:
I have to say my most memorable Funderland experience was that time a few years back when that thing happened and those people were there.
David McSavage, is that you?
My most memorable moment was when someone fell out of the rollercoaster, i think they died.. RIP
When is the winner announced?
needs more Mani