Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Panama City Goofy Golf and Magic World Skyway

We’re in Panama City Florida right now. There no ancient historical sites that I know in this area, it’s all about tourism. There’s the upside-down house (Wonderworks kids science center) and a building looking like a ship (Ripley’s), a bunch of water parks and rides in this area. Oh, and many of the stores have you walk through a large fake shark head or other creature as a photo op and to draw you into the store. 


The RV park we're visiting has an archeological site hidden within the woods. One end of a gondola lift ride is here, now under the trees and vines. We couldn’t find the other end, but we found some more cars/buckets in the bushes. I read online that this was Magic World Skyride by Von Roll in Switzerland (Type 101 GB2). Most were installed in the late 50’s and 60’s. They also built the Skyway in Cedar Point which I remember riding in the 70’s (I think that one still runs). This one was built in 1961 and destroyed in 1975 by a hurricane. There’s even a youtube of this ride from the 60’s. Pretty cool!  


We decided to visit Goofy Golf to play putt-putt. It appears to be one of the first “big” putt-putt golf courses with large creatures to pull in tourists. It’s a pretty good course with a dinosaur, an octopus, an alligator, and even a Tiki head that you can climb to the top with a good view of the beach.

The funny part is that the golf course was built in 19xx (I’m not telling!). It’s the same year I was born. Anyhow, my golf ball got stuck in the Buddha (not a sentence I would normally write). I had to have the guy working the place get my ball out. As we’re walking to the Buddha, he says “Well, you know the gal is getting pretty old and falling apart. I’m working on rebuilding this old thing.” I told him that I was born the same year so he was calling me old. He didn’t say much after that!

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