Over at the intersection of La Cienega and Beverly here in Los Angeles, there used to be a little amusement park…and whenever we drove by it, I could never figure out exactly what it was called. All the signs were different. Maybe it was Beverly Park. Maybe it was Kiddyland or Kiddieland. It may have been Ponyland. I later learned that Ponyland, where tots could ride a live pony around a little track, was a separate, adjacent business. Everyone, however, seemed to think it was all one operation.
As amusement parks go, it was pretty standard. There was nothing there that you couldn't see or ride at a jillion other amusement parks and it was all for the very young — no thrill rides, nothing for teenagers. It is said Walt Disney visited the place in the years before Disneyland and it became the model for what he did not want his new amusement park to be.
The place seemed to thrive on two kinds of business. One was birthday parties and the other was divorced fathers who had custody of their kids and didn't know where else to take them. Since my parents never divorced, I only went there once — to a birthday party where I had a miserable time. They also made some bucks renting the place out for location shoots and it was in a lot of TV shows and movies, its film appearances including Three on a Couch with Jerry Lewis and A Guide for the Married Man with Walter Matthau and Robert Morse. In that one, Matthau and Morse take their kids there and discuss the joys of adultery while the toddlers toddle. Just the place. (You can see a few seconds of that footage in the trailer at this link.)
The video below is a collection of someone's home movies over several years. It says the park closed in 1974 and I'm not sure that's right. I remember taking a date to see the movie Equus at a matinee at the Writers Guild Theater and passing that corner on the way home. I remember because both of us, having just watched a film wherein horses were blinded, shuddered at the sight of Ponyland. That would have been in '77…but perhaps it was closed down then and they just hadn't started clearing the land for the new business which opened on that land in 1982. If you know L.A., you probably know what they built there but if you don't, I'll let you find out as the punch line to this little flashback…