A Kids Delight in Seaside Heights

What could be more exciting when you’re a little kid who has to go to bed at 7 to stay up way, way really late and go on all the rides you want while the ocean crashes just below? We took two little tykes and one little baby (who slept most of the time) to the Seaside Heights pier where they drank it all in with gusto.

Ride after ride, going around in circles, bumping around curves on mini-motorcycles, spinning in little blue huts, and at the end gorging on ice cream while the clock struck 10. The crashing symphony of this raucaus, tacky, cheesy amusement park put them in heaven.

Seaside Heights is quintessential Jersey shore; with the carny guy at the Casino Pier who promises to guess your weight, age or birthday (and spends more time deflecting people who want to hear the guess without paying the three bucks) ; and the Eastern Europeans who now man most of the rides on the pier. The girls had that surly, too-cool-t0-be-here look, refusing to crack a smile even as they loaded the joyous tykes onto the rides. Hey, they could be rich models some day. It reminded me of Long Beach Island but it felt more New York, less affluent, with more to do and smaller beach houses than the mini-mansions you see in towns like Loveladies.

What fascinated me and my fellow grown-ups most, though, was the Sky Scraper, a fantastically scary tower with two seats on each end. Two fearless souls would be strapped into these seats and the ride would whip them skyward end over end, spinning out there and screaming with delight/fear/absurdity. When one of the teenage girls alighted from the contraption, my sister Caroline and I had to ask…’what was it like?’ “It wasn’t scary,” she said, an obvious veteran of far scarier rides at bigger, more modern parks like Six Flags. I couldn’t stop watching that whizzing girder, and wondering what the hell it must be like being upside down way up there.

A night of fun, kid style, down the Jersey Shore.