By Julia Train
With the final days of Gillian’s Wonderland Pier quickly approaching, Ocean City residents and visitors have been expressing their thoughts and feelings about the news of the closure.
Those thoughts range from indifferent, saying that it makes sense they close after years of financial hardship, to heartbreak.
Ocean City visitors and residents shared their favorite memories and sentiments regarding the park’s closure.
“I think there’s just so many people that are really just heartbroken over the closing,” said visitor Kimberly Buehler Sehlin.
Sehlin and her sister grew up going to Wonderland and when she got married to her husband, they brought their daughters to the park.
She’s a third-generation homeowner. Her grandparents bought a duplex back in the ’60s that later went to her parents. Now, Sehlin helps her mom rent it out during the summer.
“You still walk through there, and it’s like you just go back in time to when you were a kid again,” said Sehlin. “I just think that it holds so much nostalgia for people.”
Sehlin worries about what the closure will do for her summer rental property. She rents mainly to working-class families that can’t afford the new, bigger places.
“Driving over that bridge on Ninth Street and seeing that Ferris wheel is just such a big part of Ocean City. So for me, I just worry about how it’s going to affect my families that come back,” said Sehlin. “I just worry that people are not going to want to return if it doesn’t hold that family-friendly atmosphere anymore.”
Andrew Boylan has been going to Wonderland every summer since he was 2 years old in 1995.
When he was a kid, Boylan would visit Wonderland with his family, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents every summer during family reunions.
“That was my favorite place. It just seemed like it had its own thing going on,” said Boylan. “It felt like Disneyland in a small space; it had its own thing going on.”
Boylan didn’t just spend his childhood visiting the park, but he also has worked there for the past 10 years, starting as a ride operator and now as a maintenance person.
Marianne Brewer, an Ocean City resident for 10 years, visited Wonderland with her four sisters and two brothers in the ’60s and ’70s when they stayed at her paternal grandmother’s house on Brighton Place.
Photo Credit: Sarah Kasitz
Her two favorite rides are the merry-go-round and the tilt-a-whirl. She’s been going back to ride the merry-go-round as much as she can before the park’s closure.
“I can’t even explain how devastated I am. I’ve been going on that merry-go-round as much as possible,” said Brewer. “I’m just hoping that Mr. Mita really hears us and doesn’t knock it all down.”
Brewer is also a member of a private Facebook group called “Save Wonderland.” The group’s sole focus is to get signatures for the change.org petition and raise awareness so that a hotel isn’t put in the park’s place, which is a main concern on people’s minds.
Along with Brewer, Ocean City native Helen Struckmann is also a member.
Struckmann noticed families engaging with each other more than other places when she went. She witnessed parents not on their phones, watching their children on rides and being fully present.
“Wonderland has a certain magic to it and you could see that with the people that attend,” she said.
Her favorite memories include walking the Boardwalk after work at the Connoisseur Shop and stopping at Wonderland before going home at the end of the day.
“The carousel has always been a very, very important part of my life and one of the things I loved was the shooting gallery,” said Struckmann. “That little shooting gallery started my love for target shooting.”
Gillian’s Wonderland Pier is set to close after Columbus Day Weekend and the park’s fans are passionate about saving it from turning into a hotel. Anyone who wants to sign the petition can go to the “Save Wonderland” page on Facebook.
