A Fun Day at the Vidampark

Trying to take advantage of the sunshine, we visited the Budapest Vidampark on Saturday. It is Budapest's only amusement park, and it is quite amusing in more ways than one. Inside the gates, it resembles a parking lot carnival.  The amusement park was built in the 1950's, and I think some of the rides have never been updated. In spite of some questionable safety issues, we all had a fun time.

There was a cute little kids area with little rides and a playground. 

Notice Chelsea's left hand over Cade's shoulder....the rides pretty much all lacked seat belts. This one bumped up and down and went in a circle pretty quickly. She was a good big sis and Cade didn't fall out!

The kid ferris wheel...here I was formulating my strategy on how to catch Cade if he decided to stand up.

He didn't like the rides that went in the dark..."All done! Scary!"

This was the most memorable ride of all...the Hullamvasut.  It is a giant wooden roller coaster built in the 1920's and is the oldest operating roller coaster in central Europe. 

There were NO seat belts or lap bars, and the seats had springs underneath for that extra bounce!

This man was the brake guy.  I later read that this roller coaster is called a side friction roller coaster and has nothing to keep the cars from flying off the track, thus the brakeman. Yikes!  

We took Chelsea on the ride and she LOVED it. I held onto her for dear life and prayed. There were some pretty decent sized drops, and without any restraining devices it was a bit scary! There is an overall theme of personal responsibility in Hungary, but this took it to a new level.  Thankfully, we all survived and had a really fun day.