The Balboa Peninsula Fun Zone in Newport Beach isn’t our #1 pick for carnivalesque attractions. It might not even be in our top 5, honestly. But, it’s close to home and has the 3 requirements for an amusement park day trip: rides, sugar and Skeeball. Not to mention corndogs, ice cream, frozen bananas, iconic ‘balboa bars’, touristy trinket shops and Zoltar. And, also not to mention that it is a short 3 block walk to a long strip of sand, some salt water a pier and a wide paved walkway that stretches for 3 miles along the edge of the beach. It also happens to have a cool little car ferry that takes a maximum of 3 cars and floats you across the bay from the actual Balboa ‘island’ to the Balboa ‘peninsula’. (Yes, since the fun zone is technically on the peninsula, you can surely drive there and park in the parking lot behind the arcades. But, who wants to do that when you can ride a bike, walk, or drive your car directly onto a floating barge that overcharges you a one way fair for a 2 minute float). And despite it’s ‘cheap’ thrils and quirks and rundown arcade games, we absolutely love it. (True story, one of those arcade games was so broken, we put in a token and it was literally shooting out strings of tickets for nearly a minute and a half…kids scored 426 tickets from one token and no need to even play the game!). This has been our go-to getaway play zone since the kids were little. I have countless images with friends and family members crowded onto the ferry or riding a mechanical shark or scarfing down something, anything, sugary.
And the thing that gets me going every time, is the ride on that Big Eli #5 Ferris wheel. You hop on, amped up on ring-pops and pre-ride excitement, stretch that seatbelt across laps, drop that bar and away you go, slowly, backwards, for like 3 seconds. Then stop. Fill another cart or let someone off, then slowly backwards and stop. I have no clue how the operator knows who’s turn it is to get off and/or on or how many times anyone actually goes around. But, once everyone has emptied and been reloaded, it’s smooth sailing. It’s cables and cart rocking and the feel of gently rising through all of that to reach the top. You hit the crest of the wheel and feel that salty breeze run it’s fingers through your hair, looking right to the Pacific ocean, left to the bay dotted with boats and beach cottages.
And the sun warms your cheeks and in that moment, nothing else really seems to matter.
[The following gallery is a little snippet from a 17th birthday trip we did in 2019. Minus the behind the scenes shots of riding amok on beach cruisers through the alleys of Balboa island, this pretty much sums up the thrills]
The Boardwalk Series image “Vintage Ferris Wheel” was shot here at the Balboa Fun Zone in October 2013.
