The Ferris wheel that watched my kids grow up is coming down for good

It's a melancholy morning for me today.

Just a random Tuesday at the end of September. Chilly, dark, rainy. I'm in sweats for the first time in recent memory. The air conditioning's off, which I suppose saves a little on the electric bill, small comfort. The windows are closed. These are the last few hours of summer. Fall starts tonight.

A chilly, rainy Tuesday morning, the last few hours of summer, got EJ thinking about Ocean City's Ferris wheel | photo by EJ

My mind keeps drifting to what a great summer this one was, and then further back, to how many great summers we've all had over the years. For hundreds of people, maybe millions over the decades, a good chunk of those memories point straight at Ocean City's Wonderland Pier.

Which is now closed, and, as of this week, literally falling apart.

What's actually happening

Eustace Mita, who bought the site in 2021 and plans to redevelop it into a luxury hotel, says the property's Ferris wheel can no longer be saved. Years of exposure to salt air have welded the bolts and major components in place. What was once part of his own redevelopment plans, keeping the wheel as a nostalgic centerpiece, now has to be cut apart with torches instead. It can't be reassembled anywhere, not on that site, not anywhere else.

The news comes right alongside another bad sign: a cinder block wall collapsed under a deck at the back of the site, and Ocean City had to issue a formal notice of unsafe structure.

Gillian's Wonderland Pier closed in 2024. The site was deemed an area "in need of rehabilitation" back in June, a step toward redevelopment that's already tangled up in legal challenges. Nobody's announced when the wheel actually comes down. Just that it will.

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AP

Why this one hits different for me

I grew up going there. I was a teenager there. I took first dates there. My wife and I spent plenty of pre-kids evenings there too.

But one memory in particular keeps surfacing this morning. Summer of 1993. Our daughter was barely 6 months old, no say in the matter at all. Our son was about two and a half, and he'd been staring up at that big wheel with pure anticipation the whole time we waited in line, back and forth, back and forth, watching it go around, stop, load more people, go around again.

We finally got on. The ride climbs a little at a time as it loads, and it got noticeably windier the higher we went. We stopped right at the top, and my son, in his best two-and-a-half-year-old voice, said, "I'm a wittle scad."

I don't have a single photo of that moment. I carry a camera in my pocket everywhere now, like all of us do. Back then, I didn't. I should have. But my mind's eye still has it, clear as anything, every time I think of Ocean City or see that wheel.

Which, apparently, might not be there much longer.

I understand progress

Icona's properties are genuinely first-class. My wife and I have stayed at a few of them ourselves, and I don't doubt whatever gets built there will be well done.

But knowing that wheel is coming down soon, I've got to say it the same way my son did at the top of it, 32 years ago.

I'm a wittle sad.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 show host ­­Eric Johnson only.