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20
years
of making dreams come true
Children are all smiles as they ride Danny the
Dragon, the beloved dragon-shaped train ride at Happy Hollow Park
& Zoo in San Jose.
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Published Sunday, November 23,
2003, in the San Jose Mercury News
Dragon
train’s happy tale
By
Holly Hayes
when San Jose's Happy Hollow
Children's Park opened 42 years ago, the star of the show was Danny,
a smoke-belching, dragon-shaped train that steered itself around
the park by following a radio signal from a cable buried under its
track.
Pretty high-tech for 1961.
Fast-forward to 1984. At that point, Danny had toted around a generation
of visitors and was showing signs of being -- literally -- loved
to death. His battered fiberglass body needed repairs and painting;
his tongue was being held together with masking tape.
Readers of the '84 Holiday Wish Book stepped up to the challenge
of refurbishing the park's signature ride. Donations of $1,500 paid
for the work, and in 1985 a spiffed-up Danny wowed visitors to the
Senter Road attraction, which by then was called Happy Hollow Park
& Zoo.
Mike Rudd joined the park as a ride operator in 1978 and works
there still. He says Danny's charm is that all ages can enjoy the
ride.
``He's not like a roller coaster, where the little kids are afraid
to ride it,'' Rudd says.
Danny was built in 1960 by Arrow Development Co., a machine shop
started in Mountain View in the '40s by a group of World War II
veterans. Arrow also created some of the more memorable original
rides for Disneyland, including Dumbo, Autopia and the Matterhorn.
Danny still makes 25 to 35 trips a day through the 12-acre children's
theme park.
Today, nearly 20 years after Wish Book readers gave him his first
face-lift, Danny looks good as new once again thanks to yet another
recent refurbishing.
``It's fun to know that people who grew up in this area are now
bringing their children here,'' says Vanessa Rogier, who does public
relations for the park. ``They've never forgotten Danny.''
“Wish Book: Legacy of Giving”
Photography by Richard Koci Hernandez.
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