IT’S HARD TO imagine a time when the RDS lay empty over the Christmas period, with no ferris wheel, rollercoasters or drunk 15-year-old kids wasting their Christmas money on the sticky wall or the waltzers.
However, because Funderland only opened for the first time in the winter of 1975, that time once did exist. For some people, Funderland is an essential part of Christmas. There’s no better place to spend Stephen’s Day or any of those long, lazy days before New Year’s Eve. Look at Conor McGregor, he shut the place down for an evening so he could have Funderland to himself.
For others, it could not be less relevant in their lives. Maybe they went once or twice when they were kids. Maybe they never went because their mam told them some horror story about her friend’s cousin’s son’s classmate who went there and had his phone robbed.
When Funderland first opened nearly five decades ago, it was jam-packed (or at least it was in most of the RTÉ Archives footage from the 1970s and 1980s). It had a bunch of other attractions that have presumably been dropped because they’re considered fairly unethical nowadays (like dolphin and shark tanks).
Now that kids don’t care about anything except Fortnite and Snapchat, we’re wondering if anybody is still going to Funderland in 2018.
