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Portraits By Paula Bock

Seattle Center Fun Forest

After all these years, still making concessions to kids

Summer hours: Open daily at noon, weather permitting.

Dowdy? Irrelevant? Try telling that to the 7-year-old clutching a charmingly homely stuffed-animal prize awarded after playing balloon darts at Seattle Center's Fun Forest. The little amusement park is middle-aged, thank you, yet still alive and well — for the moment! — amidst swirling recommendations to renovate, remove, revamp. Nothing's been decided, the carnival's fate as up in the air as its Pirate Galleon, Ferris Wheel and Log Flume.

Fun Forest concession clerks Ashley Wheeler and Kitty Leung, both 18 and seniors at Ingraham High:

Q: What are people looking for when they come to play?

Kitty: Prizes! Even if the prizes are really ugly. But really, it's more about the winning than the prize.

Q: What's the big deal about popping a balloon with a dart?

Kitty: The majority of the excitement is from kids. They don't think they can do it, but then they do, and they're so proud. You root for them.

Ashley: You get really anxious, especially if they're cute kids. You really want them to win. You tell them how to hold the dart.

Q: Who comes here?

Ashley: The majority of our customers are under 10. Usually adults will get four darts for themselves, four for the kids. I remember one time, there was this little girl with her family. It was the bottles game, which is pretty tough. She threw the ball and just knocked one of them down and her family was yelling, "Yeah! Good job!" and rooting for her to try again. They're not exactly wasting their money, but spending their money even though she won't win. Money wasn't the object. Seeing their daughter happy was more worth it to them.

Q: Can you tell what people are like by how they play the carnival games?

Ashley: You can tell right away if it's a close family because aunties, uncles, grandma, they're all there. I do notice a lot of interracial families. Their kids are really cute.

Q: Did you come here as kids?

Both: Oh, yeah!

Ashley: Whenever my cousins Andrie and Mehruz would come from California, my grandmother would take us here and we'd go around and around on the rides, get our faces painted. Even when my cousins weren't here, me and my grandma would still stop by when we went to church at Sacred Heart.

Kitty: It seemed so much bigger then! So many rides! Wow! A top part and a bottom part! Now I walk around and think, "This is it?"