Germany’s ‘Disneyland for Dudes’

I wonder whether this is what James Brown had in mind when he sang, “It’s a man’s world.”

Wired has a short, funny piece on what it calls “Disneyland for Dudes,” an amusement park on a 17-acre farm outside Kassel, Germany, where men can go to do all the things that men apparently like to do: Ride ATVs and other powerful quads, operate backhoes and front-end loaders, and presumably yell real loud at one another and drink beer.

Well, I don’t know about the last two, but the park is real. It’s called Männerspielplatz — or “man’s playground” — and for about $300 you can spend a day behind a lot of manly, heavy machinery. The park’s slogan is “We fulfill men’s dream’s!” Sadly, there do not appear to be any scantily clad women shooting machine guns there, but other than that…

Writer Andrew Curry catches up briefly with the brain behind the park, a guy named Alexander Bammer (great name!). He tells Curry, “Most men these days don’t work on a construction site; they work at a desk. They dream about experiences like this.”

Bammer opened the park in 2004. Anyone out there know if there is a place like this in the States?


Click the pictures to learn about other unusual amusement parks, from R-Rated “Love Land,” to a park based on the works of Charles Dickens, from a park with a ride called “Dog Fart Switchback,” to a park that’s twice the size of Disneyland.