Remlinger Farms Fun Park: Our Seattle-Area Mini Amusement Park

Hooray! Remlinger Farms Country Fair Fun Park is now open for the season.

For the uninitiated, Remlinger Farms started as a family farm with a produce stand more than 50 years ago; today, it includes a mini theme park with 15 rides. It’s located about an hour east of Seattle in the town of Carnation.

Remlinger also offers U-pick berries in the summer and a harvest festival in the fall, but we’ve never made it past the Fun Park. My kids love it.

We have been regulars for many years, and what’s great about Remlinger Farms is that it’s fun for kids of all ages. One ticket gets you in for all the rides you can handle.

Fun for kids of all ages

For tots, there is a digger sandbox, tractors to climb on, little canoes, a toddler-sized carousel and a Ferris wheel. As the kids get older, they graduate to the wrecking ball, big swing and baby roller coaster — it is just thrilling enough.

Now at 11, my soon-to-be middle schooler is actually closer in age to the staff. The friendly and helpful pedal car attendant was just 14! But nope, my kid definitely hasn’t aged out of Remlinger Farms. We stayed from open to close, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and finally headed out when a staff member called out, “One minute left!”

New for 2022 at Remlinger Farms County Fair Fun Park

We visited during opening weekend and here’s what we found new and different this year:

There’s a giant, highly Instagrammable swing at the entrance to the park.

New brewery and new bar! The bar just opened Mother’s Day weekend, serving $7 pints of house-made beers and $7 taster flights. You can see the brewery through big picture-glass windows. The entrance, which used to be cluttered with displays of jams and pies, now features spacious seating. (Don’t worry, they’ll still hit you in the face on the way out with racks of tempting stuffies.)

The carousel is covered by a new wooden pavilion. Perfect for escaping a spring shower or finding shade in the summer.

The hay maze — achoo! — is gone, replaced by artificial turf, a rock climbing wall, an enormous monster truck bouncy house and blow-up jump pad. Several parents also joined the fun, and this middle-aged mom can attest that running on the jump pad is very fun, like bouncing on the moon. (And it did not pop!)

The Tolt River train ride is still closed, and the larger Ferris wheel that was suited for non-toddlers is gone.

You can see a menagerie of animals throughout the park: bunnies, goats, sheep, geese, a peacock and a darling trio of alpacas. You used to buy pellets from gumball-type dispensers in the barn to feed the goats by hand. Now you buy $1 bags of food in the shop that you dump into a tube that funnels into the animals’ food bowls. Not as exciting, but probably more sanitary. 

The picnic pavilion is now a fully enclosed building with French doors.

Outside food isn’t allowed in the park; we packed a lunch and ate outside the gates. You can buy burgers and fries in the restaurant, where two model trains chug around on elevated tracks.

New prices

Bit of sticker shock when I went to buy our tickets: Prices are up this year, to $23.86 per person. For our family of four, the total came to $110.66 with two pony ride add-ons ($7 each). Remember the good ol’ days when you could find $12 tickets on Groupon, with unlimited pony rides? It’s a new era.

We’d visited Remlinger Farms during the middle of the pandemic, when COVID-19 theater was in full swing: timed entry, vats of hand sanitizer everywhere, masks required at all times, ride attendants wiping down every seat after every ride. There are just a few social distancing signs still hanging around. The ride attendant at the flying pumpkins kindly wiped down our seats — to save us from wet butts after a rain shower.

With rain in the forecast, we lucked out with a low-crowd day. It was fantastic. My kids had the best time, riding their favorite attractions to their hearts’ content.

The Fun Park is sure to be packed this summer, so here’s my parenting tip for you: Go early in the season, and hope for wet weather to keep everyone else away. Have fun!