Why spend a weekend, a week, or even the whole two weeks going through all the trouble of vacationing on Prince Edward Island when you can get everything the Island has to offer in one exciting day, without having to leave the mainland?
Soon, for those too busy, or too poor, to afford a vacation to Canada’s smallest province, the Government of New Brunswick, in association with Theatre New Brunswick, Irving Entertainment (Oil), Inc., and Magnetic Hill Company, Inc. (Moncton), plans to offer a unique, entertaining and local alternative: pei Land®!
pei Land® is a high-concept entertainment theme park currently under proposal to the Federal Government, which, when getting the financial go-ahead, promises to celebrate all that is The Prince Edward Island Vacation Experience with all the pizazz and ingenuity that New Brunswick is famous for. pei Land® will increase New Brunswick’s tourism economy, and at the same time, by hiring chronically out-of-work artisans, will lessen the financial burdens of its Social Assistance Programs. With further assistance from the New Brunswick Tourism Bureau and the Canada Employment Center’s numerous and accessible Job Creation Programs, pei Land® will be staffed by professional* actors from Theatre New Brunswick. The staff will be trained as ‘Facsimile Islanders’ through extensive tutelage by anthropology students from UNB (Fredericton), who, as part of their Master’s theses, are already on the Island studying authentic Islanders in their natural habitat.
* professional, by definition, refers to a person who is being paid a fee or wage in exchange for a service. It does not necessarily reflect the talents or abilities of said person.
Along with the “quaint and friendly” Island-like staff, the park will feature numerous authentic ‘Island’ attractions for young and old, similar to those one would expect to experience while on a vacation to Canada’s smallest province. Pei Land® promises to be a truly family-fun oriented facility that guarantees one and all a truly simulated Prince Edward Island experience. And you get all this in one exciting, yet relaxing day at one incredibly low family-value admission price.
pei Land® is expected to be built on a 37 hectare parcel of land conveniently located just 48 kilometers West of Moncton’s famous Magnetic Hill Activity Park. The 37 hectares will be lovingly crafted and sculpted by New Brunswick eco-artist Guy DePressant into his artistic representation of the shape of Prince Edward Island. To ensure a true island experience, the grounds will be surrounded by a 100m wide salt-water mote. Due to Prince Edward Island’s strict Land Use and Erosion Prevention laws which forbid us to transport the actual famous red soil of the Island to the park, Guy DePressant, in league with the engineers at pei Land® plans to embed tons of iron shavings into good old brown New Brunswick earth, and, through a series of complicated oxidation techniques, expects to more-than-adequately simulate the popular Prince Edward Island red-hued soil. Failing that, we will simply paint the dirt red. Also, on the ‘shores’ of pei Land®, while not filled with the actual famous soft Prince Edward Island white beach sand – again, due to Prince Edward Island land use restrictions – our beaches will be, thanks to the ingenuity of M. DePressant, made up entirely of crushed and powdered white and brown dry rice.
By the time it gets the go-ahead, the owners of pei Land® promise that practically all the beautiful, natural aspects of Prince Edward Island will have been studied and diligently simulated in minute detail, to such an extent that even Prince Edward Islanders may not be able to tell the difference. But, of course, the Natural is only one, small aspect of Prince Edward Island, and pei Land®. There’s also the cultural and the man-made attractions.
Now, let’s get into some of the particulars of the attractions themselves. And, as on PEI, there are a lot of them. We’ll do this by describing our vision of a typical day at pei Land®.
After parking your bicycle, car, pick-up truck, camper, or even motorcycle in our spacious parking lot, a pleasant surprise awaits you as you discover that there is no admission price to enter pei Land®. Your fun-packed day immediately begins with the renting a four passenger mini-car (especially designed by a former automotive engineer at the now defunct Bricklin automotive plant), and choosing one of two different entry points to the park: The Caribou, or the Cape Tormentine Entrance, each uniquely different, each uniquely fun!
Caribou Entrance
If you choose the Caribou Entrance, your mini-car is escorted to the very first attraction at pei Land®. This attraction is a tourist participation game that you’ll be excited to play in order to enter pei Land® from Caribou. It is called the Ferry Wait Maze. In this game, all participants are instructed to park their mini-cars, one behind the other, row upon row, in accordance to the decisions of our experienced ‘ferry workers’. As you sit in your car and ‘wait’ for your turn to get on the mini-ferry that will actually take you to pei Land® you will be a-‘Mazed’ at how quickly the time will slip by.
While in the Ferry-Wait Maze, the fun really starts when you take time out to listen to conversations of some of the other ‘waiters’, as they ‘complain’ about the long wait. These ‘waiters’ won’t serve you dinner, but rather, humor. They are, in fact, actors – or rather, Islander Interpreters – so don’t be afraid to laugh at their hilarious tired-of-waiting antics. You can also have fun, while you ‘wait’, by getting out of your car and taking a moment to visit the Caribou Snack Shoppe, where it’s your last chance of the day to buy canned soda pop*; or the Caribou Gift Shoppe, where you can purchase Prince Edward Island-oriented souvenirs, made right here in New Brunswick.** A pei Land® souvenir – such as our unique Olde Fashioned Turn Of The Century Braided Red Hair Doll, a rubber lobster & miniature plastic lobster trap; an authentic life-size plastic lobster trap; plastic potatoes; stones painted to look like potatoes with googly eyes glued on them; or a jar of our sure-to-be-famous Simulated Red Dirt, or Powdered Beach Rice – will be sure to enthrall one and all. But don’t spend too much time (or money!) in the Caribou Gift Shoppe – make sure you keep your ears open for an announcement of the next mini-ferry’s disembarkation time – or else you could lose your place in the Ferry-Wait Maze lineup! What fun!!
*Now that canned soda is available on the real PEI, the Caribou Snack Shoppe will be “closed”, adding to the fun of your ‘wait’. **made in China, but sold in New Brunswick.
Once you finally get to the end of the Ferry-Wait Maze, you may think the fun of waiting has stopped, but of course you would be wrong. Every twenty minutes, a randomized number of park customers will be taken from the Ferry-Wait Maze, and be escorted, again by our trained staff of ex-Marine Atlantic Ferry Workers, to the Ferry Pre-Boarding Terminal, the final waiting stage before you actually get on board the mini-ferry. Here, Lady Luck plays her hand as you look eagerly to see which mini-ferry will take you to pei Land® island. Will you get the mini-ferry designed to resemble the shiny new modern ferry ‘Confederation’ with the huge door that will not close properly, or the rusty old mini-steamer ‘Prince Nova’ where you can still play Asteroids in the video arcade? Either way, the anticipation of getting on a mini-ferry builds as you are held, inexplicably, in the Ferry Pre-Boarding Terminal! And just to keep you on your toes, for extra excitement, we will, once or twice a day, cancel a mini-ferry crossing, totally unannounced! What could be more fun than waiting to get to pei Land® because of an ‘unscheduled’ mini-ferry cancellation!
So far, you’ve spent at least a fun-filled hour in your visit to pei Land® Theme Park, and you’ve not even reached pei Land® island itself. But finally, at last, you’ve made it onto the mini-ferry, for the exciting three minute ride across the 100m mote called ‘L’il Northumberland Strait’. While on the mini-ferry, the fun continues as you attempt to eat at the cafeteria style restaurant, but with the crossing being only a three minute ride, it’s a fun race to see who can get in the cafeteria-line quicker; or maybe you can see one of a handful of colorful pei Land® characters that are a fixture on all mini-ferry crossings, played by the pei Land® stable of TNB actors. Maybe you will sit next to Goober, the Tuber, a truck driver who rides the mini-ferry crossings. Goober is a tired truck driver who tries to make a living driving loads of potatoes to Toronto. When first arriving on the mini-ferry, you may find him asleep, but it doesn’t take much to wake him up. That’s when the G-rated expletives really start to fly from the grumpy Goober, and laughs abound. If you’re lucky, Goober the Tuber might even sing his eponymous song “Goober, the Tuber From the Vivid Crimson Soakened-Dirt. Before long, the mini-ferry ride is over and when you disembark you’ll have finally made it to pei Land® island, where you can immediately join with the other newly-arrived visitors in a Mini-Car Race to Li’l Charlottetown.
Cape Tormentine Entrance
Of course, if you’re just too excited to enjoy the time it takes for the hilarious mini-ferry ride to get to the island of pei Land®, you can choose the Cape Tormentine Entrance where you simply drive your specially designed Bricklin engineered four passenger mini-car on a minute long ride across the bridge we call ‘Li’l Fixed Link’, a miniature replica of the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island. Granted, the drive across the bridge is none too exciting, and the anticipation of getting to the island is lesser than that experienced by riding on the mini-ferry. But the bridge is quicker.
As an incentive to those choosing the Cape Tormentine Entrance, we’ve designed a to-scale model of the first sight you would see when coming off the real Confederation Bridge: the deserted ghost town of Borden-Carleton, Prince Edward Island. Whereas on Prince Edward Island, you’ll naturally choose to drive right past and not bother to stop in this community, we at pei Land® have devised a game that we think will challenge everyone to stop in this ‘one-dead-horse’ town.
Li’l Borden-Carelton is an example of one of pei Land®’s many challenging Tourist Trap Games. Watch as our trained actors put on sad faces to simulate the depressed, impoverished few who still live in the real Borden-Carelton. The object of pei Land®’s Tourist Trap Games is to see how long you can participate in them without it costing you Island-Bucks*. In Li’l Borden-Carelton, how long can you look at them before the pathetic, pleading stares of the ‘Welfare Residents of Li’l Borden-Carelton Players’ force you to stop and buy a trinket from them. Are you strong-willed enough to stop your mini-car, enter the town and walk among them? Be careful; you could get caught forever in this Tourist Trap. And you may want to save your money because there are several more ‘poverty-stricken communities’ to visit and ‘avoid’ all across pei Land®, such as Li’l Georgetown, Li’l Souris, and Li’l Everything West of Summerside.
*Island-Bucks are Loonies and Toonies.
Whether you’ve chosen the Caribou mini-ferry, or the Cape Tormentine Bridge Entrance to pei land®, you’ve finally made it! Now, the whole 37 hectare complex is at your beck and call, and what options do you have? Well, here’s just a few attractions that you will want to visit.
Pei Land® is divided into three counties, Li’l Prince, Li’l Queen’s, and Li’l King’s, and just like the real Island, almost all of our interesting or fun attractions are conveniently and centrally located in Li’l Queen’s. However, if you’re interested in sports for instance, you may want to take a detour, and visit Li’l Summerside, in Li’l Prince County. Here you can get your fill of sports. You can watch the continuously running softball tournament, played by teams of funny monkeys on two miniature fields; or you can view the remote-controlled mini-speedboat races in Li’l Summerside Harbour. And if your ‘wife’ isn’t looking, you could try and secure the companionship of one of Li’l Summerside’s Potato Boat Sex Workers*.
*Actors only. Do not actually traffic in sexual favours. Not even for tips.
Unless you’re a true adventurer, or have come to pei Land® for the simulated scenery, there’s no real sense in traveling any farther West than Li’l Summerside, or even bothering with Li’l King’s County, really. We’ll have purposefully installed no fun, exciting, man-made attractions in these areas in an effort to keep pei Land® as true to a real Prince Edward Island experience as we can. In truth, the vast majority of visitors to pei Land® will want to spend the entirety of their day visiting Li’l Queen’s County’s Li’l Cavendish and/or Li’l Charlottetown, and they will not be disappointed with either.
(The owners of the proposed pei Land® are not just interested making pei Land® an Attraction Mecca and Money Grab. We are aware that we could fill pei Land® with amusements and attractions from Li’l North Cape to Li’l East Point, but we’re dedicated in aiming for integrity and accuracy in our representation of Prince Edward Island.)
Li’l Cavendish
Li’l Cavendish is truly a land of awe and wonder. Here, your enjoyment of the natural simulated beauty of pei Land® can commingle perfectly with your enjoyment of the many fun attractions available. Our beautiful 100m stretch of powdered rice beach will mingle perfectly with the numerous family attractions found in the Li’l Cavendish attraction village. If you choose the fun of finding the rice beach too crowded, or the thrill of rather not paying the beach-admission price, why not wander up The Strip, a stretch of paved road, along which you can stop and play on the numerous mini-golf courses (we promise to have the cheapest mini-golf Green Fees in all of New Brunswick), or visit our all-encompassing attraction village.
Unlike the real Cavendish, where the attractions are spread over a wide area of land, all our Li’l Cavendish attractions are conveniently located in one micro-condensed amusement park that call ‘Admiral Arnold’s All-In-One Adventure Arcade and Outrageous Amusement Park’. Here, for one small admission price, you can see sights and attractions similar in nature to those you would find on a visit to the most popular section of the North Shore of Prince Edward Island: a model replica of a Wright Brothers Aeroplane; to-scale fiberglass reproductions of all seven of the Wonders of the World, including one of the ancient wonders- the Hanging Garden of Babylon; The pei Land® Souvenir T-Shirt Shoppe (we guarantee a fully stocked assortment of T-Shirts of all the teams in the NBA); Wrigley’s Believe It Or Don’t Believe It Museum of Freaks and Oddities and Gum Emporium; Wayne Rostad’s House of Cards and Celebrity Autographs, where you can see replicas of cards of thanks that Wayne has received from people featured on his CBC Television program ‘On The Road Again’, and such famous-person signatures as Bruno Gerussi’s and Wayne Rostad’s; The pei Land® Blue Box Recycling Depot Shoppe, where you can purchase your very own blue box with the pei Land® logo written on it; BOYD’S! School of Cosmetology, where you can get an affordable perm or hairstyle by an actual hair care trainee; or The Cradled On The Waves Native Atlantic Canadian TeePee of Maritime Disasters Museum. This listing is, of course, a sampling. Whether you prefer tacky or tasteful, natural attractions or amusement attractions, you’ll find it all in Li’l Cavendish.
Li’l Charlottetown
In Li’l Charlottetown, the first thing you’ll want to do is go to The Big Concrete Box to watch a play. The Big Concrete Box, built in the same design as The Confederation Centre on Prince Edward Island, will be a forty seat theatre. Due to licensing restrictions, The Big Concrete Box Players will be unable to perform ‘Anne of Green Gables’, or any Lucy Maud Montgomery work, but we feel we’ve come up with something better: New Brunswick playwright Jacques Tobin’s musical-comedy, ‘Aulac A Family’, about a lonely orphan who travels throughout the Maritimes with a circus, and ends up finding true love, friendship and happiness at the Irving Big Stop in Aulac.
The Big Concrete Box Players will also present a Young Company performance three times daily, outside in The Hot Concrete Hole, called ‘Spirit of Prince Edward Island’, celebrating the history and people that helped make Prince Edward Island what it is today. Here you can learn, through moving songs and touching dance numbers, about such Islanders as Hugh McFarlane, who owned the first automobile on P.E.I., and who started an automobile dealership, McFarlane Motors, in 1934, which is still in business today; Adele Gauthier, who lost two sons in World War One; or, Charlie Murphy, the successful Island businessman and entrepreneur, just to name a few.
In The Big Concrete Box Photo & Art Gallery, a permanent photo display entitled, ‘Islanders Away: Islanders Who Left The Island In An Attempt To Make Their Fortune Or Keep Their Sanity’, will celebrate those rogue, brave souls who went ‘off Island’ to try and survive, or even prosper. The gritty photos in the “Alberta Oil Fields” section are particularly moving, as are the historic photos in the section called “Up To Boston”. Perhaps most moving, however, may be the flamboyant photos of those Islanders now living in Toronto and/or Vancouver’s Gay Communities, in the section called “Islanders Out and About!”.
Of course, there’s more to Li’l Charlottetown than The Big Concrete Box. There’s also restaurants. What trip to Prince Edward Island, and likewise pei Land®, would be complete without a taste of lobster and potatoes? You can get them all at pei Land®’s McDonald’s Restaurants, where the McLobster Sandwich is always on menu and fresh-frozen, as are the famous shoestring french fried potatoes, grown right here in New Brunswick.
Before your day in Li’l Charlottetown ends, you’ll have to check out Li’l Province House. This building, a miniature replica of the actual ‘Birthplace of Confederation’ in the real Charlottetown, will most likely be a popular stop for the younger tourists, as they will be able to listen to a pre-taped history lesson describing how the exciting origins of our great country almost happened in Charlottetown. Not only will your vacation to pei Land® be fun, it also promises to be educational. That’s a promise, kids!
Finally, night falls on your visit to pei Land® and, naturally, you’re tired from the fun you’ve had. Before you leave your memorable vacation behind, however, there’s still one more pei Land® attraction you must see: pei Land®’s Nightlife! Now is your chance to go to one of the many liquor stores installed within pei Land® and buy some warm bottles of beer, drink them down in your mini-car before heading off to the Ye Olde Li’l Tradewinds discotheque in Li’l Charlottetown, where you can hear the best of last year’s dance hits, mixed professionally with Creedance Clearwater Revival songs and John Denver’s ‘Thank God I’m A Country Boy’. If you stay long enough at the discotheque, you’ll be rewarded with the witnessing of a fight or two. But don’t worry, these fighters are more than likely our trained actors ‘stage fighting’. Just make sure you don’t make mention of anyone’s “Tignish Teeth”, otherwise you may find yourself embroiled within a wild brawl yourself. After all, the motto of Li’l Tradewinds is “Where There Are No Strangers, Just Friends You Haven’t Beat Up Yet”.
What a full-day of fun you’ll have had! Now all that is left is to leave pei Land® via the bridge and get back to your own car. Just be ready to have your $47.50 Exit Fee ready. Just consider it your Admission to the rest of the world!
Whether you come for the beauty or for the fun, you’ll not be disappointed with your time on pei Land®. Vacationing on ‘the Island’ will have never been easier. Yes, soon Prince Edward Island will seem closer to the rest of the world than ever before- approximately 160 km closer – thanks to pei Land®.
To ensure that pei Land® gets the go ahead from the federal government, we’re asking you to write a letter of support to your local MP and/or MLA.
The Annekenstein Monster 