UPDATE: Mr. Hooper's Emporium sign

Recently we looked at this photo which showed part of the old sign at Mr. Hooper's Emporium:

Image from Facebook

A Big Bird Bridge reader alerted me to a full shot of the sign over on the AP archives:

 Image from AP Images

This shows that the sign stuck around until at least 2005, here is what the sign looks like today:

Image from Google Street Views

Thanks again to Gill22 for sending me the link to the AP image. If you have any Sesame Place images, please share!

Mr. Hooper's Emporium sign

Here is picture that shows part of the old Mr. Hooper's Emporium sign:

 Image from Facebook

The image is undated, but based on the uniform of the Sesame Brass band member in the shot, it's likely from the late 1990s.

The sign shows Bert, Elmo, Grover, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch. It's likely Big Bird and Ernie are far left just out of the shot.

Image from Google Street View

The store is still open, now with a sign that features Ernie, Bert, Elmo, Oscar, Zoe and Grover.

Sesame Place 30 Great Years - Album 1

Over on the Sesame Place Facebook page there is an album of photos titled "Sesame Place 30 Great Years - Album 1".

All images property of the Sesame Place Facebook page

The description is:

The first of hopefully many albums of nostalgic photos of the park over the past 30 years

Sadly, the album has been up for a couple years and "Album 2" has yet to materialize.

I wanted to show the images here so we can look at them a little bigger (they are very small on Facebook) and so they can be archived here in case the album ever gets deleted from the Sesame Place page.

This attraction was called Herry's Hands Over Water.

 This shot shows Big Bird's Rambling River, but more interestingly shows how much empty space the park at this time. Look at all the grassy area!

 This shot shows the back of Sesame Neighborhood, likely from Big Bird's Rambling River! Notice the blue inner tubes stacked up on the right.

Here is a nice shot of the Sesame Brass band in front of the entrance to Big Bird Bridge. Look closely at the mouth and you can see the bridge was still open at this point.

 This photo shows a large crane raising the centerpiece of the Nets 'N Climbs into place.

 Another nice construction picture of the Nets 'N Climbs. This looks like a reverse angle of the previous picture.

Here is a nice picture where you can see kids jumping on Rubber Duckie Pond and a few people walking across Big Bird Bridge.

This tower was in the center of Big Bird Bridge and had the name Sesame Place Water Tower. It was a place where kids could pump water to the top of the tower and watch it flow down the water wheels.

The green tarp in the foreground was Twiddlebug Hop, a rope swing attraction.

Here kids are seen climbing through a giant plastic maze of geodesic shapes. This attraction was called Crystal Climb.
Notice the employee in the green and yellow polo shirt with red shorts.

This is a great shot of the old entrance looking towards the parking lot. Today this would be facing the "fire station" facade of Sesame Neighborhood.

This is Twiddlebug Hop, an attraction where kids would swing on a rope over a series of bumps.

Make sure and visit the Sesame Place Facebook page and click "like"!

Sesame Place Jingle: Hey Come and Play

Over the years Sesame Place has had several different jingles for TV and radio. One of the earliest ones featured the lyrics:

Hey come and play!

All the kids will say

They had  a lovely stay at Sesame Place

Learn something new

Play the whole time through

There's so much to see and do at Sesame Place

Sesame Place, we really gotta go

Sesame Place, it's the place to be

Sesame Place, we really gotta go

There's so much to do and so much to see

The lyrics varied (depending on how the music was being used) but the general theme was the same.

listen to ‘Sesame Place Jingle’ on Audioboo

Big Bird's Tie

At Sesame Place the Big Bird walk-around character wears a necktie. The purpose for this is because the performer's head is in Big Bird's neck and the performer looks out through mesh material in the tie.

 This is different than how Big Bird is operated on the TV series (Sesame Street performer Caroll Spinney looks at a small monitor inside the suit.)

 Image from MuppetWiki

Currently Big Bird wears a striped multicolored tie.

At some point he had a solid purple tie:

And at some point he had yellow spots on a purple tie:

I don't know if there were other variations.

Cheshire Cat

One of the "science attractions" in Sesame Studio was a mirror setup called "Cheshire Cat".

Image from YouTube

A 1981 St. Joseph News-Press article said the exhibit "splits vision with a vertical mirror."

The exhibit is long gone. The image above is from a Texas Sesame Place commercial, but most of the footage was clearly shot in Langhorne.
I assume the commercial was shot before the Texas park was finished and the Cheshire Cat featured was in Pennsylvania.

The name Cheshire Cat  refers to the character from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland who could appear and disappear at will.




Incidentally, Cookie Monster played "The Cheshire Cookie Cat" in a 2008 Sesame Street DVD:

Image from MuppetWiki

Construction Photos of Elmo's Cloud Chaser

Image from Articles.wn

I found these photos of the construction of Elmo's Cloud Chaser (which debuted in 2011) on Instagram.

All images from Sesame Place's Instagram page

Here we see the centerpiece of the attraction being brought in by crane.

It's interesting to see a tractor trailer in front of Sesame Neighborhood.

The centerpiece is put into place. This is a rotating swing ride, so this mechanism holds the swings and is jointed so it can rotate.

These are some of the decorative panels that are at the top of the ride, stacked up and ready to be installed.

These are wonderful pictures and I am glad Sesame Place shared them.