Unique South Jersey Theme Park Allows Adults To Dig In Really Big Sandbox
WEST BERLIN, NJ. (CBS) -- The summer might be over for the kids, but it's never too late to indulge your own 'inner child' with a once-in-a-lifetime experience at a unique theme-park for adults in Camden County, New Jersey.
Forklifts, dump trucks and bulldozers galore sit inside an empty, sandy lot in West Berlin just waiting to be played with.
"All the big stuff you see at various construction sites. The big excavators, the big bulldozers, the big wheel loaders," said Ilya Girlya, CEO of Diggerland XL. "It is real construction machinery. It's not an amusement carnival ride. It's the real deal, it's the real stuff."
At Diggerland XL, adults can maneuver construction equipment in what is basically a really big sand box.
"It's really unrestricted," Girlya said. "It's a one to one experience, where it's you and a trained employee."
Telling you how to drive, lift, dig, push and roll. Girlya says the concept spawned from his own experiences growing up on construction sites.
"My brother and I use to have equipment wars, where if we would get into a disagreement, our father used to say 'go out and beat each other up a bit,'" he said.
And it's the only one of its kind in the country.
"When you drive it, you sort of focus on it. You are boxed into the cab, and so it's a great stress reliever," Girlya said. "We get a lot of senior citizens that have come out, and frankly most of them have said it's a bucket list that they have always wanted to do."
