If you grew up in the north-east in the 1980s and 1990s, the chances are you enjoyed a birthday day out at Ramboland in Aberdeen.
There was nothing more exciting as a child than finding an invitation to a party at Ramboland in your tote tray at primary school.
A popular spot for a special birthday or rainy day during the school holidays, it was the north-east’s original soft play centre.
Hark back to happy times in your childhood on a trip down memory lane with our photos of Ramboland over the years.
Opening in 1985, Ramboland was an adventure park at Codona’s amusement park at Aberdeen Beach.
Inspired by the jungle adventures of the 1980s film icon John Rambo – an American special forces soldier and guerilla fighter – the play area was decked out in vines and a tropical backdrop.
It wasn’t quite the jungle of Vietnam – but it did have a giant cut-out of an armed and topless Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo looming over the tunnel slide.
Designed to tire tots out, there was plenty to keep little ones amused as they enjoyed adventures of their own.
And it was important to work up an appetite with a post-play meal at Wimpy next door.
Ramboland was strictly an adult-free zone, in fact if you were unlucky enough to be taller than the cardboard man on the height chart outside, you wouldn’t get in.
You could play the ultimate game of tag, scaling walls and chasing each other up netting and across rope bridges before making a speedy escape by slide.
There were crash mats most of the time, but you weren’t a true Ramboland veteran if you didn’t get a friction burn or two.
You felt like a true adventurer waving down to the waiting adults below from the lofty heights of the wooden treetop-style walkway.
But despite its popularity, Ramboland closed down in 1992.
But a bit like Rambo, you can’t keep a good man down, and Ramboland reopened even bigger and better than before.
For the under-threes, there was the tiny tots soft play area, with stacking cubes, small climbing frames and slides.
There was a fun castle slide on a slightly gentler incline than the drop slide in the big kids’ section.
But for the bigger under-10s, it was all about wading through ball ponds, swinging from ropes and sweaty runs along rooftop walkways.
And of course, the pinnacle of any play session at Ramboland was the slightly terrifying Free Fall slide.
When you were only a few feet tall, the vertical chute really did feel like a mission worthy of Rambo.
If you didn’t position yourself correctly at the top, the force of gravity would force your head back into the plastic, dazed you’d land in a tangled heap with others at the bottom.
Samara Watt, above with friends, had the last ever birthday party at Ramboland in January 2013.
After 28 years, 2013 was Rambo’s last stand, and Ramboland closed for a £750,000 revamp and rebrand.
Reopening in March that year, the 1980s gun-toting one-man army Rambo was long gone and replaced with Smuggler’s Cove – a shipwreck-themed adventure playground.
See more like this:
