Cabbage Patch Wonderland
For any doll lover, a trip to the original Cabbage Patch Kids Babyland General Hospital is a pilgrimage of sorts.
The place is in Cleveland, Georgia, about 80 miles outside of Atlanta. I passed through there several years ago on a daytrip with my family.
Even if you’re not a Cabbage Patch collector, or missed the various waves of the Cabbage Patch craze, the sheer imagination on display at Babyland General is amazing. It’s a wonderland of beautiful sights and sheer craziness!
There are, of course, the more ‘normal’ aspects of the place, like the adoption agency, the hospital wing with preemies in hospital beds, babies in cribs attended by ‘nurses’…those were fun and enjoyable.
But where things go absolutely insane is in the main room of the building, where a giant tree sprouts up from a cabbage page. There is a faux river, and a boat full of dolls (oops, I forgot – there’s a poster that says “‘Doll’ is a four-letter word! We call them BABIES”), and a treehouse…everywhere you look, there’s a fantastic (and I mean that in the ‘fantasy’ meaning of the word) scene with tons of…babies posed in buses, at picnic tables, on playgrounds, all of it framed by some beautiful foliage.
I could have stayed for hours. It was like an idealized childhood playground, except all of the kids had plastic heads and Xavier Roberts’ autograph on their heinies!
I’ve also included the final display that says goodbye as you leave: a light board of a cabbage patch kid still in the garden, with undulating lights sweeping slowly back and forth in a hypnotic pattern. I stood there looking at it for five minutes, I kid you not. The picture can’t even begin to do it justice.
If you ever find yourself anywhere near Atlanta, I highly recommend a trip to Babyland General in the nearby town of Cleveland. It’s a wondrous experience, and one that doll lovers will never forget!
