Wonderland Pier’s ‘Man & Dog’ Animatronics Show moves to Promenade Food Courts

Wonderland Pier’s popular animatronic ‘Man and Dog’ show will now be viewable again this summer at the Ocean City Promenade Food Courts.

Before the amusement park closed last year, an animatronic show featuring a musical performance by various animal characters, including a cage of monkeys, drew countless fans into the park. All components of the Man and Dog animatronic show were purchased the week following the amusement park’s closure from Jay Gillian by Andrew Boylan, a long time employee and fan of the show. 

“I’m just happy that we can get this back up and running again on the Ocean City boardwalk,” Boylan said. “We had families coming up in September last year that were just devastated, asking, ‘what’s going to happen to the show? Is it going away forever?’”

Giovanni Baratta, founder and owner of the Promenade Food Court, said he is happy to be hosting the show this summer, and excited to see what kind of attention it brings. 

Boylan, who worked at Wonderland Pier for 13 years until their closure, was always a big fan of the amusement park, and an even bigger fan of the Man and Dog show.

“I always loved going to Wonderland Pier, since I was two, especially back in the mid 90’s,” Boylan said. “This show was the number one reason why I kept coming back to Wonderland Pier.”

Boylan said that being such a fan on the Man and Dog show, working at Wonderland Pier and being able to operate the show was an incredible experience. Although he said he’s sad about Wonderland Pier’s closure, now owning the show is a dream come true. 

Boylan started a YouTube channel titled “Actors 317” alongside friends and fellow fans of the Man and Dog show, Dan McDermott, Ian McGill, Alex Corson, Anthony Giovenella and Sam Lombardo. Seven years ago they posted a video about the history of the show and rebuilding their favorite western themed version, titled “Man & Dog: Bringing Back the 90’s”. When the video amassed over 300,000 views, they realized they were far from the only fans of the show. They have continued to post videos about the animatronics since then, with many videos achieving over 100,000 views. 

“We brought this look back, and we made a video about it, and it exploded. People were coming into Wonderland and actually recognizing us from the videos, and we found out there’s a whole fan base community that loves this stuff.”

The animatronics were originally built and used by Chuck E. Cheese in the early 80’s, Boylan said, with totally different character styles and animations. They were then refurbished into new characters with a new show, and sold to Roy Gillian in the early 90s. Boylan said that over their three decades of use at Wonderland Pier, they went through a variety of costume and CD changes. 

Boylan said that it seems their videos have also gained a lot of attention from fans of the old Chuck E. Cheese animatronics, who may have been totally unfamiliar with Wonderland Pier beforehand.

While he was able to recover the original CD from the 90’s version of the show, Boylan said sourcing materials to refurbish their costumes was more of a challenge. He searched countless thrift stores looking for materials that closely match the characters’ 90’s outfits based on old footage, cutting and resewing pieces to fit the characters accordingly.

Preparation for the new scene has also been a labor intensive process, Boylan said. He’s used old tricks-of-the-trade that he learned during his time working at Wonderland Pier, like a special painting technique to make props appear to be wooden, weathered and aged to achieve the rustic western feel. 

The Man and Dog show will be open to the public during the Promenade Food Court’s business hours beginning next weekend.