OAKLAND — It is typical to see kids running around at Children’s Fairyland, the longstanding attraction at the city’s Lake Merritt, on a weekday afternoon. But instead, on Friday, a dedicated staff of adults were the ones scurrying around the amusement park.

Kymberly Miller, the park’s executive director since 2019, had a bowl of steel-cut oats with blueberries waiting for her — fuel to put the finishing touches on a milestone event just days away.

A parade to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Children’s Fairyland is planned for Labor Day on Monday, with the festivities starting at 19th Street BART Station and ending at the iconic destination at Grand and Bellevue avenues.

A number of new displays will await the kids attending with accompanying adults, including circus acts, a live performance by DJ Lance Rock from Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr. network and the park’s first-ever bilingual puppet show, Tío Conejo’s Big Wish.

The whimsical park’s anniversary, a testament to Oakland’s cultural flavor and community investment, is also simply a “flex,” as Miller puts it.

“The reason I think Fairyland endures is that it’s got this through line that appeals to everyone,” she explained. “The minute you walk through the gates, you feel the simplicity of entering a different universe, leaving behind whatever world you had on your shoulders.”

“Everything is built in a child-sized point of view,” Miller continued. “As an adult, you’re following your little person around as their imagination grows and changes with these storybook themes.”

The sensory experience of being a child, those first interactions with the physical world, is often what Fairyland’s ardent fans bring up when they reflect on their relationship to the park.

It stands out in a world that increasingly has become digitized, where even a McDonald’s in Tennessee went viral because its play place had no slides or ball pits, but rather two chairs facing tablet screens mounted on a wall.

The estimated 220,000 visitors at the Oakland park each year has counted City Councilmember Carroll Fife, who would bring her home-schooled kids there on Fridays. Fife recalled how they moved through “open spaces where their imaginations would go wild.”

As the councilmember who represents the 10-acre park, Fife knows first-hand Fairyland’s challenges — years of deferred maintenance on the nonprofit’s weathered facilities. It could use an improved front gate, seating for people with disabilities and new piping.

Surviving another 75 years will require completion of a long-term sustainability plan currently in the works, said Karen Boyd, a member of the park’s board of directors.

“What Fairyland needs most is a community who believes in its magic,” Boyd said of the outdoor park whose lawns require regular maintenance.

Longtime park enthusiasts are quick to run off classic tidbits of the park’s legacy, recalling how its rides and retellings of Northern European fairytales helped inspire Walt Disney as he explored creating his own amusement park.

Or how, Frank Oz, the voice-acting legend of Sesame Street and Star Wars, got his start as an apprentice puppeteer at Fairyland during his teenage years.

Over the decades, the park has evolved to feature programming that appealed to Oakland’s diverse population, including a Cinderella-like tale from Vietnam, titled “The Story of Tấm and Cám,” and a Jewish folktale, “It Could Always Be Worse.”

Fairyland struggled to get through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, benefiting from community donations and a “celebrity story time” event led by East Bay native artists Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal.

Kids across Oakland have forged a special relationship with the park, which, as history goes, charged as little as 9 cents for a ticket when it opened in 1950.

“Those puppet shows resonated with me,” said Terry Butler, a hip-hop producer who grew up in East Oakland and now works with children, going by the stage name “Mr. Community”.

“They would talk about what they were going through in life,” Butler said, “and how the puppets were helping each other out. It was just a lot of inspiration — I’d never seen anything like that, coming from the hood.”

Today, Fairyland ticket prices are $19 for adults and $17 for minors, though families presenting some evidence that they receive government assistance can be admitted for just $5 and placed on a track toward a full membership.

The service, called Fairyland for All, has been underwritten in part by a corporate sponsor, the Pacific Gas and Electric Co., whose headquarters are nearby on Lakeside Drive. It has served 18,000 people this year, Boyd said.

If Fairyland’s storybook feeling evolves, it won’t inch closer to digital entertainment.

Miller, the park’s executive director, wants to pioneer social-emotional learning that will prepare children thoughtfully for the outside world.

The daughter of a naval aviator who moved her family around, Miller first came to Oakland as a Mills College student, where she had never been around so many other Black people and others of color.

“It felt like I was part of something special,” she said.

For 75 years, Fairyland has made countless children feel the same — a responsibility that the park’s director takes seriously.

“Nurturing a child’s imagination?” she said. “We’re going to need that more than ever.”

Visitors board a boat with a disco ball inside as they attend the Fairy Winterland event at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, Dec. 30, 2021. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)