[1] Happyland was established by William Nunley, a third-generation amusement park entrepreneur, who already operated facilities in Baldwin, in Queens (in Broad Channel and Rockaway Beach), and in Westchester County (in Yonkers), N.Y.
The new park would be larger than Nunley's other locations and, unlike its predecessors, was designed from the start for year-round operation, with a heated indoor ride area.
)[3] When Nunley announced plans for the new park, some colleagues in the amusement business questioned the wisdom of building an expensive facility at a site that seemed too far from population centers to be successful, calling the location "virtually deserted".
The park proved popular with young families who moved into surrounding communities such as Bethpage, Levittown, Massapequa, and Farmingdale, and attendance in the first years of operation surpassed expectations.
In a further departure from tradition, Happyland was not located near a railroad or trolley line but was set up to cater to the motoring public, with a parking lot that initially held 400 cars.
Along the walls were more than one hundred items of arcade equipment: small coin-operated rides, pinball machines, skee-ball games, and hand-cranked mutoscope-style movie viewers.
[14] Additional rides and attractions were added as the years passed, most notably a Wild Mouse-type roller coaster and a bumper car pavilion.