Here, the pleasures come almost entirely from Mother Nature, who is kind enough to bestow this area with soft subtropical breezes, soothing waves on beautiful beaches, nesting sea turtles, and incredible sunrises and sunsets.
The cities of Cocoa Beach and Cocoa – two neighboring communities separated by the wide Banana River – have no shiny skyscrapers, no traffic-clogged roads, and no hustle and bustle. We may earn a commission from affiliate links ( ) It's still a great miniature golf course, and a mind-expanding alternative to those prefab, franchised, absolutely interchangeable courses with Ty-D-Bol blue waterfalls.Written by Steve Winston and Bryan Dearsley The next time you play mini-golf inside a volcano or a Mayan pyramid, thank Goofy Golf. Lee Koplin's outsider art vision of miniature golf has mostly failed to survive elsewhere, but his idea that miniature golf need not be miniature has thrived. Killer storms and Spring Break morons have thrown their worst at Goofy Golf it has survived with few visible scars. The attraction has remained nearly unchanged since 1959 except for periodic repaintings of its concrete behemoths in new combinations of garish colors and designs. In the turbulent ecosystem of beachfront amusements, Goofy Golf has made a quiet virtue of stability. That's where Lee lived with his family (which still owns Goofy Golf) until he died in 1988. Lee's sculptures are so eye-catching that most people don't notice the full-size house behind the brontosaurus.
But Lee was smart he built Goofy Golf on a patch of land directly opposite Panama City Beach's public pier, so his visitors would always have a view of the water. Now swimwear and T-shirt outlets vie for attention on either side, and towering condos recede to the horizon up and down the beachfront strip. In its early years, Goofy Golf's massive Sphinx and Tiki head were the tallest things around in Panama City Beach (You can see their skyscraper dominance in vintage Goofy Golf post cards that are still sold at its front desk). The GG1959 rocket proudly announces its age. You need faith to make par at the Goofy Golf church. Golfers have to hike through a subterranean black light cave between holes 7 and 8, skewing their vision with hot pink and green UV stalactites. The two 18-hole courses were built with mechanized hazards: a snapping alligator, a monkey with a ball-swatting tail, a dinosaur using another monkey as a yo-yo. Unlike his earlier creations, most of Lee's Goofy Golf artwork is interactive, challenging players to putt through or around or into them. Lee was also ahead of his time when it came to actually knocking a ball around a miniature golf course. Goofy Golf was the first sports attraction that was fun to look at even if nobody was playing the sport. Traveling from Egypt to China requires only a few putts at Goofy Golf. All of Goofy Golf's biggest characters have colored light bulbs for eyes, and they glow at night. You can crawl inside a Chinese dragon or stick your arm out the nose of a Easter Island Tiki head. There are ancient monuments and space age icons, with a few monsters and aliens tossed in. Lee advertised Goofy Golf as "A World of Magic." It definitely looks otherworldly, showcasing a menagerie of wildly painted, thematically discombobulated giant figures built to grab attention from passing cars. It was miniature golf, but it was also a crazy visionary art theme park. He built his masterpiece, Goofy Golf, in Florida it opened in the summer of 1959.
By the time the late 1950s arrived, Lee was ready to take miniature golf and blow it up to Hollywood blockbuster size. Lee began building dinosaurs and other odd creatures in the late 1940s, at his older brother's Pee Wee Golf in California. It was a great invention, but by today's standards it was dull. So-called "Tom Thumb" courses from the 1920s and '30s were little more than greens with maybe a gnome or a tiny windmill as an obstacle. In the beginning, miniature golf was miniature. Generations of sunburned children have posed for snapshots in the monkey's hand.