Happy Hollow Park & Zoo at 1300 Senter Road in San Jose completed a $600,000-plus restoration of its 1961 dragon-train ride in July 2025, then faced a swatting hoax on May 23, 2026, that emptied the park for a day. No arrests have been made.

The ride has been running at 1300 Senter Road, inside Kelley Park in San Jose, since Happy Hollow Park & Zoo opened in 1961: Danny the Dragon, a dragon-train ride built at the scale the park's actual visitors require. After nine months closed for a full overhaul, the Dragon came back on July 15, 2025. The project cost more than $600,000, funded jointly by the City of San Jose and the Happy Hollow Foundation, the nonprofit that operates alongside the city-owned park. The Foundation ran a dedicated campaign called "A Dream for Danny" to raise private contributions alongside the city's share — enough, combined, to pay for a ground-up restoration of a 64-year-old ride.

The ride's return was the park's main story for most of the year. The disruption came on May 23, 2026, when someone called in a bomb threat. San Jose police responded, evacuated the grounds, and searched the park. They found nothing. San Jose police confirmed the call was a swatting hoax — a false emergency report engineered to trigger a large police response — according to NBC Bay Area and KTVU. The park stayed closed for the remainder of that day and reopened the following morning. As of the latest reporting from Hoodline and KTVU, the investigation is still active and no arrests have been made.

Swatting at public venues has drawn increasing federal attention. The FBI has described it as a growing national problem that pulls emergency resources away from real incidents and can result in federal criminal charges, the Associated Press has reported. No federal investigation specific to the Happy Hollow call has been publicly announced.

Happy Hollow opened eleven years after Oakland's Children's Fairyland, which in 1950 set the Bay Area template for storybook-themed children's parks: small-scale, story-driven, built for families who live nearby rather than visitors making a destination trip. Pixieland Amusement Park in Concord and Children's Wonderland in Vallejo followed the same regional model. These parks run on sustained municipal investment and local fundraising — Danny the Dragon's nine-month closure and the $600,000 it took to restore it is an illustration of what keeping a 64-year-old ride operational actually costs.

The Dragon is running. The case from May remains open.