The Wildwood tram car is back — and this time I’m riding it

I have a confession to make.

I have never ridden the Wildwood tram car. Not once. In all my years of going down to the boards, I have always been a walker. Sometimes a biker. The tram car has rolled past me hundreds of times over the decades and I have always been the guy on foot, stepping aside — or at least trying to.

About that.

Last summer I may have let "Watch the tram car please" become what radio people call audio wallpaper. You hear it so many times it stops registering. And there is a reasonable chance that on one particular evening on the Wildwood Boardwalk, the tram car and I had a closer encounter than either of us intended. I got bumped. The tram car did not apologize.

I deserved it.

The tram car is back

Just in time for Mother's Day weekend, the Boardwalk Special Improvement District has announced that the Sightseer Tram Car returns to the Wildwood Boardwalk on Saturday, May 9th. The iconic "Watch the Tram Car Please" announcement — the one I apparently stopped hearing — rides again.

This is the 78th season for the Sightseer Tram Cars, which have been rolling up and down the 2-mile Wildwood Boardwalk since 1949. The tram cars themselves actually have a longer history than that — they debuted at the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing Meadow when President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the event, and made their way to Wildwood a decade later. Seventy-eight seasons of carrying happy families past 38 blocks of shops, amusement piers, waterparks, bars and restaurants. That is a lot of boardwalk history rolling on those little yellow cars.

SEE ALSO: What's new on NJ boardwalks for summer 2026 — north to south 

How it works this season

Starting May 9th the tram operates Saturdays and Sundays through May 17th, beginning at noon. For Memorial Day weekend — Friday May 22nd through Monday May 25th — the tram runs starting at noon, closing shortly after Morey's Piers. Then beginning Thursday May 28th it runs seven days a week through Labor Day weekend, noon until Morey's Piers closes.

The single one-way fare is $5. If you want unlimited rides until 5pm on a single day, the $13 Hop On Hop Off Wristband is your move — sold on the tram cars themselves and at the Tram Car Ticket office on Cresse Avenue and the Tram Car Ticket Kiosk at 16th Avenue. Discount ticket books are also available at ticket booths on all three Morey's Piers.

My two promises for this summer

I am making them publicly so there is accountability.

Promise one: I will watch the tram car. Actually watch it. Not treat it as background noise. The tram car and I have already had one incident and I am not looking for a rematch.

Promise two: I am going to ride it. This is the summer. Seventy-eight years of Wildwood boardwalk history and I have never once sat in one of those yellow cars and let someone else do the navigating. That ends in 2026. If I am on the tram car, I will not have to watch it — and more importantly, it will not have to watch out for me.

Watch the tram car please. I finally mean it.