Sesame Place, Part 1

On Wednesday, Kyle and I took Peyton to an amusement park called Sesame Place. It's based on Sesame Street (duh!) and is located in Langhorne, PA, which is about 30 minutes north of Philadelphia. Peyton is really into Sesame Street right now, so we thought that he would enjoy going to this park. Plus, the park is geared towards kids 2-7 years old, so he was at the perfect age. The park is half rides and half water park.

We woke up at our normal time Wednesday morning and got on the road around 8:30. Peyton was singing and talking during the entire trip. I'm not joking - he really didn't shut up! He was singing "Elmo's World" and "Wheels on the Bus" over and over and over. We stopped twice on the way and got stuck in some traffic around Philly, because three lanes of I-95 needed to merge into one due to some road work. Other than that though, it was smooth sailing and we arrived at the park around 11:00.


I thought that we were walking down Sesame Street!

Earlier in the week, I made reservations for us to eat lunch with the characters. Lunch was at 12:30, so we decided to hold off on the water rides until after lunch. The first ride that we saw was the Flyin' Fish. Kyle decided to ride with Peyton. They had to wait in line for a good 15 minutes, and Peyton was scared the entire time. He didn't want to ride the ride at all. Once it was his turn though and he was seated in his Elmo fish, he loved it! As soon as it was over, he asked to ride it again, but we moved onto another ride.

Peyton saw these big slides next. I walked him up the stairs because there were a lot of them. I couldn't go down the slide, so I got Peyton into line and then went back down the stairs to meet him at the bottom. Kyle was waiting at the end of the slide to take pictures.

Of course, when he was finished, Peyton wanted to slide again. This time Kyle walked him up and I waited for him at the bottom. He could have just done that slide all day, but we told him that he could slide at home and that we should go ride a different ride.

Peyton and I rode the Peek-A-Bug, which is difficult to describe. It rocked back and forth and spun around in circles. Kyle said Peyton looked scared the entire time, but he didn't cry and I think he ended up liking it.

We had a few minutes left before lunch, so we decided to check out one more ride. All three of us rode Grover's World Twirl, which was a teacup-like ride. There were several rows of turn styles to corral the line, but the line was short, so people were only lined up in the first row. We (like good park patrons should) walked through all of the rows of the line, only to have a mother jump over the bars and tell her son to do the same to cut in front of us. I, of course, had to say something to her. I asked her if that was really what she wanted to teach her son - that cutting in line is ok. I was just so furious because it is a children's amusement park and she is teaching her child that doing things like that are ok. She got an attitude and told us that we could go ahead of her. I told her that we were going to do just that. I don't care if she was angry, she should follow the rules and teach her child to do the same! Once we finally got on the ride, we really enjoyed it.

Next, we rushed over to where lunch was being held, because the teacups took longer than we expected. There were about 50 four-person tables in the dining hall. Six characters - Bert, Ernie, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Elmo, and Zoe - were stationed around the room for pictures. We came upon Bert first. Kyle was hold Peyton, who was terrified of Bert. I gave Bert a hug and then he started playing with Peyton, who eventually came around and gave Bert a high five. After Bert, Peyton was fine with all of the characters.

Bert - Still a little unsure

Big Bird (was huge!)

Cookie Monster

Elmo

The lunch was a buffet, with Cesar salad, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, penne with alfredo sauce, penne with marinara sauce, sliced turkey, teriyaki chicken, chicken tenders, hot dogs, steamed vegetables, and more. We fixed our plates and sat down. Everyone else had drinks, which were brought to you by a waiter, however no one came to take our order. Finally we flagged a waitress down and asked her to bring our drinks. She took our order and went to get the drinks. Meanwhile our real waiter (who looked about 12 years old) finally came over to take our drink order. When we told him someone else was getting the drinks for us, he looked incredibly confused, stood there for another 30 seconds and then said, "Ok," and walked away. That kid was dopey.

While we were eating, the characters walked around to the tables. Peyton was cool with them and got excited each time one approached him.

Zoe

Kisses for Ernie

Each of the characters also sang a song and did a dance while we were eating lunch. It was quite entertaining, so much so that Peyton wasn't very interested in eating! They had cookies, cupcakes, and ice cream for dessert. Peyton enjoyed some ice cream. (He is my son...)

It was definitely worth the high cost of the lunch to have the time with the characters. In the park, the characters would only come out for a few minutes at a time and there would be a line of 20 kids waiting to meet them. We didn't have to wait in any lines to see the characters and were able to spend lots of one-on-one time with them.

I'll post about the rest of our day another time. I wanted to break it up into two posts because there are so many pictures!