Rewind (Part 1)

Time to rewind. I should have posted this a month ago, but August was a very busy month around here, thanks to Mother Nature. So, yeah, I'm now playing catch up with the blog.

Family Trip to Sesame Place

Summer isn't summer for Liam without a trip to..... you guessed it..... Sesame Place. We did the same as the past two years: racking up the points on our credit card and booking a room for one night at the hotel right across the street from the park. Liam seemed to be okay with the picture-taking, so this time around, I carried my little point-and-shoot camera inside a waterproof container.

Photo taken after their fifth ride on day one. Their expressions are priceless.

(Video of Liam and Daddy on day two)

Noteworthy: Liam and Daddy riding their one and only roller coaster a total of 14 times in two days (five times on day one and nine times on day two). After one of their last rides, we were curious about their video (there is a camera attached to each car), so we took a look at how it turned out. Liam looked like a fearless little pro. Towards the end, he acted like he was driving it. I'm afraid he will be one of those people that raises their hands when going down a roller coaster, which I could never do. Needless to say, we just had to buy the DVD. It's also up on you tube.

In case you didn't know, they have dry rides and wet rides. We usually do the dry rides first. Grover's Vapor Trail is right at the entrance, so we spent a good amount of time there. Then, we hit a few other rides before Liam and Daddy tackled the nets. Bill said the nets were quite the workout.

Can you see Liam and Daddy
getting splashed on in this video?

After the nets, we moved on to the water rides. Our faves still are: the lazy river, the family raft slide (not pictured here) and of course, the splash "castle".

 

Despite Liam's protest in wanting to continue enjoy the wet rides, we did manage to catch a show before having dinner with the characters.

He was chosen to dance in the parade (day one).

A trip to Disney World is out of our reach, so this is it for now. We hope next summer Daddy's schedule will allow us to venture out to other amusement parks within the tri-state area, but only if our wallet allows such an expense.

The "second happiest place on earth"

It has been said that "the happiest place on earth" is Disney World. I'd like to believe that it is our own home, thank you very much. (Well, we are holding off on the Disney trip until Liam is a little older. We want to wait and expose him to more Disney stuff little by little, so that it all makes sense to him when we do go. I suspect, it won't be for a few years.) So, what is "the second happiest place on earth"? That for many is debatable. We put it to a vote and have agreed, that for our little family, Sesame Place in Langhorne, PA might very well be "the second happiest place on earth" right now.

We had been there once before and loved it since we are such huge fans of Sesame Street. As you may recall, it rained for just about the entire two days we were there last year. Well, I am happy to report that this time, we had two, fun-filled "sunny days!" Hooray! Again, we were able to spend the two days (Thursday and Friday of last week) at Sesame Place and stay at a nearby hotel all with our credit card points! What did Liam think of the hotel room now that he's older? He suggested that we drive back home, because "this place doesn't have a kitchen." 

We took very little photos this time around since we decided that I would join in on the fun and do all the rides with the family. As I explained in the post before, we are trying to keep the incessant picture taking to a minimum. You tend to miss some of the fun in making memories when you are stuck behind the camera as opposed to being an active participant in the fun. Sure, we would love to capture it all in photos, but sometimes, it just isn't possible to take pictures and have fun at the same time. This is especially true while doing the water rides at Sesame Place.

We rented a locker for our towels and change of clothes, and we only took with us our 99-cent flip flops and our money in a little waterproof container that hung around our neck. The weather was very hot and humid, so we didn't mind walking around all sopping wet from one wet ride to the next. 

Liam experienced his very first roller coaster (this one called Grover's "Vapor Trail"). Much to our surprise, he loved it and asked to ride it again and again. I, on the other hand, didn't enjoy it much. I used to ride the roughest rides at Great Adventure when I was a teen, but I really don't enjoy the vertigo. (This just started happening after giving birth to Liam.) 

Liam rode on one water ride with daddy ("Sesame Streak", basically just a ride on a tube down a slide) and then we all went on another ride ("Sky Splash") where we all hopped on a raft and slid down splashing heavily at the end of the ride at the bottom. We really enjoyed riding on "Big Bird's Rambling River" (otherwise known as the "Lazy River") on inflatable tubes, the three of us, holding on to each other's tubes and letting the river take us along. At times we floated directly in through some water falls and sprinklers much to Liam's delight since I always happened to be the first one to float directly to it. 

Of course, we couldn't miss "The Count's Splash Castle", and we spent quite a bit of time there. Liam, an expert now*, at going down the slide, went several times down the easy yellow one first (half pipe, curved). Then, to our surprise he moved on to the green one that was partially enclosed. I was hesitant, but Liam, of course, loved it. When we all started to see our fingers and toes all prune-y, we decided to dry up. 

We then headed over to have a buffet dinner with the characters. At dinner, the characters went around to each table to say hello to the children. Here are a few fun pics we took at dinner:

Liam thought it was hilarious that Ernie was taking a sip of Liam's chocolate milk.

Here Liam is showing Ernie a little Ernie figurine that we picked up at the gift shop.

Cookie monster taking a sip of daddy's slushie...

...and then offering some to Liam. So cute!

Zoe also stopped at our table to say hi...

...but Liam's favorite moment was the one and only chance he got to be close to Elmo.

(Sorry about this picture, Elmo!)

After dinner, we went on a few dry rides and then bid farewell to Sesame Place. We may go back again before the summer is up, but just for the day. We missed out on some shows because of all the water activity. Little Liam wanted to be in the water all the time, and who could blame him with all the crazy hot weather we had those two days.

*Last year, Liam only went down the slides at the playground that went straight down. I thought it would be best for better control. Well, at Sesame Place last year, Daddy took him to the half pipe, curved, slide (the easy yellow one) on the "Count's Splash Castle". I thought he would sit Liam on his lap and slide down together. I couldn't see them go down, but when I saw Bill come down alone first, I panicked and started screaming. Then, I saw Liam come down and land at the bottom with his hair all pushed to one side of his head, coughing and coughing. I was so upset, but Liam, between coughs, kept saying, "Again! Again!". The rest of that summer was spent looking for the same kind of curvy slides at the playground so that he could practice. This year, he had no problem handling the slides at Sesame Place. Thank goodness.

"Chimica"

This word is music to our ears. It is Liam's made-up word for part of the Sesame Street song:
"Sunny days, chimica, oh sho' way..."

On August 12th and 13th, we drove to Sesame Place (located in Langhorne, PA). We wanted to surprise Liam, but it was impossible with all of his incessant inquiries as to where we were driving. "Church? Gym? Ocean (the beach)? Co' Moe (uncle Moe's)? Welita's house?" So, we finally told him we were going to Sesame Street. His reaction was not quite what we expected. He thought we were going to watch it on TV somewhere and he was not too pleased with the idea. He said, "No, go Welita's house" or in other words, he would much rather visit Abuelita. We laughed and assured him that we were actually going to visit Elmo, Big Bird and everybody. So, on the drive over, he kept asking us, what seemed like every five minutes, "go Sesame Street now?"

We resisted the urge to immediately drive right up to the theme park that looked SO inviting from the main road and instead drove directly to the hotel* and left our car parked there. There was a shuttle bus that took us for free right up to the theme park's entrance, so we didn't have to pay for parking at Sesame Place.

We finally got to Sesame Place with our previously purchased "Elmo Any Two-day Pass" and dinner tickets (for day one) in the hopes of spending two fun-filled "sunny days" days at this theme park. The weather prediction called for about 50% chance of showers. Well, we ended up having one and a half days of heavy downpours and drizzly rain. I know, bummer. (We did have a couple of hours of sun before the park closed on our second day there, and it made the whole place look SO wonderful, of course.) Liam on the other hand, did not seem the least bit bothered by the rain. The umbrellas and rain ponchos were nothing but a nuisance to him. You should have seen his face lit up with excitement as he saw, one by one throughout both days, all the life-sized characters he loves and knows so well.

We got to see the Elmo show complete with his goldfish friend named Dorothy and Mr. Noodle's nephew also called Mr. Noodle, in a set very much like the one we see everyday on the TV show.


We decided to do the dinner with Big Bird and friends. We pretty much knew that the meal itself would not be worth the money, but at least we had air conditioning and shelter from the drizzly rain.

The best part of that meal was the characters that approached each table for some one-on-one time with the children. They would also individually break out into song every so often during mealtime.

The highlight was really when Elmo sang and danced. He had everyone join him in a conga line. When that ended, there was no stopping Liam as he immediately took off running, as most children did, to dance with Elmo. We will never forget his little happy face and his non-stop laughter as he danced and reached over to touch him. He just kept yelling out, "awesome!" (--A word that he has picked up from the Church nursery leaders that are obviously from Utah. More recently, he has been coming home from Church on Sundays saying "time out!" Hmm...I wonder why?!)

Though my husband would vehemently deny it, he enjoyed the music from Abby Cadabby's show. (Check out the expression on the dude sitting next to my husband. He is either really into it or he's gob smacked that he had to sit through it.)

I rather enjoyed the Rock Around the Block Parade, or as my husband called it, "the rain parade". It was complete with floats and all the characters dancing around to the load music blaring from a spectacular sound system that could probably be heard well outside of the theme park itself. I thought it was cool how all the characters would go right up to the people sitting on the curb to shake hands or "high five" them.

There are "wet" and "dry" rides for practically all age groups. Though he enjoyed the few he was actually allowed to go on because of height and age restrictions, his hands down favorite one was the carousel. (So much so that just a few nights ago, he almost scared us half to death when he called out in his sleep, “Up, down, up, down”.) A full hour and a half later, Liam had to be removed from this ride kicking and screaming. (Honey, you’re the best! What a champ!)

Another one of Liam’s favorites was this old fire engine truck that was half sticking out of one of the buildings on Sesame Street, itself. How funny are the things that really interest a two-year old. Same here, Liam had to be removed kicking and screaming.

As far as the "wet" rides, I would have to say that the Count's Splash Castle is truly the crowd pleaser. It is huge, ornately decorated and full of stuff to do on there. You could easily spend a couple of hours on just this one attraction alone. At the top, there is an 8-foot bucket that tips over splashing everyone below with 1,000 gallons of water. Cool!

It was amazing to see in myself the urge to groove to all the silly music around me at Sesame Place. It is inexplicable, really. Maybe it's because I was a huge fan of the show when I was my son's age. If I were to play this music for my boy at home, I could probably only withstand five minutes before I would have to walk away from it. And yet there I was, grooving to it and dancing with my son.

Everyone was friendly, polite, and all the children were treated like royalty. Sesame Place is cute, lovable and was more fun than I had anticipated, despite the rain. We really made a concerted effort to refrain ourselves from constantly complaining about the rain and instead, like everyone else there, tried to make the very best of it. The things you do with and for your children! Seeing my little boy's ecstatic face was our big reward. It's priceless.

We are so grateful that we had the chance to do this with our son. Here’s hoping we can return someday, preferably when it’s SUNNY!!



*We stayed one night for free at a nearby hotel because we had accumulated just enough credit card points. Other freebies we enjoyed were breakfast and dinner (on our second day) courtesy of the hotel itself because our room was in such poor condition. We dined on delicious filet Mignon!