**Hey friends! I am back from Spain, sorry for the radio silence!! I am a big jet lagged, but we will now resume our normally scheduled programming! I will warn you, this is kind of long with a lot of pics!**
So, a few weeks back my friend Danielle texted me asking if we would be interested in going to PA with her and her family to visit Sesame Place. I immediately Googled it, since I had never heard of Sesame Place, spoke to Robyn about it to make sure our weekend was clear and told her we were in! We went last weekend and I have to say, we ALL had a blast! We headed to Langhorn, PA on Friday night at 5:45 p.m. after we all got home from work and changed. I was totally expecting horrendous traffic, but with a quick stop for dinner, we made it there in 4 hours on the dot, there was NO traffic and we flew in. We checked into our hotel and passed out.
The next morning Robyn and I decided we were going to head into Philly for breakfast to try a place that we read about in one of our recent Bon Appetite magazines, High Street on Market. Since we didn’t have to be back to the hotel until 9:45 a.m. to grab the shuttle to the park, we left the hotel at 7:30 a.m. for the 30 minute trek into the city. We got in with no traffic or issues, found parking and started the very short walk to the restaurant. We made it about 50 yards when Ashton decided to walk straight into a square phone pole. He caught the pole right at the corner of course and he fell backwards and started screaming. I immediately picked him up and he was crying so hard on my shoulder. After a few seconds, he pulled his head back and all I could see was blood. It was EVERYWHERE! I tried to stay calm so I didn’t get him more upset but we quickly ran back to the car. Thankfully I had wipes, antibiotic ointment and band aids in the car. Robyn and I cleaned him up and tried to stop the bleeding but the gash in his forehead was pretty bad. After a few minutes of pressure we were able to slow it down, get the ointment on it and put on a band aid. Ashton had stopped crying and wasn’t acting abnormal so we decided to grab breakfast (that’s blood all over his gray shirt!) I’ll spare you the pics of my shirt!
Breakfast was AMAZING…Robyn even agreed and said he would definitely come back (I can count on 1 hand the number of times he has said that in the 9.5 years we’ve been together!) We headed back to the hotel, got both myself and Ashton changed, met up with our friends and their two boys and grabbed the shuttle from the hotel to the park (saving us $17 a car!) The shuttle ride was just over a mile and before we knew it, we were there!!
We entered the park and the kids were in awe! The park’s energy was really great and I knew it was going to be a great day, plus, the weather couldn’t have been better, it was in the high 60’s, low 70’s with a slight overcast for most of the day…the perfect Fall day to spend outdoors!
The park was decorated in a Halloween theme, so of course, since that is my favorite holiday, I was ear to ear grinning. We quickly made our way through the entrance and came across Oscar the Grouch taking pics. There was only a few people in line, so we jumped in and was quickly told by an employee that Oscar was done taking pictures. Um, what? He’s been out less than 10 minutes (since the park just opened at 10 am.) I started to get annoyed but thankfully after we walked out of line and started looking at another area, she came back to me and said that we could get our picture taken with him.
I LOVE this picture, it may be my favorite from the whole weekend! We finished with a high five to Oscar and we saw the Count across the street, got in line, but Ashton wanted nothing to do with him. He can’t be my kid, I mean, I love vampires
They also have a really cute replica of the Sesame St neighborhood, which Ashton couldn’t really appreciate since he doesn’t watch much tv, but it was pretty cool for me to see!
We made a stop at the firehouse you see above because the boys wanted to play on the firetruck.
After playing on the firetruck, the boys were ready to hit the rides. The best part of the park is that ALL of the rides are geared toward young kids. Ashton was able to go on every ride and we were able to go on with him (there were a few rides where the height limit was 6’1, so Robyn was too tall and had to to sit out!) We went on every single ride, some of them multiple times!
Since our friend Nate doesn’t love spinning rides, I rode with the other boys on a few rides!
And the ride that was the crowd favorite….
The ROLLER COASTER!! I was really worried that Ashton was going to freak out on this ride, it was pretty fast with some really good drops, but he LOVED it! I know I shouldn’t worry about him, he always surprises me with this like this because he has no fear, but still. Every single time the ride stopped, all the boys asked to go on it again. We went on it 3 times in a row then convinced them that we had a lot of other rides to get to. At the end of the day, before we left the park, we rode it one more time.
Around 12:30 pm we decided we needed to grab some lunch so we headed to the park cafeteria. I will say, like most parks, it was pricey, especially for what you get, but let’s be honest, when kids are involved, the parks know they have you exactly where they want you because you have to feed your kids. We brought snacks with us and they do allow you to bring in drinks, coolers, etc, but coolers were just not feasible for us since we were traveling such a long way to get to the park. Also, the lines for food were LONG! And…this happened!
Ashton and Rylen both slept through lunch but we brought their food with us and they snacked when they woke up. We headed towards the Haunted House, which we had a lot of fun exploring. They also gave out trick or treat bags and were handing out goodies throughout the park.
On the way to the haunted house they had all these great carved “pumpkins” all over the park and you could even buy a small pumpkin and paint it!
Inside the haunted house, we explored all the fun areas!
Ashton wasn’t afraid of the non-moving Count!
And we tried to get a picture of him standing next to the number 2 (for his age)!!
We also quickly watched the parade, but the boys really weren’t into standing around to watch the characters go by, plus, the streets were lined on both sides with a few people deep so we figured it was a good time to get back to the rides where the lines wouldn’t be so long!
We rode rides for another few hours and then around 5:00 p.m. decided to call it a day (the park closes at 6 p.m.) We wanted to head back to the hotel, wash up and get ready for dinner.
Overall, we had a blast, and I’d highly recommend this place to anyone with a toddler. I do however want to point out some negatives of the park in general that may help to know before you go to set your expectations. The one thing that was severely lacking was that there were not a lot of characters walking around for photo options. We only saw Oscar right when we walked into the park and then The Count. There were designated meeting areas for some of the other characters at specific times but the lines were really long and Sesame Place employees took the pictures that you could buy for around $20 a piece, which is just nuts to me.
The cost of admission is HIGH. It was $56 a person for anyone 2 years or older. That seems really high to me, especially since the water park part of the park was closed at this point in the season. I had called the park in advance to ask if they were going to run a special on the ticket prices and they told me no, that I should buy them in advance so I went to my local AAA store to do so. When we got to the park, they were not only running a special online for cheaper tickets (around $40) BUT there was also a Groupon running for $32 a ticket. I spoke to the manager but since we bought our tickets at AAA, they could not refund us our money. Our friends bought their tickets online so they did refund them their purchase so they could go right on Groupon and buy that deal (saving over $20 a person), which was good, but I was kind of annoyed that I specifically called to ask about tickets and they gave me misinformation. However, I wasn’t overly upset about the cost since we were on vacation, but for $56 dollars, I was expecting it to have more of a Disney World feel/experience. Sesame Street is actually pretty small especially with the water park activities not functioning. Thankfully, toddlers don’t seem to notice those things and had a blast, which in the end was the most important thing to me.
If you are going to take your kids here, I would HIGHLY recommend doing so later in the season. Maybe don’t wait as long as we did if you want to enjoy the water park aspect (I think they closed it down a week or so before we arrived) but because it was later in the season and most kids were back in school, the crowds, while there, weren’t out of control. the longest we had to wait in line was about 15 minutes, which is WAY better than at some other parks we have been to. Also, the weather was beautiful. Some families may not mind the sun and heat, but if you are outside in the wide open for 7+ hours, the last thing I want to be doing is standing/walking in full sun and high temps, I just don’t do well in those situations, and having a miserable, hot, tired kid on your hands doesn’t lend itself to a fun experience.
In the end though, I would absolutely come back. Ashton had a blast, the rides were all really fun and we all had a great time as a family…which can be witnessed in the last picture taken!
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Question of the day
Have you been to Sesame Street Place before? Are there other parks out there like this for toddlers?
