Tales From the Minivan

Everyone slept much better last night!  So much better that we all slept in!  Normally this would be welcomed but the drive to Sesame Place was about 2 hours so I wanted to get going early.  We ended up getting on the road by 9am and arrived in Langhorne, PA right around 11am.  Luckily the park had just opened at 10am and didn’t close until 8pm.  We still had the rest of the day ahead of us.  We paid for parking $15 then got our tickets at the door.  I meant to search out discounts or buy my tickets online, but got sidetracked and ended up buying them at the gate….for the 5 of us (Finn was free) it was over $230!  OUCH!  The good news is that this gives us another day there, the bad news is that we won’t be able to take advantage of it, as I’m not sure we want to take the 2 hour drive down to Langhorne again.

We got through security and started in the water park side of the park as it was desperately hot, I don’t know the exact temperature, but I would say it was definitely in the 30’s!  This family of Maritimers is not used to that!

The boys splashed around in their new Nammu Swim Hats.  They are a UV Sun hat, and work really well, they stayed on the boys heads all day.  I was finding that whenever the boys would be out swimming they would never wear a hat then their little scalps were getting burned.  They never complained about the Nammu’s and wore then from 11am to 6pm!

Finn was loving splashing around at Ernie’s Water Works, and Liam was working with the other kids on this water works contraption.

Ernie’s Wave pool was another hit, even Mackenzie swam here.  She enjoyed the Ernie fast facts.

Big Birds Lazy river was worth the wait, but a tip for anyone going here on a busy day, don’t get into the first line you see, go a little further around the river and you’ll see a second line which is MUCH, MUCH smaller.  Finn loved riding in the tube with me, although all he wanted to do was nurse and kept grabbing at my bathing suit! He had seen a little girl nursing in the line, and starting signing for milk then.  The other mom and I were joking around about it.  It was nice to see another nursing mom, she’s the only one I saw in the park all day, and believe me there was no lack of babies.  I have never seen so many strollers crammed into a theme park.  Other than Finn, I only saw one baby being worn and it was a beautiful little newborn in a ring sling by her very proud dad.  We did bring our umbrella stroller, but Finn never sat in it at all.  We used it for our camera bag and backpack, it did come in handy that way.

Once we got off Big Bird’s Lazy River, Andrew took Mackenzie Liam and Ciaran on the Rubber Ducky Raft Ride aka- The Sky Splash as we weren’t sure if Finn was allowed to ride it.  I sat down and gave him a little drink as discreetly as I could in a swimsuit.  I saw a woman kind of staring me down, and thought that they were disapproving stares.  Turns out she was a LLL leader, and she came over and talked to me for a few minutes and gave some encouraging words, she was very nice.  Finn slept for a few minutes while we waited for the rest of the crew on the Raft ride.  I got some great shots of them coming down.

Hunger was setting in and Captain Ernie’s next to the Lazy River was calling us.  The food wasn’t bad, but as usual themepark fare, pricey!  $8 for a kids meal!  It did come in a cute little Elmo Head Souvenir  thingy.  It think they’ll make great little party favors for an Elmo themed birthday, perhaps Finn’s 2^nd?

After having a bite to eat, we headed over to Elmo’s World.  This area of Sesame Place has most of the rides.  We managed to ride a few, but the lines were very long and didn’t get on all of the ones we wanted to.  There was also this huge rope climbing structure, Mackenzie and Ciaran weaved their way through it way above our heads.  I took Finn down to a little area for toddlers and he had so much fun playing with the large foam blocks.

Next it was time to get a drink for the boys, I had decided to purchase one of those large souvenir bottles for $5.00 earlier in the day, this way you could get refills for $1.50 instead of the $3.00 they were charging.  When I went to buy it, the Sesame Place employee did not hear me correctly and thought I wanted a refill,  and gave me the bottle for the price of a refill instead of the full cost!  Just a tip if you ever get there some day, all of the indoor eating places have fountain pop and free refills.  I didn’t find this out until later.  We started the day out drinking water as I froze our reusable containers, but they soon melted and there was barely a water fountain to be found in the park.

After getting the boys a drink, we noticed that people were lining up along the main Sesame Street for the Parade!  We decided to saty and watch, and Andrew devised a plan that as soon as it was over we would try and hit a roller coaster called the Vapour Trail!  The Parade was cute, the boys tried and tried to get high fives from the characters, Liam succeeded once getting Grover.  Ciaran was a little upset when it ended without him getting a high five too.

Luckily the disappointment of the lack of a high five was short-lived as we raced up the ramp of the Vapour Trail.  One little problem we forgot about was Finn sleeping on my back in the Ergo!  Ooops!  Mackenzie is not a ride person so she was happy to stay back with Finn, so we managed to transfer him over to her back without waking him!  I rode with Liam, who at the last minute tried to get off, I convinced him he’d be fine and off we went.  Ciaran on the other hand loved it and was grinning the entire ride!

On our way out of the park  one of the security officers offered to take our pic too!  What a great park, a lot of fun for any age!