Archive for November 28th, 2009
Let me go on record saying that I knew, I knew, visiting Bus.ch Gardens newest attraction would be a mistake. Let’s see…Saturday night on the opening weekend for an as yet untested seasonal event. And yes, it was pretty much exactly like I envisioned it would be.
For some reason, my family descended en masse on Williams.burg for Thanksgiving weekend this year. They opted for shopping on Black Friday, which I absolutely will not do – no way, no how, not ever – so the plan was for all of us to meet up at Christmas Town on Saturday afternoon. I also want to go on record saying that was absolutely NOT my idea.
We got to the park early and headed in just in time to catch the live Sesame Street show. Not all of us went – some of the older kids (and adults) opted out so we were able to grab pretty decent seats close to the stage. The premise of the show was that Abby Cadaby, being a young fairy, had to be taught what Christmas was all about. There were lots of Christmas carols, much singing and dancing, and a pretty good message on the meaning of Christmas. It was entertaining enough for the adults but Ava was absolutely entranced. She insisted on sitting on my sister most of the show but I finally coaxed her onto my lap once the dancing (hers) was becoming perilously close to being out of control (from excitement – not misbehavior). She not only danced, she sang along, applauded when appropriate, whoo-hoo’d and responded when audience interaction was called for, and screamed “Merry Christmas” and “Bye-bye” to Big Bird once the show was over. All in all, it was a great way to start the evening.
Except that was the high point of the whole night. It pretty much went downhill from there. Well, except J and I did get to actually ride a roller coaster together for the first time since 2007. Too bad that experience was somewhat ruined by the horrific thoughts that I kept having about both of us dying in a freak roller coaster accident and leaving Ava without parents once again.
The crowds were massive, the lines for everything were long, and the flow of traffic was horrible. Only part of the park was open meaning there were many, many people (more than they projected/expected) packed into a smaller space and less than half of the rides were running so you had fewer attractions open for all those folks. Several of the much hyped features of the event, such as the live penguin exhibit, were laughable (seriously – it was a 2+ hour wait to see 2 penguins in an acrylic box) and we couldn’t get in to see any of the other shows at all. The waits were just too long to be able to do it with little kids. Heck, there were even hour long waits to buy food from any of the open restaurants so J waited 30 minutes to buy a $7 sausage from a cart because Ava had already munched through all the snacks we’d bought and was absolutely starving. And the worst part? The whole Sesame Street part of the amusement park was closed leaving virtually no kid rides open. That was disappointing and I’m still not sure what they were thinking to not open that relatively small but important part of the park.
Santa? Good thing she hates him anyway because that was a 3-4 hour wait. I hear he was pretty amazing. We didn’t wait to find out.
On top of everything else, it was freezing. Ava was pretty much toasty warm since, in Chinese bundling fashion, I had about 13 layers of clothes and a snowsuit on her – well, warm except her frozen little fingers because I forgot to grab her mittens from the car. Mad parenting skillz, I know. But since it was my fault and I wasn’t about to let her lose fingers to frostbite, I made her wear my gloves.
I should also mention that we had Ava in her stroller but had the Ergo with us, just in case. I get a little freaky about having her in a stroller in really busy places because people don’t pay attention and either run into it OR they have backpacks/bags/purses that they swing around without looking. Ava can also get a little panicky in crowds jostling her about so I like to be able to carry her if necessary and a carrier just makes it a little more secure and much more comfortable. Ergo, the Ergo. It’s easy to roll up and carry in the stroller, simple to adjust to a variety of sizes or ways to wear it, and it’s the most comfortable one for J to wear if needed. Because it was so crowded and getting so cold as the evening passed we ended up chucking everything except her into the stroller and J tossed her into the Ergo on his back.
Back to the gloves…
After a bit of convincing (which involved lots of me giving her the stink-eye every time she tried to remove them) she finally decided it might be okay to wear Mama’s gloves. She got into it pretty quickly – flapping her fingers about like Edward Scissorhands and gently whacking J about the head and ears with the mostly empty fingers of the too-big gloves while waggling them flirtatiously at every single person who passed by. This provided endless amusement to me, to my sister, not so much to J, and to everyone else around. I, of course, have no pictures or video of this because we were all way too busy laughing like hyenas at her while J merely tolerated both our idiocy and her abuse of him. It was made even funnier by her shouting “Giddy-Up, Horsey” to him every time he slowed down.
What can I say? We were hard up for entertainment by then.
The night ended soon thereafter. I was ever so grateful to get into a car with heat and away from the maddening crowds. While it was good to spend the time with my family I’m not sure any of us had a great time – mainly because we’re all fairly antisocial and there were simply way too many people crowded into the park for us (or me, at least) to really enjoy it.
We’ll go again next year – but not on a Saturday, nor on opening weekend. I’m hoping it was successful enough this year that they’re comfortable expanding it a bit and that they learned from the issues they encountered this time and will make it a little better next year.
And family, please come on a non-holiday weekend next time. I promise it’s way more fun with fewer people around. And you can actually find a parking space at the outlet malls.