well, it aint the happiest place on earth -- that's for sure

Not sure what it was, but Labor Day Weekend hit me like a ton of bricks this year.

Despite just getting back from CA on the 23rd, I had a deep desperate need to do "something" for the last official weekend of the summer. I emailed suggestion after suggestion to the Big Dubya and got a whole lot of "uhm yeah, maybe" from him all week. I'd finally just kinda chalked it up to a weekend at home when on Thursday afternoon I got an email from him proposing we execute one of the ideas I'd laid out earlier in the week.


I'll be honest, I was psyched and pissed all rolled into one. Psyched because we were going somewhere, doing something..... something that the kids would LOVE. Pissed because I had one day to get the house in order, the laundry done, the kids packed and ready to go away AGAIN. But, with a fair amount of grousing and a little bit of help from the big guy, I did it




On Saturday morning we jumped in the car and headed for Sesame Place. The plan was to be there roughly when the park opened and stay all day. I'd arranged for us to attend a "character dinner" where we'd have the opportunity to "dine" with Big Bird, Cookie, Ernie, Bert and all the gang. I had high hopes for this dinner..... I have high hopes for any dinner that charges me $16.95 for a two year old who eats like.... well, like a two year old.

What did we think of Sesame Place?

Well.... it's not Disney. It's not clean, the workers spend more time talking on their cell phones than working (oh, I'm not exaggerating one tiny little bit) and the patrons are rude -- rude to the workers, rude to the other patrons, rude to their kids and rude to each other. It's fair to say that we've been spoiled by Disney and probably expect too much, but..... with a name like Sesame attached to it -- I expected way more from Sesame Place.

The dinner was terrible, the service was terrible, the food was terrible -- but, the characters were great and the kids were in little-kid-heaven -- making it all worthwhile.

It could be that the holiday weekend is responsible for my negative impression of the place, it could be that it's dry (yep, no booze on Sesame Street) -- but, I was underwhelmed.

Once you add in our not-so-stellar experience at the nearby and newly refurbished (cough, cough, cough) Comfort (a misnomer if there ever was one) Inn -- we were glad to get back home on Sunday.