We started the morning off with breakfast at Benediction ($23.44) eating/sharing French toast bites, scrambled eggs, thick cut bacon (Ro), orange juice (mine) and apple juice (for Ro). I really love this little restaurant, but B doesn't really like it that much, and so I thought it would be fun. Ro loved to draw in chalk on the tables. He didn't really like the bacon very much, but probably because he wasn't used to thick cut -- very greasy. Other than that, he loved the eggs and French toast. He then drank two 8 oz mason jars of apple juice! The waitress asked if he wanted another one and he nodded. I told him that he had better drink it all, and he did! Proud (and cheap) momma here!
We then went to Roeding Park ($5 parking) and were excited for Superhero Day! Ro wore his "Thatman" (read: Batman) shirt and got a ticket for a free ice cream/popcorn at the snack stand in Playland. Other than entrance tickets to Storyland, we bought train tickets and a new Storyland key ($19). For the record, I think the old keys still work in the boxes and I think we'll try one of B's old metal keys for fun. Ro liked listening to the stories, but seemed to get bored halfway through. He loved sitting on King Arthur's chair, listening to Humpty Dumpty's story, and playing on the pirate ship. He was too afraid to go up the steep steps for the Three Bears' house and go down the slide. I tried to talk him into sliding down, but it was made for short people and I kept bumping my head on the concrete sides of the house. Now, I did mention it was Superhero Day and there was a Spiderman walking around giving fist bumps to all of the kids. Ro was really happy when he got his fist bump. (Ro *smiling*: Why did he give me a bump? Me: Because he likes your Batman shirt. Ro: I love Thatman!) There weren't really that many superhero-dressed workers running around, but that seemed to make it better for the kids because it wasn't too overwhelming. Once we saw everything, we hopped on the train to Playland.
I wasn't really sure how the train worked. Ro was just happy to ride it. He liked looking at the dinosaurs, the "ghost town" (I thought that was pretty clever.), and the pond. Fun fact: there were wings from a dead good floating close to the train and a red-eared slider turtle sunning itself right on the floating wings. Luckily Ro didn't notice, but I wonder how many other parents had to explain that one to their kids.
Ro had no problem hopping off the train into Playland. We took a good look around and checked out which rides we wanted to ride. Each ride is three tickets at $5 per ticket. Ro chose three different rides, two of which required me to ride with him ($15). We went to get the free ice cream/popcorn and found out that the ice cream would actually be a Slush Puppy. It was too hot for popcorn, so Ro decided out of eight flavors to get a cherry-flavored Slush Puppy. He loved it. We then rode together on the merry-go-round. It turned out that the ride attendant didn't ask for tickets from the adults riding with children, and so Ro got an extra ride. We rode together on the helicopter ride that goes around in a circle and you pull the bar to lift the vehicle up into the air. Ro actually didn't want to raise up the helicopter, but I managed to talk him into pulling the bar to raise it all the way up once, and then we rode the rest of the way closer to the ground. Then Ro decided to ride on a mini-rollercoaster ladybug ride that bounced up and down in a loop, and ended his ride spree with a ride in the mini-racecars that moved in and out from the center of the circle by moving the steering wheel.
We ended our visit waiting for the train with multiple families with other small children. Ro had a lot of fun showing the train display to the other kids -- we got to the train station first and I had a chance to show him the controls before the other kids arrived. He had fun on the ride back and really didn't want to get off of the train. I managed to convince him to leave by reminding him that B would be at home and would want to hear about how his day went (a record 20 seconds compared to a previous average of five minutes).
All in all, we had a lot of fun, but I couldn't help to notice how much everything added up to a total of $82.44 just for the two of us with no food. I'm not sure how we could have made it any cheaper either other than knocking off $5 for a key if we had brought an old one. But Ro did have a lot of fun. I had forgotten that my mother-in-law had taken him to Storyland before and somehow managed to avoid taking Ro onto the train to Playland. He knew all of the houses/stories already and how the keys/boxes worked. I had vague memories of Storyland/Playland from going when I was three years old, too, but my memories were mixed with when my Dad took me to many awesome fairytale themed places in Germany when I was five/six years old, and so I wasn't sure what to expect. All and all, it was perfect for a morning with Ro.
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