Big list of Sesame Place tips

[jerzeygirl]

I took my son (who is 25 months old) to Sesame Place this past weekend, and i'd assembled a giant list of tips and to-dos from reading reviews on this board and others. I updated it a bit based on my own experience, so i thought i'd post it here for all of you ladies who are still planning to go. Since I only live about an hour away, i don't have any info about making it an overnight trip or staying at hotels, but the rest should be pretty relevant to everyone.

ADMISSION
- Go on a tues, wed, or thurs to avoid weekend crowds and lines.
- The park is fairly empty in early June, and admission is cheaper, but not everything is open and up to full-speed by then. (For example, no character breakfasts on weekdays.) Mid-June through early July seem to be the best times to go. In Aug it’s crowded no matter what day you go, and by Sept, they begin draining some of the water rides. (They do have a Halloween event in Oct.)
- Bring a pepsi can or coupons from the entertainment book, burger king, mcdonalds, or AAA for discounted admission. They don’t let you stack coupons though.
- The 2-day elmo's pass is the same price as the 1-day pass, but you can't apply coupons toward it. If you get the 2-day pass, make sure to get it validated upon admission. You can come back any time in 2006.
- Consider buying and printing your admission tickets online first so you don't have to wait in line at the park because lines are long when the gates open at 10am. (Not sure how this works if you're using coupons.) If you attend a character breakfast before the park opens, you can pay for admission at the same time and not have to wait in line later.

PLANNING THE DAY
- Book a character breakfast in advance – it starts at 9:15am (park opens at 10am) and you get a lot of the pics out of the way early on so you don't have to worry about finding all of the characters throughout the park. The Elmo breakfast books up weeks ahead of time. Sometimes you can get into the Cookie Monster breakfast up to a day or two beforehand.
- Wear a bathing suit and water shoes.
- Bring a change of clothes for your child and yourself, extra reg and swim diapers, sunscreen, a towel, some extra plastic bags, and a camera if you’re prepared to keep it dry and safe.
- They sell waterproof containers in the park for around $6 that you can hang around your neck and keep money in if you want.
- You can bring your own stroller (there were strollers EVERYWHERE). If you prefer not to, they rent singles and doubles, as well as wagons.
- They rent lockers if you want - the ones near the back of the park near the Count's Fountain have fewer lines.

FOOD
- Bring your own lunch in a cooler and keep it in your car. Park in the preferred parking area, which is $14 (vs. $11 for regular I think), but it’s closer to the park entrance as well as the shaded picnic area. When it’s lunch time, exit the park (make sure to get your hand stamped for re-entry), and eat at one of the picnic tables. The food they sell inside the park is ridiculously expensive, and you can easily wait in line an hour to buy an overpriced hotdog, so this avoids all of that stress and gives you a little down-time to chill.
- No coolers are allowed in the park, but you can bring in snacks.
- If you don't feel like bringing your own water, buy a souvenir cup when you enter the park and water refills are cheaper.
- Breakfast with Elmo is inside a building with A/C, but it’s slightly more $ than breakfast with Cookie Monster. Characters we saw there were Elmo, Big Bird, Telly, Zoey, and Grover. Breakfast with Cookie Monster is outside and our friends who went saw Cookie Monster, Burt, Ernie, Big Bird, and the Count. Same food at both breakfasts – juice, milk, coffee, cereal, French toast sticks, scrambled eggs, mini muffins, mini bagels, bacon, letter-shaped tater tots, and sausages.
- If the kids don’t crash as soon as they get into the car and you want to do dinner before you go home, there’s a mall next to the park that has lots of non-attached restaurants like Chili’s, Applebees, etc.

RIDES/SHOWS
- The typical rides are geared toward kids age 4-5, but there are lots of things for younger kids to do. Look for them on a map, or ask employees where the stuff is. Fortunately, a lot of the things that appeal to really little kids are play areas like fountains and slides that have no lines.
- Plan to do all the dry rides in the morning when it's cooler, then change and do the wet rides after lunch.
- Elmo’s World has the newer, most little kid-friendly attractions. It’s in the back of the park, so head there as soon as the gates open and there will hardly be any lines for the first hour or so. (I think Elmos World replaced the ball pit and a few other attractions that have been mentioned here, because i thought we just missed them, but I don't even see them on the map.)
- The lazy river is good to go on with little kids as well. The entrance by Ernie's Grill has shorter lines than the other, more visible entrance. At one, they put you on blue floats and at the other they put you on yellow floats. We saw lots of teenagers switching floats right before the exit so they could stay on longer. Assuming you don't cheat, the whole thing takes 15-20 mins to get through, and then you have to get off.
- The Elmo's world show is just like Elmo's world on tv and it's cute. You may want to save it for the hottest part of the day, because it's one of the only sections of the park with a/c. (This also means it could be chilly if you’re wet when you go in.) There are no bad seats, but you may have to get there 30-40 mins early to get in if you go in the afternoon. (We went to the 11:15am show and only needed to get there about 10 mins early.) If you wait until the end when most of the theater has cleared out, I’ve heard you may get to take a few pics with elmo and mr. noodle.
- Big bird's beach party is supposed to be another good show. There are other shows as well, but i never heard many people talk about them. (We only did Elmo’s show.)
- There's a character parade mid-day and again in the evening. People line up over 30 mins early to get a good view. According to reviews, sit where the blue meets the black ground - it's like watching the parade go by twice. Or sit are on the side of the street right in front of the Sesame Street buildings, or on the curb in front of the flowerbeds to the left of the Sesame Street fire house, because people won’t be able to get behind you in either of those places to crowd you out. (We didn’t do the parade because it was too hot mid-day and my son was zonked before the later one.)
- The lines for the rides are shorter when the parade is going on.

MISCELLANEOUS
- All of the characters you don’t see at breakfast hang out along the parade route for most of the day, either right inside the gates or by the Sesame Street buildings – they don’t circle the park from what I can tell. I think they rotate shifts, coming out for a half hour at a time, and then switching off with other characters and taking a half hour break.
- Getting there early and parking in the preferred parking area was definitely the way to go, not just because it was close to the picnic area. We were only about 5 cars away from the gate, and we went back to our car many times during the day to lock our valuables in the trunk during the wet rides, get extra towels, etc. We also considered eating lunch in our air conditioned car if the picnic area got too hot.
- Bathrooms by the sky splash tend to be least crowded. Bathrooms by the entrance are most crowded.
- Employees in the blue/green shirts are the supervisors and most knowledgeable.
- Mr. Hooper's store is the best, biggest place to get souvenirs, and it’s air conditioned. Much of the same stuff is sold at Toys R Us, etc, but I saw a lot there I’ve never seen before.
- If it rains for more than an hour, you get a free pass to come back any day.

[mtrattner]

Wow! Thank you so much for all that info.

Can you give me a bit of a personal opinion?

What age do you believe a child could enjoy it?

Also at what point would you travel a long distance to go there? We are in CO and thinking about going there with a 24 month old.

Thank you again for all your hard work.

[jerzeygirl]

I think it depends on the child. DS turned 2 about 6 weeks ago, and while he had fun, i think he has as much fun at our local pool, or the little amusements at the jersey shore, only it's cheaper and there aren't huge lines to wait in and it's not so overwhelming to do it all at once. What sesame place had going for it that those things don't are the characters. And DS was positively *traumatized* by them. He liked seeing the faces of Big Bird, etc. as we drove in, but once the actual characters came up and tried to touch him, he screamed. (Then as they walked away, he'd say "bye bye elmo" and wave!) I probably could've predicted that, based on how he's acted with Santa Clause at Christmas, etc.

When it came down to it, i think i went more for myself this time than for him. If i'd have told him we were going to meet Elmo a week ago and then never mentioned it again, ne never would've realized it. So if i were coming a greater distance - especially all the way from Colorado - i'd wait until i knew he could get *really* psyched about it. That would be when he was 3, or maybe even 4. There'd be more for him to do, and i'd know it was money well spent.

[Eloise36]

Wow, thanks so much for doing this! We had been planning to go to Sesame Place sometime this month, and this really helps!!!

[mom2aidan]

Thank you so much for this! We're planning to go there in 2 weeks and this is really very helpful!

[overcome]

Thank you for posting this. I printed it for future reference.

I appreciate the time and effort it took for you to put this together. Your hard work will benefit many!!

Thank you so much - this is incredibly helpful! Would you mind if I posted it on another board I participate in? I'm often on a parenting after infertility board and questions about Sesame come up constantly.

Thanks!

I should've added my own tips as we did Sesame once when ds was 18 months old. He LOVED the parade - it was his favorite part of the day. So see it if you can. Also, this isn't heavily advertised, but a one day pass is actually a 2 day pass - you can enter the park again the next day or any other day in the season. So nearby hotels offering special 2 day passes really aren't offering you a deal at all.

I wouldn't fly from CO to go to Sesame. It's a small park (14 acres) and you might be disappointed if you came so far to see it. Maybe wait a bit and come when your child is older and you can do Sesame and Hershey Place.

[jvorhis]

Thanks so much for all your help. I am going to print this out for future reference. We are only an hour away also but I can't decide if I want to take her or not.

Thank you so much for this post. We're going with another family in three weeks and I now feel prepared for our trip!