Sesame Place - It's also a water park

Many of the things that we didn't like about Sesame Place had to do with it being a water park, but I have to give a lot of caveats here.

For one thing, this is very common. There were a lot of amusement parks in Pennsylvania, and it was pretty common for them to have a water park area. Given the humidity, this makes sense. People need an escape from the heat.

We were also there on Labor Day weekend, which is not only a big holiday weekend before the school year starts, but also often when water parks close down or at least change to a limited schedule. Therefore, it may have been significantly more people than usual, though with this being our only day there, we really don't know.

Also, as far as I know they did a recently good job of running the water park. The designs certainly incorporated the theme well, from a giant Rubber Ducky overseeing the water slide to the Count's Castle literally counting down before the giant bucket of water spills over. I imagine that the things that we didn't like are common to many water parks.

There were just a lot of things we found gross.

First off, people don't constantly keep changing. That wouldn't be practical. I get that. What that means is that people might go in the water, then come out to eat, and that could be why all the seats in the cafe where we ate lunch were a little damp, and you had to be careful not to slip.

Water is like that. It is probably for this reason that restrooms that were fine the first time we used them were less appealing the second time and disgusting the last time. Also, restrooms closer to the water attractions were worse.

I won't deny some of these were personal hangups that other people might not even notice. For example, in line for dinner I was behind a man who was only wearing shorts. I had a hard time not staring at the birthmark on his back, wondering if it was a birthmark or a horribly mutated mole. Is that malignant? No, it's probably just a birthmark. Why is it the only part of his back that hair is growing out of? Especially when it is so much hair? Like for that part to be so hairy, that seems like he is a hairy person, but it's all there!

This is quite rude, I agree, but much worse if I had said anything or he had seen me. Part of the problem is that we were in line for such a very long time.

That leads to one other thing that might not be water park specific. We ate lunch at Cookie's Cafe, and dinner at Captain Ernie's Bistro. The menus were basically the same, only Ernie's was worse. There were flies, the vegetables were limp, and they were out of things.

The openness of the setup may have been the reason for the flies. Ernie's was near the water, and so it was a takeout window setup, though at least part of the line was inside. Cookie's was located by the dry rides, and had indoor seating so was built differently. Running out of some food items (like pickles and tomatoes) and having the lettuce be limp, could just be a result of it being later in the very busy day. However, it seemed to go along with everything being grosser when you were near the water.