Philadelphia - City Hall

http://www.visitphilly.com/history/philadelphia/city-hall/

We really lucked out with our hotel in Philadelphia. The staff of the Philadelphia Marriott Residence Inn was excellent and they had the best complimentary breakfast buffet we have ever attended.

Location was also helpful. Although our cab driver had a little bit of trouble finding it at first, once we were there we found that we were really close to many of the attractions, and we were just kitty-corner from City Hall, which was really convenient for navigation.

City Hall is easy to spot from many places. For a long time there was an informal agreement in place that nothing could be taller than William Penn's hat. That helps City Hall stand out. For those times when you can't spot it, pretty much everyone knows which direction it is in.

On our first day we wanted to keep things pretty easy, so we grabbed some lunch and took it into courtyard to eat. There were some tables and shade there.

There is also a lot to look at just around the building. It was built in the Second Empire style which has a strong baroque influence, which is especially noticeable walking around the outside.

Inside there is sculpture everywhere you look. There are 250 sculptures total, all designed by Alexander Milne Calder.

(I wondered if that was the mobile artist, but this is his grandfather. However, grandfather, father, and son, all have art featured prominently around Philadelphia.)

Our path to and from each day's adventure tended to lead through City Hall, so it was a big part of our time in Philadelphia, and seemed like a good place to start.

Ground transportation in non-Philadelphia Pennsylvania

There were a few reasons that we chose the hotel we did for Langhorne, but two big ones were that it was close to the park and also had a park shuttle.

We did appreciate the fact that they got into the local spirit by decorating the lobby with Sesame Street characters as well, and that is how we get our pictures for the day.

I want to focus a little more on the transportation aspects, and this becomes an issue for other areas in Pennsylvania. In Langhorne, Easton, and Hershey, at check in were were always asked for information on our car, not whether or not we had a car. The car was just assumed, which did not happen in Philadelphia or Minneapolis.

This made more sense as we began to observe how much these places were not designed for pedestrians.

Since Langhorne was our first destination, we noticed it first there. As we got into town we started looking around to get our bearings, and I saw that the only foot route between our hotel and the park was either via the highway overpass, which did not have great shoulders and sidewalks, or under the overpass along the train tracks, which somehow seemed even more dangerous.

There is a mall and a bus system, and apparently people will often park at the mall and bus to the park, but even if you are local you will probably not walk to the park.

We arrived late one night, and there was nowhere easy to get to, so we used the hotel sundries store, which meant basically cups of soup or oatmeal. Based on that, learning that there was not a free breakfast buffet was even more disappointing. Eating in the park was okay, and then the next night we ordered in, which was not great.

I'll get more into the other towns when we get to them, but as a general rule, shuttles are important, and cars are important. If the hotel has a shuttle but you don't have a car, plan ahead for meals and other needs.

They just aren't planning on you walking.

Sesame Place - Food and Souvenirs

The food was pretty standard for theme parks at Sesame Place. There were cookies at Cookie's Cafe that weren't at other places, but you could see that the Cookie Monster cupcakes at Cookie's Cafe and the Rubber Duckie cupcakes at Captain Ernie's Bistro were essentially the same things. Children's meals could come on cute Elmo or Cookie Monster plates.

Prices were about standard. One thing I noticed is that the annual membership prices seemed very reasonable. If you live nearby, season passes to a water park could very well be a reasonable investment. That being said, parking is quite expensive (I believe it was $38 for the day, with a discount to $17 for handicapped parking), and Langhorne is not walkable, which I will write about more next week.

Souvenirs are more expensive, but the have some adorable ones.

Just walking into the store there si all this cute, bright, colorful plush everywhere.

There is a good variety of popular characters, and they rotate in less popular characters on a regular basis. While we were there the classic character was Herry Monster.

There is an online store, and the site refers to mail-order also, but this may not show everything. Julie became aware of a Two-Headed Monster Plush through the Sesame Place Facebook page, where the order occurred via an e-mail contact. If there is someone you are hoping for and don't see, it doesn't hurt to ask.

http://shop.sesameplace.com/

https://www.facebook.com/SesamePlace/

There were non plush items as well, most of which did not interest me, except for some T-shirts.

You may also notice that the Sesame Place site features different store names now, and some things are missing. This is their seasonal retooling. It looks like the water attractions are shut down, which makes sense. I was not expecting the addition of stocking stuffers, but that's cool:

http://sesameplace.com/en/langhorne/shop/oscars-stocking-stuffers/

Obviously, my sisters focus more on plush, and looking at this little guy sticking out of the bag, I can't blame them.

Have a sunny day!

(They don't have to say that, but it's one of their options. The better, more into it employees tend to use that one. It is not like Disneyland where you have uniformity of cheerfulness.)

Sesame Place - Dry Attractions

http://sesameplace.com/en/langhorne/play/dry-fun/

With more than half of the park being a water park, there is a pretty strong delineation. Whereas many theme parks will have some kind of ride that splashes you, these rides did not have water, and with the exception of the Mix and Match Twiddle Tracks, they were not even near the water.

(That is because Twiddle Bugs are not monsters. The other rides are monster-themed, and in Monster Land.)

Rides do not specifically work to accommodate larger guests. Some of them can, but it is not a given.

Again, I have to give a lot of credit to the artistic incorporation of the theme. This made the Monster Mix Up my favorite, because seeing the monsters in disco regalia while twirling in the tea cups was pretty cool, and the glittery disco ball and classic disco songs were not lacking.

For sheer artwork our favorite was probably the Sunny Day Carousel. While all of the mounts were horses, they were muppet horses, and looked fantastic. Pictures of non-horse muppets decorated the ride, and best of all there was a bench with Slimey on one side and Bert's pigeon Bernice on the other. Adorable! However, the mounting of the horses was pretty uncomfortable. It may work better for lifting smaller children on that way. Also, it was mandatory to wear the safety straps, which seemed silly for adults.

My sisters thought that Captain Cookie's High "C's" Adventure was the cutest. I'm still voting for Disco Cookie Monster, but the nautical ride was also pretty cute.

My least favorite was Flyin' Fish, and this is solely based on the look of the ride. Elmo is not my favorite monster, possibly because I have no childhood associations, possibly because of the hype. Anyway, this ride has various fish as the vehicles, with variation for the type of fish, like the angelfish has a halo. That could be clever, but also each fish has an Elmo face, and also there is a clownfish, and I find clown Elmo downright ugly. That may be just me.

The other ride I want to mention as pleasantly surprising was the Peek-A-Bug. It is a car on a short arc, and while I have seen them in traveling fun centers, I have never ridden one. Given the shortness of the track I wasn't expecting much, but even though the track does not give the vehicle a lot of ride to move, the body slips and turns on top of it. It gave more bang for the buck than I had thought possible.

There are slides and playhouses and things that can be used for kids to burn up their energy while staying dry, which I'm sure is useful for parents.

They did also have a midway with various games, but we did not really try any of them. 

They are adding two new rides according to the web page, though they appear to be behind schedule.

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.

Sesame Place - Character interactions

As much as we know that there is good writing and music that goes into Sesame Street, what really makes the show is the Muppets. Therefore, their presence is an important part of any visit there.

There are three main ways of interacting with the characters, not counting their representations in the rides and decoration.

One is the characters roaming the park. "Roaming" might not be the correct word, as there are generally specific areas where the tend to be. However, if you happen to be heading down the street the same time as Big Bird, you can walk with him. That is a thing that happens.

 The areas they head to are logical areas. For example, we found Oscar near Oscar's Garage, a souvenir shop.

Actually, the main areas all seem to be on "Sesame Street" the part of the park where the buildings resemble the show's set. We also saw Bert and Ernie here, but they were finishing a stint and we could not get in line. There are multiple stints per day, so if you have a specific character you can make it happen.

We did not want a lot of pictures with characters, but also some of them happened on phones, so I can't find the picture of my sisters with a honker. However, that was one that happened closer to the entrance of the park.

Another way to see the characters is in the parade.

This is a place based on an educational show, so if you see some people with letters and numbers, those will come up for songs that incorporate counting and sounds. When the parade stops for musical numbers, they are interactive, with dancing, counting, and singing back. There was even some jump roping.

Because they would stop and dance, characters did not always stay on the same float. So here is Murray in the cookie jar, but you knew it was generally Cookie Monster's spot, and he ended up in there later.

Finally there is 1-2-3 Smile With Me, a photo queue. It has two sides, but you are in line for both at once. When we got in line it was toward the end of the day. The first character was Big Bird, and the second was Elmo. Just as I was thinking that I would have wanted Cookie Monster most, Big Bird left and was replaced by Cookie Monster. I would have liked a picture with Big Bird, but I was really glad to get Cookie Monster. Then we left, because we didn't really want pictures with Elmo.

One annoying thing with this area is that personal cameras could not be used beyond a certain point, because they want you to purchase pictures here. We took our pictures from behind the line, and did not purchase anything.

There are plenty of options for meeting your favorite character and for capturing the moment on film.

Langhorne, Pennsylvania - Sesame Place is cute!

http://sesameplace.com/en/langhorne/

Sesame Place is adorable. I want to make that point first, because there were things that as I write about them will be critical. While there are things that they could do better, they do incorporate the theme well, and it is an adorable theme.

These means that you see artwork of the characters everywhere and it looks right. The soundtrack is also music from the show, and you start remembering how much there is to pick from as you hear the variety.

The 2-D artwork looks good, but then when it is brought into 3-D, including plush, food, parts of the ride, and characters you meet, that looks good. The block of Sesame Street buildings are probably the least "right" - I think the scale might be off - but I believe children will care more about the characters, and the characters look great. Even the topiary is pretty good.

So that's important to remember. If you have any fondness for Sesame Street the show, looking around is delightful.

If I then spend several posts talking about various things about the park, and am thus able to use more pictures, I see no problem with that.