My sister loves to tell people that when I was a kid I wanted to be three inches tall. She usually blurts it out at a random moment with no background or lead up. Just here we are eating, pass the salt, and did you know when Lisa was little she wanted to be a Smurf? In some sense, she’s right. In the sense that I read every Littles’ book, watched The Smurfs, and thought Honey I Shrunk The Kids was the best idea. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was my idea; someone must have stole it from my fourth grade journal. But what kid didn’t want to escape his or her own life to end up in some sort of exciting adventure. And Smurfette had a lot of dresses. Okay, they all looked exactly alike, but they were cute.
Yesterday we took the kids to Legoland. Legos were a toy my mom never bought us, but I loved to play with at the neighbors’. And they allowed a lot of imaginative play with people who were about one and a half inches tall. So you’ll probably understand why I thought Miniland U.S.A. was the best part of Legoland. The worst part? Everything else.
First of all, its real name is Toddlerland, as in introduce your toddler to the idea of exhausting and expensive theme parks land. Everywhere we turned were double strollers, kids on leashes (which I think should be reported to CPS, because it just seems mean), and by five o’clock, rampant temper tantrums. And the rides confirmed any suspicions I have about the appropriate age for Legoland. They were an introduction to roller coasters, but I am not sure why any young couple would pay $110 (one adult and one child) to ride a mediocre roller coaster. Why not go to a county fair, or Fun town and hop on the merry go round? Yeah, there were some cool things made of Legos. Although I don’t know why Arnold Schwarzenegger gets a bust made out of Legos next to Mozart, George Washington, and Albert Einstein. And bathroom lines behind sticky four-year-olds and tired moms, not too fun. I did see one woman with her own portable potty for her kids. Smart thinking. It folded up into the size of a briefcase and fit in the basket on the stroller. We watched her dispose of a bag of pee … if only we could get all 500,000 parents to bring that so I could use the toilet with out following three year old Johnny who pees everywhere but in the toilet bowl.
