Enchanted Castle

On Saturday, we took the kids on a little trip to meet up with a volleyball friend of ours at Enchanted Castle. I know it was a risk because that place is basically sensory overload, but we figured the kids would have fun amid the video games, toddler rides, flashing lights, loud booping noises and families galore. That's basically what we came across. My sister was able to meet up with us and that helped me out a TON. What I thought was neat was the real-life skee ball stations that I pointed out to Nikko. He tugged me toward them, saying Skee Ball, and I tried to teach him how to roll-flick the weighted plastic ball up the lane and end up in a hole. It was so evident that Nikko lacked the muscle strength to roll that ball with one arm. I saw Ronin take a turn and since he's only 3 years old with toothpick arms I didn't expect much. Ronin gave up easily and went on to flashier games. Still, Nikko went back to skee ball twice and seemed to make a connection that this game was the same as the one on my iPod Touch, yet different.

The kids handled all the crazy stimuli pretty well but Ronin was getting a bit hyper. One thing I didn't bank on was the smell of pizza from a nearby table when we stopped for a snack break. Nikko smelled and saw a pizza at the next table and started whining. I was hungry, too, but knew we didn't have the time or the patience to stand in line to order any. I had to distract him with Oreos and lollipops. Finally, removing the kids from that room was the best strategy. Nikko was curious about other video games. I sat with him and tried a Sponge Bob driving game, but other games he was only an observer. Other than that, our experience at Enchanted Castle was a pleasant one for the kids but definitely not an outing I can make going solo.