Wonderland Weekend

As my friend and former colleague Morgan, who is way younger than me, said in response to my telling her we were going to take Leila to Lancaster, PA to do Dutch Wonderland last weekend: "that didn't exist when I did that family trip." I was initially surprised to learn about this pleasantly refreshing amusement park too, but anyone who's on the DC area parents' blogs and listservs does know that it exists. Now I had plenty of fun back in the day at Kings Dominion as a tween and teener, but my perspective on amusement parks now (all those large, sweaty, sticky people in jean shorts and fannie packs crushed together in hours' long lines...) probably tends toward the negative. And that is why I refer to Dutch Wonderland as pleasantly refreshing. I'm glad we didn't take Leila at any younger than age 3, but I can see her enjoying it for another 5 years or so. The park is nicely contained and laid out with plenty of shady trees. We started on a miniature version of the Strasburg railroad that looped around the park so we could get an idea of where the rides, shows and concessions were laid out. Yeah, the map would have given us that too, but the train's the first thing you hit once you go through the castle walls to enter the park. It took Leila a little while to get her stride, and the Frog Hopper ride she next went on traumatized her a bit (think a mini-bungee effect.) She probably would have been fine had one of us been on it with her, but I didn't think the shoulder harness would clear my frame. She adamantly refused to get on many rides after that, but she came back around after seeing the "Frog Prince" show, which combines the typical Princess kisses the frog and breaks the spell story with some pretty spectacular (even to an adult) diving routines. Actually, she probably enjoyed the shows more than anything else, but we got her on the log flume with us after that, then the merry go round and the sky gondola thing that crosses the park etc... It was crowded, but we didn't wait more than 5 minutes in line for anything but the log flume, and that was only about 15. I had her bathing suit in a back pack, but we did not venture into the water park. Cesar and I didn't have our suits on, and I couldn't see her doing anything by herself aside from maybe standing in a fountain, and that just didn't seem worth the hassle.

We did spend the night there because I wanted to take her on the real Strasburg Railroad and see some countryside on Sunday, but the trip from DC and back could totally be managed in a (long) day. Especially with the GPS in the car - man I've learned to love that thing and follow it with blind faith in a very short time after denying Cesar one for years. We also wanted some time to hit the outlets. We stayed at the Country Inn and Suites, literally across from the park and next to the Tanger outlets. It was more than we should spend on a weekend, but perfectly reasonable for 2 Queen beds and a living room suite. We wanted to watch the Olympics Saturday night, so I found us a sports bar in downtown Lancaster in an old tobacco warehouse that had individual TVs at each booth. For a sports bar, the food wasn't half bad. We shared fried mozzarella that was coated in pretzels instead of breadcrumbs and served w/ dijon mustard sauce and I had a "Pittsburgh Salad", which was greens topped with flank steak and french fries(!!) is that perfection on a plate, or what?

The only downer to the weekend was coming home Sunday when Leila finally announced to us at 2:30 that she was hungry for lunch (we'd downed a bag of kettle corn around 12:30) and it had to be McDonald's of course, so we stopped at one in Timonium, MD. MICE. MICE. MICE. In broad daylight in the indoor play area. Lord only knows what was in the kitchen, but it was about the grungiest McDs I've ever been in. I refused to take Leila in the bathroom. Thankfully, I didn't see the vermin, but trust Cesar's reporting. I'd already done my best to curb Leila's interst in the play area b/c those places just creep me out as a rule. Cesar took her in while I waited for the food to prove to her it was too dirty then came back to me to say he'd seen 3 or 4 mice peaking out of the equipment. EWWWWWWWWWW.