Child's birthday--

[aprilgail2]

3. At Chuck E Cheese, if parents end up staying, have a plan in advance on whether or not you will pay for thier food/beverages. Just don't be surprised.

That one came as a surprise to me too LOL....I never realized that you feed the parents at all the parties (at least around here you do)...but then every party we get invited to they feed me there too LOL so I guess its a wash! Most places have pizza at the parties so we just order 3 extra pies and some drinks, but that adds on another 50.00 to the party cost...then the tips for the party "hostesses" etc....all adds up!

 

[Marseeya]

Let me add another thing to the whole Chuck E Cheese idea.

We had a party for my DS there one year and it was pretty fun, but you only get an hour and a half in the party room. After that, they pretty much just kick you out and you're stuck with all those presents, trying to find somewhere to go sit in the restaurant. I don't know if they're all like this, but the two I've been to actually reserves seats (and naturally we didn't know in advance), so every seat in the place was reserved and everyone with my party had to STAND UP with our coats and everything after the party was over. Their attitude was "We've got your money, now get lost!"

I'd never do another party there, even knowing we could reserve seats for after the party. That was ridiculous.

Oh, and BTW, for $200, we could invite 40 kids to the local skating rink for a party.

 

[Belle1962]

Thanks for all the tips and advice. Up until this year my DS and I would take a 1/2 day off work and take cake, goodie bags, drinks, paper products, etc. to his daycare and have his "party" for the afternoon snack. We always had enough cake that the staff would enjoy also (and a few extra goodies bags for the staff to take home to their kids). This was basically a party but no gifts for DGS, which he was fine with. I am really leaning towards the jump party as I too do not really want to do Chuck E Cheese and DGS has stated his preference for the jump party. I am now negotiating with the jump place because they are $75 higher than another jump place in our area. What I like about the jump place I am negotiating with is that they have a "parents room". But they are abit further for people to drive. For his daycare/Pre-K--the parents usually just place the invitations in the children's packet to go home and for the team we will mail out invitations. I guess I will be prepared for "anything"--extra kids and feeding parents.