We had the pleasure of going to Sesame Place in Langhorne Philadelphia for my birthday weekend. It was our first time and Mr BAM and I agreed it was perfect for our kids (Mr P nearly 6 and Little Miss 20 months). The drive from NYC is an easy breezy hour and a half if you go straight or a little longer if you detour to rest stops. Definitely short enough for busy toddlers.
Their were water slides, roller coasters, carousels and a ton more dry rides. We really enjoyed all the opportunities to get up close and personal with the kids’ (and our!) favorite characters. Once you get one cuddle with Elmo or Abby Cadabby you just can’t get enough! We discovered a few tips and tricks just by trial and error and amazing intuition that really made the trip awesome.
I hope these help you have as great a time at Sesame Place as we did.
1. Sunscreen, a hat and water shoes are a must. Without watershoes, you’ll burn your feet lining up for popular rides like Sky Splash on the concrete steps
2. Kids under 2 are free! Their is plenty for them to do as well. My 20 month old had a blast on the carousel, Peek-A-Bug, Grover’s World Twirl, and even the waterslides and wading in both The Count’s Splash Castle and and the Teeny Tiny Tidal Wave. Those are just the rides she did, their were man more that she could’ve done
3.Twilight tickets are available after 3PM for a reduced price
4. Stay at Springhill Suites, not only the closest hotel to Sesame Place but also a hotel that caters to family and offers friendly service
5. Grab a map as soon as you get in, this will help you plan what shows to see when and basically how to lay out your day including where to find your favorite characters for photo opps
6. Get a reusable cup from any Sesame Place restaurant and refill for just 99 cents throughout the season. This is great cause kids get a souvenir, plus you can refill in most all restaurants for 99 cents! Choices are mainly soda, but there is also Hi-C and iced tea on offer
7. Though the servers at the restaurants will always say “fries with that”, don’t forget that you can swap the fries in your child’s combo meal with apple slices or applesauce
8. Children’s combo meals come with complimentary plates and straw cups – another souvenir from the trip
9. For all you diehard coffee drinkers, their is a Starbucks on site!
10. Check the schedule of shows and allow for 25 minutes for each – Elmo Rocks is outside, so don’t think you’ll get away from the heat, but there is still shade
11. For the Let’s Play Together show sit directly behind the reserved seating to get up close and personal, as all the characters step up on those benches and dance!
12. If your child wants a chance at dancing with Mr Noodle and Elmo during the Elmo World Live show, make sure they have closed toes shoes on to be considered (water shoes are fine)
13. Most rides will require an adult 18+ to ride with kids under 42″ or under the age of 7
14. Line up to take pictures with Elmo and Big Bird at the 1-2-3 Smile With Me! Studio. You don’t have to purchase the pictures (you’ll probably want to!) but your kids get extra cuddle time with Elmo and Big Bird
15. Bring a towel or so that you have something to sit on during the afternoon parade. Stake your place 15-20 minutes before the parade begins
16. Slap on the sunscreen and sit on the sunny side of the street, the characters dance to the side more (our observation after attending 3 parades in 2 days)
17. Head to the middle of Sesame Street for the parade (between Abby’s Surf Shop and the Fire Station), this is where the main characters stop on the route and perform for a good 10 minutes. Think Elmo shimying right in front of you and waving directly at you
18. Leave the lifejacket at home, Sesame Street has some for use on all appropriate rides
19. Find a shady place by the Count’s Castle and eat on the lounge chairs while watching people get soaked
20. Dine with Elmo and Friends to ensure your child gets to cuddle with all their favorites. This is a guaranteed way to get up close and personal with all the faves – Elmo, Abby Caddaby, Count, Grover and Cookie Monster
21. Bottomless drinks are served to your table during Character Dining experiences and more souvenir cups for the kids (they offer milk too!)
22. Kids under 2 eat free at Character Dining experiences, kids between 3-10 eat for a reduced price. All kids eat for free if you chose the Breakfast or Lunch options (as opposed to dinner)
23. You are allowed to take your own pictures just about anywhere that paid photos are being offered. We thought this would be frowned upon, but the staff was great about not pushing purchases
24. If you buy before you go and print your tickets at home, you can bypass Guest Relations lineups and just stroll up to the gate and have your ticket scanned
25. Bottle warmers are available at The Welcome Center, Dine With Me!. Cookie’s Cafe, Elmo’s Eatery, and Captain Ernie’s Bistro
I just received an email from Sesame Place with an awesome lineup of fall shows for the kids – Yo Gabba Gabba and Super WHY! would definitely top Mr P’s list of must see concerts. I don’t think I can tell him about them!
Disclosure: I was not compensated for this post.
My fiance and I are planning a trip to Sesame Place later this year. It’ll be our first time going. We’re unable to have biological children, so we’re taking her baby brother (he’s turning two in November, the same month as my birthday) to enjoy the fun and play Mom and Dad for awhile.
Thanks for all of these tips! We have done loads of research, but we were still a little concerned as to what to do when we get there. This has helped loads!
Best of wishes,
Ethan
I’m sure you will love it! Happy to hear that I have provided some valuable tips 🙂 Just remember to grab a map when you get in and then plan your day accordingly – so much to do!
Thanks for all of the useful info! We will be heading there with our three year old daughter this weekend. She loves Cailou and can’t wait to meet him and Rosie and see her fav Sesame Street characters! Wish I would have found this blog sooner… our hotel reservations are already booked at the Crowne Plaza.
I hope you had a great weekend!
They have a great iPhone app for the park! Has set timers for shows and an interactive map so you can find what you are looking for.
Thanks! I did not know about that – great tip 🙂
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Hi,
I’m really glad to hear that your 20 month old enjoyed it. We are thinking about going early this summer with our 3 year old and 18 month old, but were a bit concerned that there would be much for the little one.
That’s the nice thing about Sesame Place, if you think about Sesame Street it is kinda geared for littlies. She could’ve done the merry-go-round all day, and there were enough paddling pools to keep her happy as well.
Great guide! I would definitely advise against using their life jackets though. Last year, we saw employees using them to cover up an accident a child had at the top of the sky splash while waiting for someone to come clean it up. The life jackets always smell weird, too, and are worn by countless kids that could have been sick.
We have season passes, so we’ve been there a lot. One thing we noticed with the dry rides is that they always seem to have problems with them! The peek a bug and blast off don’t start half the time, so the employees keep opening and shutting the gates, extending the ride, letting people on and off, etc. to get them to start, so expect some extra wait time when they have problems with those rides.
And unlike a lot of parks, you CAN bring your own food and drinks! As long as it’s in a small cooler or in a bag, you can bring anything but alcohol and drinks in glass bottles.
They have a fast pass which either allows you to cut to the front of the line on every ride once, or for more money I think they have one with unlimited access to the front of the lines. Great option if you don’t have season passes! The park isn’t too big, and it gets crowded. Until Cookie Monster land opens, there are only 6 dry rides not including the roller coaster, so they all have very long lines! Going after 4 is another way to avoid the lines.
Thank you for this post. These tips are great, especially the ones about the parade. Just what I was looking for!
1. The tips number 22 say ALL kids are free if you choose breakfast or lunch. According to the website when trying to pre purchase this is not true. Lunch is 25 for adults and kids 2 to 9 are 15 bucks. Do you know something we don’t know about getting that deal?
2. You CANNOT bring food into the park. Only a small cooler (measurements are on website). that has baby formula baby food or medicines are allowed. You can however leave a cooler in your car and exit the park to eat at the picnic benches. Just be sure to get your hands stamped!!!
You sure can 🙂 We visited in ’13 and did the cooler in the car method, but we saw many people bringing in food. We went again last year ’15 and brought a small cooler packed with picnic foods and snacks. No problem at all!
JLC is correct. The website also says the following: Sealed non-alcoholic beverages and small single-serve snack sized items such as chips, pretzels, cookies, whole fruit, and pre-made sandwiches are also allowed.
I wish I had seen this when before we went! We just got back with from taking our 6 year old. Had a great time and we also figured a few things out ourselves that helped us save time and saved us money!
We booked the stay two nights and get the third free through Sesame Place. Totally worth it! You had to buy extras in order to use the deal and we were hesitant at first. But it worked out in the end and we were glad we had the extras. Part of the package was we got Park Fun Passes. They are season passes without the discount perks in the park. We were able to go for two days and save even more money!
Buy online before you go to park. You save time and money! Also online is a map of the park to help you plan your day before you go.
We packed our own lunch, left it in the car, paid a little extra for preferred parking and we ate at the picnic tables right there in preferred parking. Saved us a bunch of money and we got some down time away from the park.
The meal with Elmo was included in our package and if it hadn’t been we would have paid extra! All the characters come right to your table. You can take pictures with all of them. You can pay for the pictures Sesame Place takes but there is NO pressure to.
Do the breakfast with the characters if you can. You get to see all the characters and get it out of the way before you even head into the park. When we saw the characters walking around the park through the day and the LONG lines to see them and have your picture with them. We were able to say to our daughter “You already saw them and had your picture taken” It saved SO much time since the lines to see each character were sometimes longer than the rides! Another perk of going for the breakfast was they let us into the park early. We got to go on rides with no lines and check out the park before the crowds where there.
One last thing, get there early! The second day we went we were there about 9:30. We got a good parking spot in the shade, checked into guest services, hung out in line listening to Sesame Street songs and eating a few snacks we brought for waiting. It was a sunny, hot Saturday we went and by the time the gate opened, the line was all the way to the street! There were so many people! While everyone else was checking in, waiting for a locker, figuring out where to go we went right to the water rides. For the first hour we had no lines, no waiting for ANY of the water rides. We even got to go on some of the rides 4 times in a row! After about an hour there started to be lines for the water rides and by that time my daughter had enough and wanted to go and check out other things. By the middle of the afternoon the water rides had the longest lines.
Another thing we heard before we went that helped was that it’s not as big of a park as it looks online or on the map. It’s the perfect size though for little one!
Thank you so much for this info Tina, it’s going to be just me and my 4 year old daughter going to sesame place tomorrow and I was a little worried on how I would navigate things considering it’s going to just be me and her so no one will be there to hold our things but I refuse to pay for a locker. My plan is to have us get-on the dry rides first, and then take a break for lunch,I decided that I would bring a small cooler and we would just eat in the car. I just paid for our preferred parking ticket online and was delighted to learn from your post that there is a picnic area right there in preferred parking for us to eat and enjoy our lunch, we will be wearing our swimsuits under our clothing so after we eat we plan on ditching our clothes in the car and heading back to the park for the water rides. I hope my plan works and I don’t regret my locker decision, I have a waterproof pouch that goes around my neck for my car keys and cell phone and money, I hope we have a good time.
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The breakfast & lunch dining with character options are not free for kids (as per tip 22) — at least according to Sesame website.
Yes! Finally something about sasame street.
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Thanks so much for the tips and the adorable photos ! Glad your family had a blast we’re taking my five year old daughter and my two year old niece Saturday can’t wait!
Hope you had a good time and that the tips were handy 🙂
Wencore are looking at going this summer with a 15 month old. Is that to young?
Great tips! thank you so much!