I’ll share some details about the room and the resort, with the full disclosure that I didn’t pay for the room. On the other hand, I wasn’t asked to write a review and was under no obligation to do so, so there’s no quid pro quo here.

We were given a base-level Summit room, which is well worth the upgrade if you haven’t booked one. The decor was modern and the room clean. Regular amenities of a coffee maker and room safe, and a flatscreen TV. Pretty much what you’d expect to find in a good hotel room these days. It was more spacious than other rooms we’ve stayed in lately, too.

One note for people traveling with kids: don’t book the Concierge level, which is floors 25-27. We were given a room there, and when we tried to use the Concierge lounge, we were told kids weren’t allowed inside. I didn’t particularly mind since I didn’t pay for the room, but if I had paid extra to have access to the lounge and the continental breakfast, I would have been miffed. Originally I didn’t understand why they didn’t want kids in the lounge (no explanation given), but looking on the website I see that it turns into a bar at night, so that certainly makes sense.

Probably the best thing about the GSR for families in Fun Quest, which is located deep in the catacombs of the Lower Level. [Parenthetical here: GSR opened as the MGM Grand Reno back in back in 1978, and it's very similar to the original MGM Grand Las Vegas, which is now Bally's. You'll see what I'm talking about when you visit. On the Lower Level, you can even see the original MGM lions on the elevator doors if you look hard enough.] It’s a bit of a hike to get there, but don’t give up hope: it’s well worth it. 

Anyway, Fun Quest is a blast. Since Prima and Secunda are still toddlers, they were confined mostly to the Tumble Town area, which is your basic kids play gym, meaning there are blocks, a bunch of things to crawl on, and more things to crawl on. We spent a grand total of three hours or so here, and the kids didn’t get bored at all–in fact they wanted to stay. You, on the other hand, might want to tag team it with your co-parent or bring a book.

There’s lots more to Fun Quest than Tumble Town–some cool slides, laser tag, and a whole arcade full of classic games like the basketball hoop game that was a plot point in Bookies and Dance Dance Revolution. And there’s probably lots more even cooler stuff for older kids that I didn’t notice, being pretty much confined to Tumble Town. But I saw a lot of teenagers and pre-teens hanging out here and at the Round Table Pizza down the hall, so I guess this is pretty popular.

Back to the hotel…one of the best things about GSR is that they let dogs stay. We don’t have any dogs ourselves, but the kids love saying hi to dogs they meet, and once or twice it took us fifteen minutes to get from the elevator to the side door because there were so many dogs to play with. It gives the place a not-casino vibe, which is a good thing.

Of course, you’re in a casino, and that’s half the fun. One morning, Prima and I were up early, so to get her out of the room (so that Mrs. Viva could get some extra sleep) we went for a walk downstairs and caught the parade of partiers staggering back in around 6 in the morning. Weeks later, Prima still does a good impression of one drunk but harmless guy who was weaving his way around the lobby and stopped to talk. Good times.

So if you’re staying in Reno, I’d definitely suggest the GSR. Noticed a lot of skiers there, so I assume it’s got good proximity to the ski spots. It’s right off the freeway–as in you drive straight from the exit right into the parking lot. Fun vibe that’s about halfway between a classic casino and a ski lodge. I’d pay for a room there next time.

CSN is the College of Southern Nevada, the area’s two-year college system. The Planetarium is located at the Cheyenne Campus, which is several miles north of Downtown.  It’s a quick drive from the 15–just head north until you hit Cheyenne, go east and then, after about a mile, the campus is on your left.

Finding the Planetarium is a bit of a quest–there is absolutely no exterior signage. Having never been there before, I used Google Maps to locate it, but couldn’t find anything that looked like an entrance. Finally a security guard gave me directions.

The Planetarium isn’t connected to a world-famous observatory like the one at Griffith Park, and if you’re expecting that kind of facility, you’ll be disappointed. But if you come to the Planetarium for what it is–a science venue in a community college–you can have a wonderful time learning about the skies with your kids. The Planetarium is basically two rooms and a hallway in the building that houses the Education, Social Science, and Science departments. But for someone with a shred of imagination, it’s a link to the stars. Most kids have imagination, so play along, and you’ll have fun.

Get there a little early–as you’ll be reminded several times, the shows start promptly on time, and there is no late entry. Once you’re inside, you can leave, but you can’t come back in. So if anyone needs to go to the bathroom, do it before the show.

You buy your tickets in the small gift shop, which had plenty of neat science and astronomy related posters and toys available for sale. Some of the stuff seemed like it was scavenged; for example, there were a few NASA postcards of random shuttle missions: one featured the mission insignia of STS-4; another had the crew of STS-7; yet another had the crew of STS-41-B. It gives you the feeling that you’re meeting science on the frontier, where resources are scarce but enthusiasm runs high. It’s $6 for adults and $4 for kids.

The Planetarium itself is small. I might be spoiled from having been to the one at Griffith Park, which has seating all around in reclining chairs, so that you’re practically laying on your back as you watch the stars move above you, but at 30 feet, the dome isn’t the biggest, and the seating is in regular theater-style chairs. Again, this isn’t a knock on the Planetarium–we had a fantastic time and, given the resources, it’s phenomenal that CSN has something like this open to the public. I just don’t want to raise expectations that this is the kind of thing you’d see at a major observatory/science center.

This was a two-person mission for Prima and me. I’d say that, at 4 and some change, she’s at about the bottom age range where kids can actually get something out of this. Much younger, and I’d also say that there’s the risk of the kid being freaked out by the show.

There are three shows on Friday (6, 7, and 8 PM) and four on Saturday (3:30, 6, 7, and 8 PM). We went to the Saturday early show, and got a “double-header” of “Season of Light” and “Stargazing.”

Here’s the trailer for “Season of Light”

The show was about a half-hour long, give or take, and started by talking about the science of the solstice before moving into several religious holidays around this period, including Chanukah, Christmas, Saturnalia, and traditional Native American and Celtic rites.

The producers walk a delicate line between being respectful of all the traditions and advocating for any particular one of them though, as can be expected, they spend most time talking about Christmas and considering various astronomical phenomena that might have been associated with the birth of Jesus. All in all, it’s a good show.

Then there’s the much shorter “Winter Stargazing” show, which provides a good introduction to stars visible in the hours after sundown during the winter months. at the end of this, you’ll be able to find Polaris, and, using Orion and Sirius, find all the stars of the Winter Circle. Fun stuff.

We found one of the most remarkable things after the show was over. Right outside the doors, there’s a display with a tire. Big deal, you might say. Only it turns out it’s one of the main landing gear tires that Discovery used on STS-121. It’s indescribably cool to be able to touch (well, there were no signs that said don’t touch it) something that’s been in space and played such a critical role in getting our astronauts safely home. Prima and I went home and watched launch and landing footage of STS-121. Here’s a bonus clip of ascent footage from inside the cockpit.

There are other small exhibits in display cases around the planetarium and, if you go up to the second floor and walk a bit, models of the space shuttle and ISS and an Astronaut Wall of Fame with signed portraits from a few dozen astronauts, mostly from the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era, though there are several shuttle astronauts as well. You can have some fun talking about the accomplishments of some of these astronauts with your kids–well, at least I did.

All in all, this is about an hour of activity, give or take, depending on how much time you spend afterwards looking at the exhibits. You’ll want to check the schedule before heading up, because it changes. I know Prima and I are looking forward to seeing the next show in January, and when she’s a little older we’ll hopefully catch the late show and do some real stargazing afterwards.

The CSN Planetarium is an unexpected gem of a find in North Las Vegas–lots of fun for any kids interested in space (and parents, too).

Now, as far as finding it…here’s the best way. Using this map, I can save you the hassle I had. Head east on Cheyenne after you exit the 15, make a left on Community College Drive, then the first right. Park in that lot, and walk right up to the “L” building. You won’t see any signs, but trust me, the planetarium’s waiting for you inside.

If you live in town, this is your best chance to see planetarium shows on a regular basis in the area’s only planetarium. If you’re from out of town, it’s not a bad place to take the kids for part of an evening if you want to get away from the Strip. Combined with a leisurely off-Strip dinner before or after the show, it could make for a nice evening. You can get all of the details and check which shows are current right here.

Here’s how it works: Ethel M Chocolates has a year-round cactus botanical garden adjacent  to its Henderson factory/store complex. Every year, from before Thanksgiving to just after New Year’s, the company turns the garden into a lighted desert winter wonderland, with Christmas lights hanging on the cacti, bushes, and trees. It looks much cooler in person than I just described it.

In addition to walking around and admiring the lights, you can cajole your kids into sitting on a stranger’s lap and take pictures of it (if that’s your kind of thing) and you can enjoy the sounds of local school choirs singing holiday favorites. The latter starts at 6PM, the former at 5 PM (at least this year), and you can see the schedule here.

Lots of holiday light spectaculars charge admission, with some or all of the proceeds going to some kind of charity. This is wonderful, but it can lead to a little bit of stress for parents, since if you’ve shelled out $30 to see the lights, you’re kind of locked in to seeing them, even if your kid starts to have a meltdown. Ethel M’s Holiday Cactus Garden is absolutely free, which means that you can be a good deal more casual about the whole thing, particularly if you live in the southern half of the valley.

Parking…well, there’s plenty of it in the area, but see below for some tips.

Doing a complete circuit of the garden takes about 20 minutes, 30 if you’re being particularly leisurely. There are cul de sacs and loops, so there’s not one place to start and finish. I don’t view this as a negative at all, since it encourages just letting your feet take you where they want to go and discovering new things, but I overheard one mom complaining bitterly (truth to be told, more bitterly than I would think was appropriate for a free attraction) that “It’s a dead end up there. They should put up a sign!”

But if you view these “dead ends” as fun little places for your family to explore, you’ll have a fine time.

If you haven’t been to Ethel M’s, one of the neat things is getting to take the “factory tour,” which doesn’t involve putting on a hard hat and trooping through dangerous part of the chocolate construction zone, but instead means walking about 50 feet down a hallway with huge windows on parts of the factory. When we went, on Saturday night, the assembly lines weren’t running, but it was still kind of neat. As I told Prima, “Here’s where they would be making the chocolates…but they’re not making them right now.”

On another note, and maybe this is just me, it seems that the different chocolate stations have some pretty racy names. I don’t know exactly what mental image “cream beater” or “one-shot depositor” conjures up for you, but, and again maybe this is just me, for some reason it doesn’t sound exactly family-friendly. But be aware that there are kids around, so try to keep your lascivious wisecracks about the enrobing machine quiet.

At the end of the “tour,” you can have a free sample, and then you get deposited smack dab in the retail store, which has all manner of chocolate delights. I honestly don’t know if there’s a premium to buying them here as opposed to the store at the airport, but I’d wager that the selection is a lot bigger. And you’ve got a better story to tell whoever you’re buying it for than, “I picked this up between gates C4 and C5 at McCarran.”

All told, if you don’t wait in line to visit Santa, this is a solid 45-minute activity–again, depending on how long you linger in the garden. It goes pretty late–the lights are on until 10–but unless you’re impossibly jet-lagged and your kids will be manageable at that hour, I’d suggest (for younger kids) working this in before dinner. And here’s where the tip comes in:

• Tip: When visiting early, get there around 4:45.

I suggest this because that’s around the time we got there, and we were able to get a parking spot pretty close in. Last year, we got in around 5:15 and had to park much farther out, which means more than just walking farther–you’re navigating a relatively dark area with your little kids as people in cars, who are distracted by their own kids, are trying desperately to find parking. The lights, which are billed to come on at 5:00, were already on, and the easier access and lower stress made it much more fun.

There’s a map to Ethel M Chocolates right here, and I’ll duplicate the directions here:

When using a navigating system, input the following address:

• 1 Sunset Way
• Henderson, NV 89014

From Las Vegas Blvd:

• South on I-15
• Exit onto Henderson I-215 going East
• Take Airport Exit and exit onto Sunset Road
• Turn Left onto Sunset Road
• Stay in the middle lane as Sunset Road turns into Sunset Way at the intersection of Mountain Vista and Sunset Road.  
• We are located on the corner of the Green Valley Business Park.

From Henderson Area:

• North on Green Valley Parkway
• Turn right on Sunset Road going east
• Stay in the middle lane as Sunset Road turns into Sunset Way at the intersection of Mountain Vista and Sunset Road.  
• We are located on the corner of the Green Valley Business Park.

From I-95 Freeway:

• Head towards Henderson from your direction
• Exit Sunset Road going West
• Turn right onto Sunset Way
• We are located on the corner of the Green Valley Business Park.

As you know from the sticky post, I’m not a big advocate of bringing kids to Las Vegas for the fun of it–the whole premise behind this site is that it’s not promoting toddler travel to Las Vegas, but that it’s a resource for parents who, for one reason or another, find themselves having to bring their small kids to Las Vegas.

That being said, in my travels around the region, there are always some attractions that I think other parents would like to know about, or would like another parent’s perspective on. And that brings us to today’s review of the San Diego Zoo.

We’ve visited the zoo before. This time around, we were in San Diego while I gave a series of lectures at SDSU, and we scheduled it so that we had a morning to hit a museum (which ended up being the San Diego Air and Space Museum, hopefully the subject of a future post), and a whole day to spend at the Zoo.

• Tip 1: Parking is free, but if you’re staying in the area, you can use the trolley service that runs through Balboa Park. It gets you over the overpass, but leaves you off quite a distance from the zoo entrance (and, if you’ve got a screaming toddler trying desperately to escape the stroller, you will count every step of the way). Which leads to…
• Tip 2: Bring your stroller. The zoo is big–about 100 acres. By design, it’s in a hilly part of town that allows the zoo to host animals in discrete microclimates. This is great news for the bonobos, but it also means you’re going to be doing a lot of walking with your little one(s). Sure, a non-umbrella stroller can be bulky and inconvenient, but for me it’s well worth not having to carry 20-60 pounds of kids around the park. Which leads to…
• Tip 3: This is going to be exhausting for everyone. Fun, but exhausting. When planning for your visit, you need to ask yourself: do you want to be the reason your kid(s) don’t get to see all the animals? In other words, what can you do to make sure that they tire out before you do? For me, that meant bringing the stroller, and you probably have a few other strategies to keep yourself from tapping out and heading for the exit before seeing the elephants.

Did I mention how big the park is? We got there just after opening, around 10 AM, and left just before closing at 5PM. We saw just about everything there was to see, but could have spent much more time there. And it was a great experience, mostly because we didn’t have a schedule to keep or list of things we had to see in a certain order. It was basically show up and see where our feet took us until either the kids bailed or they threw us out. It ended up (nearly) being the latter, but due to time, not bad behavior. You know it’s time to leave when the zoo employees start walking with a certain purpose and intensity level.

You might be wondering about price: for two paying adults, one paying child, and one non-paying (under 2) child, the tickets came to over $100, with AAA discount. That seems like a lot of money, but I think it’s well worth it: we spent almost 7 hours in the zoo, which boils down to $3.57 per hour per household member–a pretty good bang for the buck, all things considered. The key, of course, it to make sure you can have a long stay, which goes back to Tip 3 above, although a lot of it is based on sheer chance: you never know when your kid(s) will stage a spectacular Category 5 meltdown 45 minutes into your day.

There’s not too much else to say about the zoo attractions themselves: you walk around and look at a lot of animals. We didn’t spring for the Backstage Pass or catch any of the scheduled shows, so it really was just a lot of looking at animals. Which, for a 4 year-old (and, to a lesser extent, an 18 month-old) is fun enough. But I will share another valuable tip:

• Tip 4: No matter what rare and beautiful natural wonders you see, or what valuable scientific information you or zoo personnel share with your kids, the one thing they will remember after you leave is the animal that they saw defecating and/or urinating.

Sure, you might say, funny joke. But I’ve got empirical proof. Prima had her mind made up when she got to the zoo. “I’ve got one thing on my mind,” she said quite seriously, “and it’s pandas.” And yet, when we got home, it wasn’t the pandas that were the highlight of the day. Instead, it was the giraffes. Because we saw a giraffe pee, and pee, and pee (those things must have bladders that are bigger on the inside than the outside). Which would be amusing enough, but then, just as the peeing giraffe finished peeing, a baby giraffe walked up and smelled the (now finished) peeing giraffe’s nether region, resulting in guffaws all around and a memory that none of us will ever forget.

Speaking of the other end, one of the worst things about going to theme parks/zoos/other kids attractions is the awful, overpriced food. This is one of those cases where I can deal with one of the two, but not both at the same time. How many times have you had to choke down a cold, tasteless burger that cost $12 while your kid picks at some underdone chicken nuggets? Well, I think that the San Diego Zoo’s solved this problem, and the answer is Albert’s.

How to describe the restaurant? The Zoo website says “Dine in style in the heart of the San Diego Zoo,” and they’re not far off the mark. I only learned about Albert’s by trying to find a nice place to have lunch in Balboa Park the day before–I think that Yelp gave a hit for the place. The menu seemed better than the usual, and we were in the area, so we decided to check it out.

To get to Albert’s, you have to take an elevator down three stories from the Monkey Trail. And when you get down there, it’s like you’re stepping into another world. There are a few strollers parked in front, but nothing near the teeming masses feel of the feed line at the grills and cafes upstairs. And you’re not eating off a picnic table: Albert’s is a full-service restaurant, the kind of place where you’d go out for a nice dinner without the kids.

And that was the weird thing: I think most of the people in Albert’s weren’t there to look at animals. There were a few tables filled with Ladies Who Lunch drinking mimosas and a few more with guys in business suits who looked like they were entertaining clients/visitors. They didn’t seem to mind plebians like us begging our kids not to paint the windows with ketchup or crawl under other peoples’ tables–in fact, they acted like it gave the place character. So instead of us watching the animals in cages, we kind of had other people watching us. Turnabout’s fair play, I guess.

The menu might seem pricey–$16 for a roast beef sandwich–but when you factor in that you’re paying a premium of $5 or so over truly dreadful park fare, it’s actually a good investment. And you get to recharge your batteries away from the zoo for a while–this is really like being out of the zoo for 45 minutes while you eat.

You can also, apparently, get sauced there–two moms next to us were drinking martinis, and I really think we were the only adults in the whole place who weren’t drinking. The whole tab ended up coming to somewhere near $50, tip included, which isn’t that much worse than what you’d pay for tasteless microwaved food upstairs. Therefore:

• Tip 5: Eat at Albert’s.

If we’d have been at all methodical about our visit, we probably could have gotten more out of it, but sometimes it’s better to just see where the day takes you. Near the end, we learned that our tickets gave us access to the Guided Bus Tour, a 40-minute or so jaunt around the park in a double-decker bus. We took it, taking one of the attendant’s advice to sit on the bottom level (better view, he insisted), and had a total treat. Our driver, who went by the nickname “Zoo Man,” was a font of knowledge about animals in general and the zoo in particular, and kept the ride fun for parents and kids with his humor. He was able to make seeing the animals special, particularly when we caught them awake or, in the case of a polar bear, playing with an inflatable ball in the water. Zoo Man really made that a fun part of the day.

So we really got doubly lucky that day–we could have settled for the first food we saw and gotten the usual theme park stuff, or kept on walking around without taking the tour and learning a lot more about the zoo. But there’s one more thing…

• Tip 6: Visit the children’s zoo.

This is a little section of the zoo, to the left of the entrance as you walk in, with a playground, a petting zoo, and a few other things that weren’t running when we visited. It’s a great place to take a break and let your kids run around, so I’d suggest visiting this area after the initial excitement has died down and kids are starting to lose their fascination with the animals. The petting zoo is pretty great, too: I met a goat that I really hit it off with, at the very least, and I think the kids liked it almost as much as me.

Like I’ve said above, I didn’t do nearly as good a job of researching and planning the visit as I could have, but we all had a great day, so maybe that’s the best approach.

To me, “Quick Family Cookbook” is something of a redundancy. In our family, by definition anything we’re going to cook is going to be quick, because dinner time is early, and there’s not a ton of time during the day to cook. So when I saw this cookbook on Amazon Vine, I jumped right on it. I’d already reviewed ATK’s The Pasta Revolution, so I felt pretty confident about being able to replicate most of what they presented.

Quick Family Cookbook is a collection of recipes that have been tested and retested, organized by type and placed in a five-ring looseleaf binder. The pages are a relatively heavy, glossy stock that I imagine will hold up well to typical kitchen abuse. I enjoyed the binder format–you can remove a recipe to have it handy while you shop or cook, and the pages tend to stay open when you prop the binder up.

On to the meat of the matter (so to speak), the recipes. I’ve cooked a few of them so far and found that, despite almost completely disregarding the stated ingredients and directions, they turned out pretty well. The quick spinach lasagna, for example, calls for store-bought alfredo sauce, something that’s only going to happen in my kitchen in a dire emergency, so I made my own. Ditto with substituting home-broiled chicken breasts for store-bought rotisserie chicken in another recipe. My personal take is that while Quick Family Cookbook shows you the shortcuts, you are by no means obligated to take them.

That means, naturally, that you’re not going to be cooking quite so quickly. And even where following the recipes fairly well, I found that I had to add about 20 minutes to the started prep and cook time. Which isn’t bad: turning out an edible family dinner in 40 minutes is, in my book, something to be proud of.

Of course, I tend to take cookbooks more as eye-opening suggestions and guidebooks for culinary adventures that formulae for producing food that are meant to be taken literally, so feel free to take this review with a grain of salt. But I’ve found that Quick Family Cookbook has given me some new ideas in the kitchen, some of which the kids have even deigned to eat. I have a feeling I’ll be using it for a long time. Recommended.

This is a fun chapter book for mystery-minded little ones, particularly little girls, and especially those who like the Fancy Nancy series. If you’re not familiar, it’s about a little girl (I’d place her at about 7 or so) who likes…fancy stuff. In this book, she and her friend Bree are private detectives. It’s pretty cute, particularly since Nancy’s incredibly genre-savvy–she’s a big fan of Nancy Drew, and knows a few things about how crimes are supposed to be solved.

In this first of what is hopefully many Super Sleuth books, Nancy and Bree work on solving two mysteries, both of which it is completely credible that a pair of little girls would be solving. The writing style is easy enough for adults, but maybe a bit challenging for early readers, with words like “obstinate” and “exasperating” (and that’s just on one page). But as long as you don’t mind stopping every now and then to explain a word, you’ll be fine. And that’s how vocabulary grows, isn’t it?

I actually enjoyed reading this with Prima, who really got into it. I was able to correctly solve the mystery about 1/3 of the way through the book, but that probably means the author has it right: if an adult with decades of reading mysteries is legitimately baffled by the caper, imagine how confused a five year-old would be.

The art by Robin Preiss Glasser goes a long way towards keeping young readers engaged. In general, it’s a fun read for parents and, apparently, an absorbing one for kids. Tip: keep the flour out of reach, or you might find them “dusting for fingerprints” as they try to solve mysteries on their own.

Did you play with Bristle Blocks when you were a kid? I know I did, but I forgot all about them until I saw Edushape’s Magic Brix Starter Set while browsing for a gift online. Just looking at those plastic blocks with little pegs sticking up brought back a ton of memories.

Apparently, the concept behind Bristle Blocks is public domain, so there are many different manufacturers of plastic blocks that look pretty much the same. I decided to roll the dice on the Magic Brix and see if Prima and Secunda are as intrigued by these toys as I was.

The short answer is, yes, they are. There are 100 blocks in this starter set, and they come in far more variety than I remember. There are the classic long rectangles, short rectangles, and squares, but also a bunch of other shapes: triangles, windows, and even axles and wheels. That’s right, you can actually make a car with this set. Consider my mind totally blown.

The thing I like best about Bristle-style blocks is that they are general, rather than specific. Here’s what I mean: When I was young, all Legos were generic: you had a bunch of small, colored, plastic blocks, and you could make a pirate ship, moon lander, or race car from the same little pack, if you had enough creativity. Sure, it didn’t look exactly like any of those things, but to a kid with imagination, it was close enough. Now, it looks like most of the Legos (at least the ones I see) are very specific; there’s not too much else you can make out of the Death Star set besides the Death Star. To me, that ruins the appeal of the toy: you might as well be putting together a model kit (something I never was able to do as a kid). So I like having a box of blocks that let kids build whatever they can imagine, even if it doesn’t look exactly like that they’ve seen in a movie or cartoon.

So far, for example, we’ve built a few different houses, a few cars, a helicopter car, a jet car, and a fairly accurate representation of the space shuttle orbiter (the wheels make good main engines). There’s really no limit to what you can do with these.

I’m happy with the quality so far, and at about $33 they seem to be a decent value, with lots of potential replay. And, just admit it, you’re probably going to have more fun than them playing with these.

This delightful picture big is an absolute joy to read with your little one–though, I’m guessing, substantially more joyful to read with a little girl than a little boy. The plot is simple: it’s Saturday and Zoe, who looks to be somewhere between 4 and 6, gets to decide what she’s going to wear for the day. And, for the rest of the book, she thinks about what kind of day she wants to have, and imagines herself wearing the appropriate clothes.

It sounds like a simple enough idea, and you’re probably thinking that it sounds suspiciously like a similar sequence in Olivia. But Zoe is a much, much better protagonist than Olivia, and not just because she’s innocent of torturing the cat or destroying a priceless world heritage site in Venice (but that’s the subject of another review). The little nuances Murguia gives her show Zoe’s sense of wonder at it all. You wouldn’t think that a closet full of clothes could be so magical, but it’s easy to see how, in the eyes of a toddler, it is. And, in the hands of a skilled artist, we, the reader, get to share in that magic.

There are a lot of little details I love. for example, as Zoe is standing in front of her closet, her little sister and dog wander in, and they join her in each of her imagined adventures. On first read you might not even realize it, until, on a page where Zoe imagines herself hidden in a tree while her sister and dog play below, a word balloon from her mother breaks in, asking is she’s seen her sister.

There’s a lot to love about this book.

Let’s face it–if your kid ends up liking this book, you’re going to be reading it again and again and probably even again. Zoe Gets Ready is one of those picture books with enough little details to keep you enjoying the read as much as your little one. Most kids’ books are pretty much identical on the big things–they let you bond with your child and share some sort of positive message about the power of imagination, perserverance, acceptance, or whatever. It’s the ones that get the little things right that you don’t mind reading time after time. And Murguia definitely gets the little things right here.

Bottom line, this is a great book–especially recommended for reading to an older toddler with a younger sister.

As you can see from the website, Storybook Land is the the anti-Disneyland. Yes, it’s an amusement park that appeals to kids, but it’s absolutely not slick, corporate, or homogenized. You’ll get some adorable stuff here, and some genuinely creepy stuff too. I’m talking genuine nightmare material, even for adults, like this Alice mannequin. Yes, once you go to Storybook Land you’ve gone deep, deep down the rabbit hole. And there’s no blue pill in sight.

There are a total of about 40 attractions at Storybook Land. Some are typical carnival-type rides, like the teacups, a Ferris Wheel, and lots of rides that go around and up and down. There are also tableaux of famous scenes from fairy tales, some animatronic, some not, a few restaurants, and both a train and a tram that let you ride around the park. There’s also a micro-petting zoo (one sheep, when we were here, and he was on his lunch break when we circled back) and an area where you can feed–but not touch–deer and other wildlife.

All of the stuff is kid-friendly, but in a very un-Disney-like way. It’s kind of like the toys that your grandparents would get you, that weren’t at all like the cool toys you’d see advertised on Saturday morning. For example, there’s this kind of mannish Mother Goose:

And there’s also a pretty loose definition of what constitutes “Storybook.” There are a pair of colonial-era Phillies fans decorating one section of the park, and there’s even a Moby Dick. I don’t think that Melville wrote fairy tales, but I guess I’m wrong.

Seriously, I have no idea what he’s doing there, and there’s no narrative that explains these things. But that’s the charm of the place.

Prima loved nearly all the rides, and looked with some interest at the tableaux. Secunda seemed to like the place, but we only took her on the less intense rides, although intense is pretty subjective here. There are very few rides that aren’t opened to kids of all sizes, provided they’ve got an adult riding with them. Prima said she liked all the rides, but some she liked more than others. The balloons, for example, were a little too much for her, and she didn’t like the teacups that much, but that might have been because I was spinning it too fast. “Way way way too dizzy” is how she described it.

As long as your kid is having fun, it’s pretty hard not to enjoy yourself as well. Everyone at the park was friendly to us, and the rides seemed to be operated competently by professionals. There was a mix of kids working summer jobs and older people who have probably been with the park for years, and everyone seemed glad to be at work, without being unnaturally happy in that “customer satisfaction is our number one priority” fake smile way.

That being said, it’s not all fun and games. For example, I get the feeling that someone was abusing the “unlimited rides” part of the bargain. Here’s a paragraph from the Storybook Land website:

Storybook Land rides are unlimited; however, common sense must prevail. Riders must exit the ride and re-enter, if others are in line to ride. If nobody in waiting in line to ride, we suggest and enforce no more than three consecutive rides at one time. You are welcome to come back after at least a 10 minute break. Continuous, repeated riding without rest time in between is not in the best health or safety interests of either children or adults. The privilege of unlimited rides cannot be abused. Children must be in the company of parents or chaperones at all times. Ride attendants will enforce these polices.

If you don’t think that’s funny, try saying “Common sense must prevail” and “The privilege of unlimited rides cannot be abused” in a Mayor Quimby voice. You’ll at least chuckle, trust me.

Here’s another picture of something that actually looks pretty creepy if you look at the eyes. Imagine it moving, with those dead eyes just staring out at you.

Prima says she liked this scene, though, “because it was fun watching it.” That’s good enough for me.

The tableaux and the rides are fun, but you can also have a good time just strolling around the twenty acres of the park. If you come from part of the country that doesn’t have a lot of trees (like Las Vegas), you and your kids will find walking among the trees a novel experience. You’re going to want to apply plenty of sunscreen before entering the park, since you’ll be spending a lot of time outside. That might be one of the best parts of your day.

It can get pretty hot, though. The day that we went it was in the 90s, humid, and without a hint of a breeze. I was tempted to break the rules and ride the “Twirling Tug” for an hour straight, because that ride made it feel like you were in nice breeze–at least twenty degrees cooler.

We spent just under three hours at the park, saw pretty much everything, went on all the rides but two, and left feeling pretty satisfied. And it felt pretty nice to be doing something kid-related that wasn’t completely commercialized. Don’t get me wrong–the place is as much a tourist trap as any other amusement park, with the same low-quality, overpriced food (though you can bring in picnic lunches if you like) and sweets for sale. But you won’t find any cartoon/movie tie-ins, so it feels different.

It’s a little pricey–admission for four was just under $100–but it’s worth it. Kids under two are free.  Plan your day well (I’d get there early), and this could be a lot of fun for everyone.