Issue link: https://fredparent.uberflip.com/i/1533132
28 Fredericksburg Parent and Family • March 2025 It was a chilly and sunny Saturday afternoon. A few days previous had been my niece's 9th birthday. My kids and I were meeting her and my sister-in-law for her choice of birthday activity: Fun Land! We got there around 1:30. I gathered up the kids and went inside. Immediately in the door, I was hit by a wall of noise and light. Beeping games, laughing kids, and whirring rides all mushed together into a heaving din. The dim lighting contrasted with the bright flashes of hundreds of lights to dazzle my eyes. The children were delighted. I was less so. If you're susceptible to noise- or light-induced head- aches, you might want to sit this one out like my wife did. WRITTEN BY MATTHEW JONES Parenting at We then took some time on the games. Most of them were the high-luck-low- skill ones that give you some prize credits on your card but aren't much fun (in my opinion). I spent a few minutes at skee-ball - where only one of the three machines was working. In fact, a lot of the machines were out of order. By my count, more than a quarter of the games were out of commission. The kids weren't fazed, though. They love those luck-based credit-spewers and were happy to drop most of their money in them. They also really liked the virtual real- ity roller coaster, which was more of an experience than a game. dadlands At my niece's request, we went to do mini bowling first. It counted as a ride, so was included in the price I paid. That was good, because the lanes were not in good condition. About half of them were out of order; the one we started a game at broke down after a few minutes. We switched to a different lane and started a new game. If we hadn't gotten the unlimited ride pass, it would have been very frustrating waiting the 10 minutes until the mechanic showed up to fix the thing. Another benefit of the unlimited pass was that I didn't feel like I was wasting money when the kids got bored 15 minutes in and wanted to switch to some- thing else. The price offerings were… dizzying. If you want to do it a la carte, you load up a card with money and pay for each ride you want to do, plus money for games. There are a dozen or so rides, each costing 5 or 10 dollars a ride. I considered fig- uring out exactly what we wanted to do and just pay for that. But I opted to let the kids go wild and avoid decision paralysis, and paid for the group-of-four special. It came with unlimited rides, $20 of game credit apiece, and a pizza and drinks. That covered me and the kids; my sister-in-law got a similar one-person deal.