Last night we went to Disney on Ice with our kid. Yeah, I know, it’s a pretty standard, money-making tactic on behalf of yet another big corporation, exploiting their fans and their fame to sell us more things we don’t need. I understand all of that, and in an act of rebellion make a point of any watching pirated films (my own small, revolutionary move) but try explaining the problem with capitalism and consumerism to a six year old. The only thing he was interested in was seeing Goofy on the ice, not sitting through one of my lectures.
The show was fine I guess, which basically means that Ralfie seemed to be having a good time, but on the way home we ran into an entirely different problem. The first thing he said when he we got into the car to go home was “Daddy, can we have my birthday party there?” I was stunned.
Ralfie’s birthday is about a month away but I didn’t even register he’d gotten old enough to notice that kind of passing of time. Geez, they just grow up so fast, you know? More than that, though, I was taken aback by his (relatively) simple request. I mean, I have been looking at kids party venues for the past week or so, just trying to work out how to deal with as many children as he wants to invite with minimal effort on the part of me or my wife. But I hadn’t even considered having it at an ice skating rink. I mean, I’m sure there’s an ice skating rink in Melbourne that probably do acts as kids birthday party venues in Melbourne, but I have no idea where they’d be.
That can be easily fixed, though. I can ask around a bit at work, I know one of the guy’s kid had a birthday at an indoor soccer centre, maybe they had a look at ice skating. If not, I can always just Google it.