We had our son's first birthday party at AAC where they have several different programs for various ages. Given that the age of the attendees was anywhere between 1-5, we went with the "messy hands" painting party. On their website, they offer the following:
- Professional Art Teacher
- Age-Appropriate art lesson and activities
- All materials and supplies
We will revisit all of these throughout the review, but the party was lacking in ALL areas...
We arrived at the center a half hour before the party with 2 cars filled with food and decorations only to see that we were locked out of the building along with the instructor for the class. Someone arrived shortly after but this delay set off a chain of events that compromised our ability to enjoy the party.
First off, the room was filthy when we arrived. There was crushed goldfish crackers on the floor min plain sight. This was extremely worrisome that the room was not at a minimum swept out before our party.
From there, our guests arrived at 11 and we expected the art portion of the party to begin shortly after everyone settled in. Instead. the instructor (an overwhelmed teenager who by no means fit the description of "professional art teacher") spent until 11:30 gathering supplies. I'm not quite sure what took so long, but you can imagine that in that idle half hour, we began to lose the interest and attention of a toddler audience, including both of our own kids.
The first exercise was to create "fireworks" using some paint and a plastic fork. It was painful to see the instructor struggle around the table as nearly every single glue-stick she pulled out of the box was dry or empty. Meanwhile, the grandmothers in attendance at the party were the ones preparing the paint for the kids, literally squeezing gobs onto cardboard pallets as the instructor worked out the glue fiasco.
Once the children had their supplies, no instructions or demo was given to them. One of the grandmothers had to prompt her to explain to everyone what they were supposed to be doing.
As the kids worked away, the instructor then had to leave (again) to find more supplies and when she returned, once again the grandmothers had to help her with materials as they cut lengths of paper streamers for the next project.
At this point, I left to get food since we had ordered ahead from a pizza shop for a noon pickup and we were barely 20 minutes into the art. I assume that project turned out better than the first as by the time I got back, the artwork was over.
Our main issues were:
1. Facility was dirty.
2. Family members having to work instead of participate in the party. I seriously have no idea what would have happened had the grandmothers not stood up and taken over. We would probably still be waiting for glue-sticks.
3. Overall lack of value from party cost. I don't know how the money that we paid is appropriated between the facility, the materials and the instructor, but all were poor and not even close to being worth that much. The instructor, while decent enough to apologize to us throughout the party, was completely overwhelmed, either by the delay or the age group or both. She contacted my wife prior to the party to get a headcount with ages, but never discussed what projects they might do at the party. In the 40 minutes that we actually did art, I'd say she had at most 5-10 minutes of interaction with the kids. It was the grandmothers once again going around the table to see what the kids were doing them, encouraging them and talking with them.
In the end, we wound up with the equivalent of 50 sheets of constructions paper, some paint, stickers and glue between the 12 kids. The materials certainly don't warrant the cost, nor did the dirty room.
Upon seeing the types of parties available at the center, we were excited to have a toddler dance party there for our older son, who loves that kind of stuff. But after our experience over the weekend, I can't see us using your facility for a party ever again and certainly would not recommend to anyone who would ask.
The consolation here is that the kids had fun and will never have any idea of the shortcomings we experienced. But as a parent and a paying customer, the experience has left us with a bad taste.
We tried to express several times to the event coordinator, Julie, how disappointed we were in the hopes that *maybe* we would get some of our money back. Instead she offered us discounts for AAC events and hoped that this wouldn't deter us from hosting another event there. ZERO chance of that happening! read more
