Learn and Play Cafe

Marcus really wanted to play right away but
I made him eat his breakfast instead.

I have heard about the Play and Learn café for awhile.  It is only few miles from our house and offers a café and play area for little ones.  I finally decided to take Marcus there today.

Play and Learn Cafe Website

 

We got there a few minutes before it opened (9am) and ended up staying for almost 2 hours, so I call that success for Marcus.  Here are few thoughts on it.

Marcus's Breakfast pancakes

• The concept is really smart.  Gives a parent a great place to bring your little one to eat and play in a nice warm environment (really good for winter).
• We got some food and drinks.  The food was OK-  Marcus ate his pancakes but it won't blow your socks off and I would consider it fairly reasonably priced.  Just an FYI you are not allowed to bring outside coffee drinks in with you and their coffee/tea was only so-so and since you can't bring it in the play area anyway I would probably skip that in the future.
• You do need to pay in order to enter the play area- $5.00- which once again I think is fair and reasonable.  It costs that much to bring them to any other play gym.
• We got there at opening- which I think should be a bit earlier than 9 am on a Saturday and it was pretty wide open and not a lot of people there- by the time we left it was getting pretty packed.  So I advise getting there early if you are like me and don't like a crowd.
• Overall I would give this place a grade of B+ (if the food/drink offerings were a bit better it would have gotten a A-).  It was good entertainment for a reasonable price.  I know we will go again.

Here are some pictures of the place.

Café Area

Play Area- which we called the castle.  It was perfect for Marcus.
 

It didn't take Marcus long to find the trains to play with.  He is such a funny boy- for about the first 15 minutes he didn't stray very far from me.  After that he was all over.

He really like to climb the play area and looking down on Mommy!

 We did have a moment or two where he didn't want to share.... it was all about the food.  He actually took an eggplant away from a little guy.... so we talked about it and gave it back.

 One thing I really like about this place is that the parents were pretty engaged and I didn't see any kids climbing up the slides (not even once) and that is a pet peeve of mine!  I never let Marcus do it and then he sees other kids doing it and thinks I am mean..... No Marcus Mommy isn't mean.... just doesn't want you to break the rules!

Marcus really liked the slide and went down it several times.