Add The New York Post on Google A kids’ birthday party in Australia is making a splash among parents, some of whom say it may be the best idea they’ve ever seen.
Scenes of the festivities, filmed by the birthday girl’s mom, have gone viral on social media, racking up more than one million views and praise from hundreds of parents.
“My daughter had a genius birthday party idea. Doing a park crawl!” the mom wrote alongside the video, as footage showed roughly a dozen children climb into a kid-friendly party bus to the tune of Pitbull’s club banger “Fireball.”
The party was not only a hit with the young guests, who danced their way to various locations, but also parents around the world, including podcaster, Monique Bowley.
Speaking on her podcast, “Parenting Out Loud,” on Monday, Ms Bowley said the park crawl “might be the best kids’ party idea” she’s ever seen.
“What you do is you hire a bus, you load kids onto it, you pick three or four parks in your city or your neighbourhood and you just go park to park for the party,” she told her co-hosts, Amelia Lester and Stacey Hicks.
The kids enjoy snacks while on the bus, and at the last park, “it’s birthday cake time”.
After that, the children, “bedraggled and wrecked” from a day of playing in parks, are driven back to the bus stop to be collected by their parents.
But the best part, Ms Bowley said, is that other parents can’t fit on the bus.
“There’s no standing around at a kids party, holding a paper plate, making awkward conversation,” the mom of two gleefully said.
“It’s just like, see ya later, see you in five hours – how good is it!”
Parents split over park crawl party idea
Surprisingly, parents online are divided over whether the party is a “brilliant” idea, or a recipe for disaster.
Some said they had already hosted a park crawl for their own kids, while others said they “couldn’t think of anything worse”, and that supervising children in one park was hard enough.
“As a parent, I hate this so much,” one dad commented.
“This is a terrible idea. Literally a nightmare of a situation waiting to happen. Not to mention, who has that much energy to round up a bunch of kids on and off of a bus for eight hours straight when you could just have something in the backyard or at a trampoline park?” another wrote.
“This is brilliant, but I’m bringing the parents because 20 unsupervised kids let loose in a park is something my anxiety could not handle,” one mom said.
Numerous people pointed out that the bus in the video didn’t appear to have seatbelts – a “dangerous” missing detail.
Mom’s opt-out clause for ‘busy’ parents
Earlier this year, an Aussie mom divided parents after she included an opt-out clause on her son’s birthday invitation.
Emma Kenney invited everyone from his kindy room, but urged “busy” or “tired” parents to bow out if they need to, or simply want to.
After one of the mom’s friends called the note ‘weird’, Ms Kenney asked social media users to decide if she’s a “social freak”.
However, several people applauded the invitation addition, describing it as “super thoughtful and helpful.”
