Eight Classic San Antonio Birthday Parties

Need a trip down memory lane? Here are my top eight classic spots for birthday parties in San Antonio:

1. Kiddie Park

Who hasn’t attended a birthday party at Kiddie Park? It’s been around since 1925 and is the oldest children’s amusement park in the country. It’s a local sentimental favorite and for good reason. The rides are well-maintained classics (most of them have shade—a real bonus), children are easily contained and able to be watched, and ticket prices are a bargain.

Back in the day, it took four simple steps to have a successful Kiddie Park birthday party:

  • Purchase a bucket of Church’s Chicken drumsticks, gallon jug of generic red juice, and bag of Lay’s potato chips.
  • Tape plastic party-themed tablecloth two feet too short for the picnic table in case bored children want to eat wood splinters and lead paint chips.
  • Hand out favor bags containing candy cigarettes.
  • Crack open a Tab and smile; your work is done.
Scan 11
I’ve heard if you try to serve fried chicken at a party in 2016 the over-zealous Mom Police will take you straight to jail.
Scan 10
To this day, it takes a village to manage a birthday party.

kiddie park birthday 001[1]
Good news: The Little Dipper roller coaster was dismantled so you are no longer at risk for tetanus and whiplash!
Scan 5

The folks at Kiddie Park remain extremely flexible. You can bring in pre-made food, cake, decorations, face-painters, clowns, and extra tables and chairs. Depending on your party package, you can even have access to electrical outlets for crock pots. But who needs crock pots when you’re bringing in delicious Church’s fried chicken? (FYI: It’s still located directly across the street from Kiddie Park, and if Taco Cabana is more your style, it’s right there too.)

2. MacArthur Park

This park is, hands down, my favorite in the city for pavilion and playground amenities and shade. It is clean with lots of acreage full of well-maintained playscapes for both toddlers and older kids. There are plenty of picnic tables and parking, and there’s so much space that you never feel crowded by other park attendees. There are a few playground relics left over from decades ago like the awkward metal spaceship and turtle with 19 layers of paint, and they blend well with the more modern bouncy balance beam and rock-climbing wall. My kids especially love that that the swings are plentiful. If you’re a piñata fanatic, never fear because there are tons of trees to meet your needs. (This park seriously has the coolest playground equipment around.)

Scan 8
That’s me in the front. And, like all little sisters, mine was relegated to the back-bottom portion of the structure, alone and faceless.

San Antonio has tons of great parks to choose from, and fellow ACMB mom Katy (another MacArthur Park fan) has highlighted some additional favorites. Like Raymond Russell and Mission Park Pavilions, MacArthur Park is part of Bexar County Parks and may be subject to different rules and guidelines than San Antonio Parks like Hardberger, Brackenridge, Woodlawn Lake, and Martin Luther King. Polite reminder: neither county nor city parks allow nudity.

3. San Antonio Zoo

Recently celebrating its 100th anniversary, the zoo has been revamped over the years with the Zootennial Carousel, animal encounters like Lory Landing and the feeding station at Giraffes at the Savannah, and eateries Longnecks Bar and Grill and Beastro Restaurant. Long gone are the old playground and boat ride through the everglades and shark aquarium (now replaced by the Kronkosky’s Tiny Tot Nature Spot), monkey-and-goat mountain (I SWEAR this was a thing even though I’m the only one who remembers it), elephant and camel rides, mountain playscape in the petting zoo, and the zoo train INSIDE the park. Most important, perhaps, is that everyone’s favorite Mold-a-Rama machines remain for your sniffing pleasure (click here for other locations and molds). Parties at the zoo are given in two-hour increments and will happen rain or shine, so remember this when you make your reservation (which must be done online). In the best interest of the animals and other guests, there are restrictions on balloons, piñatas, plastic straws, music, and outside food and drinks, but the zoo does provide three options for food packages, plus ice cream and cupcakes.

Scan 2
Y’all understand how angry I was when I got the donkey, right?
Scan 4
Little known fact: The zoo train was powered by bowl cuts.

Scan 1

4. Magic Time Machine

Magic potion drinks on dry ice, decorative theme rooms, servers in costume encouraging you to play with your food… What more could an adult a kid want? Though I’m certain the kitchen could catch fire and I would perish in a fiery blaze somewhere between a Christmas room and a decoupaged Monopoly table, I absolutely adore the maze of rooms. And I don’t care if there are peaches floating in the French onion soup or some kid is eating grated cheese with his hands, I will visit the salad bar car at least four times. The motto here should be: Come for the atmosphere, stay for making your child ask where the bathroom is.

Scan 21
Wearing a romper and selecting George of the Jungle from the 1960s cartoon series as my waiter tells you all you need to know about my coolness factor at age 11.
Scan 23
At age four, I’m pretty sure I did not request The Devil as my waiter. OMG, OR DID I???

If you haven’t yet visited the Magic Time Machine (which I refuse to believe is possible), Kristin wrote a great overview.

5. Garage Party

If you watch the video linked above, please know I never attended a garage party that fancy in San Antonio. Sure, there may have been a few streamers and a pin-the-tail poster, but definitely no balloon arches or draperies. My parents were partial to the real-life-as-backdrop theme, allowing everyone to see old scuba tanks, broken lawnmowers, and boxes covered in dirt dobber nests. Garage parties are great because you don’t have to allow kids in the house, but they still have shade and box fans for air conditioning. Kids of all ages can still participate today in classic activities like Twister, egg-on-a-spoon races, balloon-popping games, telephone, hot potato, beanbag toss, freeze dancing, musical chairs, Simon Says, and a bazillion more ideas. If you’re looking to decorate your garage and not use expired fertilizer and old bikes as a backdrop, Amols’ Party and Fiesta Supplies is a fabulous local resource and super fun to visit.

Scan 17
I’m not even kidding you, after this excitement we went to see a Richard Dreyfuss movie about habitual gambling.
Scan 16
When your child’s best friend is splatter paint.

6. Swim Party

Any responsible swim party will have ample lifeguards and no doodies in the pool. If you live in San Antonio with a birthday between the months of May and October, you’re a definite candidate for a swim party. Public, private, gym pool, waterpark, backyard Slip ‘N’ Slide, octopus sprinkler, whathaveyou; anything goes in this hot mess heat. I’d like to think even the Coahuilatecans were partying in our river back in the day. Swim parties are simple: a few games of Marco Polo, sharks and minnows, and categories, and you’re golden. I’m partial to the one where you strut around the pool acting out the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, but that’s just me.

Scan 14
Ninety percent of any ’80s swim party was spent trying to mount a Shamu inflatable.

7. Bowling Party

Another (air conditioned) local classic is the bowling party. San Antonio has tons of locations like University Bowl, Astro SuperBowl, Brunswick Zone Thousand Oaks Bowl, Main Event (North and West locations), Bowl & Barrel, Oak Hills Lanes, Bandera Bowling Center, and Bowlero (formerly Country Lanes). If you haven’t been bowling in a while, it’s nothing like when you were little. For better or worse, there’s no smoking out in the open, and the food is totally upgraded.

scan 18
My sister’s party at Country Lanes. She got a personalized bowling pin as a souvenir, but we put it on top of a bookshelf and it rolled off and beaned her on the head so our mom threw it away. I’m sorry, but all her friends are in the Witness Protection Program.

8. Rollercade

Officially named THE Rollercade, it is perhaps one of the most classic of all classic San Antonio party spots. The music is jammin’, the atmosphere is slammin’, and I’m allowed to use these words because I was a child of the ’80s and ’90s. Parties range in price depending on the number of skaters, customization, and if you’re hosting a public, public glowprivate, or Hall of Fame/VIP theme. No outside food or drink is allowed other than cake and paper goods, but you can choose from hot dogs, pizza, soda, and fruit and veggie trays to be served. Every child should celebrate at least five birthdays here to try out all the party rooms.

Photo courtesy of The Rollercade
Photo courtesy of The Rollercade
Screen Shot 2016-07-03 at 12.02.51 PM
Photo courtesy of The Rollercade

Important note: Please do not refer to it as “THE Rollercade” or you will be laughed out of town. It is, simply, Rollercade. I’ve been known to refer to Hallmark as “The Hallmark Store,” but as for calling Rollercade by its official title, I would NEVER.

Gone-But-Not-Forgotten Classic San Antonio Birthday Parties

It is a real shame your child can no longer experience legendary party spots like Malibu Grand Prix and Castle, Showbiz Pizza, Pear Apple County Fair, Discovery Zone, Playland Park, and Jungle Jim’s Playland.

Scan 20
Fargo’s Pizza. Looks fun, right? As long as your idea of fun is sitting in a narrow, wood-paneled room watching a 16-inch television play Woody Woodpecker cartoons on repeat.
Ashley
Ashley is a back-up dancer for circa 1989 Janet Jackson in her dreams and a mother of two preschoolers in her waking life. An Alamo City native, she spent her college and post-college years in TN, CA and AZ (all lovely states completely incompetent in the fine art of breakfast tacos). After crying everyday in radio sales, working next to a sheep pen at a rural telecom, being totally confused in agriculture, and completely giving up and drawing cartoons of co-workers at an online university, she finally found her calling in grant writing for a non profit arts organization. And then her husband (who, no joke, watches college football for a living) was like, “Hey! We can move to San Antonio to be closer to your family if you want to!” And then Ashley was like, “Hey! That’s good timing because remember all that drinking I was doing last week because I thought I had really bad PMS and wanted to power through it? Well, that PMS is a baby!” So they moved to S.A. and Ashley found a job with a rural non profit, but when she tried to go back to work after the baby, living on no sleep with a newborn and a traveling husband unable to share in the workload, she quickly learned she was about five seconds away from a mental breakdown. Cut to today where she is a full time mom, loving the freedom to run all over the city each day with her kids, despite a 98% decrease in her ability to pee alone/do less than 19 loads of laundry each week. She chronicles her most embarrassing childhood moments and photos at This is Me at 13-ish (http://meat13.tumblr.com), in hopes that she never forgets that as difficult as it is to be a parent, it is just as much of a struggle to be a kid.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Ashley, I always love your San Antonio flashback posts! 🙂 It makes me feel like I’ve lived here all my life- when I most definitely have not. It reminds me of the reasons I love San Antonio! This city has so much personality!

  2. Is there a petition I can sign to bring bag Showbiz Pizza?

    Also, the mom in the Kiddie Park pic is holding her baby instead of wearing it…GASP, call CPS!

Comments are closed.