Idlewild Park // 2019 Norwin Community Picnic

Another Norwin Community Picnic Day has come & flew by in the blink of an eye –

I’ll be honest: I have attended the Norwin Community Picnic at Idlewild Park & Soakzone for probably 26 of my last 29 years (there were a few years I missed because Derrick & I were living in NEPA). So, I have a lot of memories surrounding this yearly event. But, one of the memories I do not have – is how quickly the day passes by. I’m not sure if it’s just because I have kids now, but suddenly the day at Idlewild Park is just too fast.

I’m the type of person who likes to do everything. And, having visited more amusement parks in the last few years than I can count, I’ve learned a pretty good sense at how to walk into a park, scope out “the land”, and conquer everything I want to do (skills that come with being the wife of a roller coaster nerd & YouTuber I guess). But, Idlewild is a tricky one. My parents established a pretty good rhythm for how to “divide & conquer” the park back when we were little kids, and their system works really well, but if you get “off track” by even just a little bit, you’ll be running the entire rest of the day trying to catch up.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Idlewild’s operating hours are very strange. The park not only opens in stages, but it closes in stages as well – and they don’t stay open very late. Most of the Community Picnic days that we’re there – the park closes around 8pm. In fact, last night the park was open until 8:30pm, and that extra 30 minutes felt like an extra special dessert after you’ve already had your “normal” dessert.

Needless to say, I’m starting to learn that it’s okay if we don’t do everything at every park we go to – and that includes Idlewild.

And one of the things that we didn’t get to do this year was ride the Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Trolley Ride. If you’ve read my past posts about the Norwin Community Picnic at Idlewild, you know that our daughter loves Daniel Tiger & seeing his show, meeting him, and riding the Trolley Ride is always at the very tippy-top of our “must-do” list at Idlewild. Well, yesterday, the park had signs posted that only one trolley would be running, so wait times would be about double what they normally are for the ride. If you’ve been to Idlewild, you know that the Trolley Ride line can get insanely long – it’s not uncommon to wait for a full 60 minutes+ to ride. So, we honestly thought twice about if we wanted to wait in line or not. Ultimately, we decided to wait because the line didn’t look too long. Well, after waiting for about 30 minutes, we were all the way up at the front of the line, waiting to be the first ones on the very next trolley ride. We had about 10 minutes more to wait when one of the ride attendants came down & apologized that Trolley was experiencing some problems & they were going to have to call maintenance in to take a look at it. Totally bummed, we waited another 10 minutes, hoping it would be a quick fix, and when it appeared that it was going to be down for an extended period of time, we gave up & left the line. It just feels completely wrong that we went to Idlewild & did not ride the Trolley Ride!

Other than that, we had a wonderful day at the park! We enjoyed a stroll thru Storybook Forest, spent a lot of time in the Soak Zone, Braelynn got to ride a ton of rides (including the RolloCoaster!), we played in Jumping Jungle, played games, ate cheese fries & ice cream – it literally was a gorgeous, wonderful day (it just flew by way too fast)!

This year was Leander’s first visit to Idlewild Park & his first Community Picnic!

If you’d like a waltz down memory lane, you can find my past posts about our days at the Norwin Community Picnic here: Idlewild 2018, Idlewild 2017, Idlewild 2016, Idlewild 2015

Storybook Forest is the very first section of the park to open & I can’t lie: walking thru that section of the park with the “big” cousins has been a highlight of the day for me!

Representing!

Then it was off to play in the Soak Zone! We met up with Amy & Nathan and Ellen, Jonathan & Alethea there!

Uncle Cheese – the baby whisperer!

The ball pit in Jumping Jungle makes for the prettiest photos! I just love all the color!

These two have attended every Community Picnic together since 2012 & next year when they come, they’ll be married!!

Once again, my Dad emcee’d the giant prize drawing at the end of the night! He successfully kept everyone entertained, kept the drawing rolling along super smooth, and only embarressed my Mom 2 or 3 times along the way.

Along with Leander, this was Alethea’s first year to attend the Community Picnic too! And she won a prize!! She was the only one of our family to win this year!

After the drawing ended, we had a little more time to squeeze in a few more rides to cap off our wonderful day! And the cherry on top was Braelynn being tall enough to ride the RolloCoaster with Daddy!

See you next year, Idlewild!