Will the kids dig Busch Garden's Sesame Street fun?

WILLIAMSBURG

The morning at our house began as usual, frantically. But not for the usual reasons.

"They both want to wear red," my wife said, "because of Elmo."

Within the hour we'd be headed to the Sesame Street Forest of Fun at Busch Gardens, a new effort in the park to put a fine point on their offerings for young kids. In the Sesame Street section, a short stroller push from the main entrance, the rides are set up so parents and children can get on together.

Curious if this new section would grab either of my kids, I offered the Busch Gardens folks a couple of human experimenters: Almost 7-year-old Ava and 4-year-old Sadie. Busch Gardens General Manager John Reilly said they thought of the Sesame Street area as good for kids up to about 9.

Sadie, I wasn't worried about. A couple of years ago she had toted an Elmo doll through airport security, twice, from here to Florida and back. Ava? I feared the Busch Gardens designers hadn't met a 7-year-old like her.

I believe she has previously described Sesame Street as "for BABIES."

But she was game. I think the phrase that lured her in was "It's at Busch Gardens."

Dressed in red (the girls, at least), we loaded up and headed to Williamsburg.

First up, breakfast with the Sesame characters. First wish: I sure hope Elmo is there.

It didn't take long to find out. We had barely dished up our food at the breakfast buffet when the Sesame Street characters - Elmo, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, a couple I didn't know - oozed onto the stage and began singing and dancing: "Sunny Day, sweeping the clouds away."

Huge smiles. Grins of disbelief. TV is one thing, but big fuzzy characters two or three times the size of a kid make an impression.

"Daddy," Ava said, "this is so funny."

"I didn't know Cookie Monster would be so gigantic," Sadie said.

On the way there, the girls had debated their own Sesame Street mystery: Is Elmo a boy or girl? But they forgot all about that, and forgot about their scrambled eggs too, when Elmo and Big Bird posed for photos on the stage and the others walked into the crowd.

Sadie, the Sesame Street fan, didn't want to go onstage for the photos, didn't want to hug or dance with any of them walking around. She became a skeptic. "Daddy, is Elmo really real?"

Meanwhile, Ava agreed to hug Cookie Monster and dance with him - or her. The characters seem good at sizing up the kids, so Bert walked up and gradually coaxed a hug out of Sadie.

Then Bert got a dance out of Ava. She smiled and giggled the whole time. She was downright giddy.

And Sadie, she found her own amusement.

"Daddy," she yelled, "a grown-up hugged Ernie!"

After breakfast we headed to the new area. The Sesame Street Forest of Fun is in the England section of Busch Gardens and, for the first time, features rides that parents and children can do together.

It's been in the works for three years, said John Reilly, general manager of Busch Gardens and Water Country USA. While it may seem that Sesame Street characters don't have much to do with old-world Europe, Reilly explained the tie-in:

"Sesame Street Forest of Fun is the characters' imagination of what a European adventure looks like."

Or, as Sadie put it, "Daddy, Elmo's dressed up like a king."

So the four rides are: Prince Elmo's Spire, a "shot-n-drop" ride; Bert and Ernie's Loch Adventure, a boat ride; Oscar's Whirly Worms, a spinning and rotating experience; and Grover's Alpine Adventure, a rollercoaster.

Our tour guide for the day, park spokesman Bruce Wilson, pointed out that there is only one entrance/exit for the Sesame Street section, so parents can more easily keep track of their children - a great idea for kids this age. And it's near the park entrance, so they don't have to push strollers too far.

Wilson told us the flume ride was for very young children, but the girls wanted to try it first. They got into the boat, which travels a loop in shallow water, and putted around.

"I agree with you," Ava told Wilson when she got out. "This is for littler kids."

"You're right," Sadie chimed. "This is for littler kids."

"Now can we go on the rollercoaster?" Ava asked.

Sadie backed out. "I want to watch Ava on the rollercoaster." Then she saw it: "There goes the rollercoaster and Grover."

Grover's likeness is embedded in the bow of the first car of the rollercoaster. Ava and I got into the rollercoaster, and I sensed it was for real when we pulled a pretty serious restraint down over us. The announcer warned us to hold on, because Grover's Alpine Express is "fast enough to be fun."

And it was. It took a couple of mildly aggressive dips and turns, and when it pulled into the station, Ava gave it a stellar rating.

"Oh my gosh! I couldn't even look. Sadie, I couldn't even look. Can we go again?"

Reilly said the Sesame Street area aims to appeal to children between ages 2 and 9, and it had plenty to entertain my girls. And parents who were kids in the '70s and beyond will no doubt get a huge nostalgia kick.

It was a nonride that enticed Sadie. Oscar's Yucky Forest, a take-off on the Black Forest of Germany, is a colorful, rubberized playground.

"Daddy, can I go over the bridge?"

Sure. (Isn't it great when a parent gets to say "yes"?)

So they ran around on that and played the low-tech kid game of "try to catch me." Sadie ran in the tunnel and hid in a cave and chased other kids over the bridge. Ava wanted another ride, so she got onto the spire, a tower ride that drops riders then bounces them to a stop, then drops them again.

I couldn't hear what Ava was saying, but she was laughing the whole time. As she got off, a mother stopped next to me: "She was very entertaining with her giggling up there."

We all did Oscar's Whirly Worms, which whips you around pretty well.

Later, we got some lunch and checked out rides in other sections of the park, and Ava and her grandfather lined up for the Pompei flume ride several times.

I asked Sadie what she wanted to do.

"Daddy, can we go to Sesame Street?"

Yes.

Lon Wagner, (757) 446-2341, lon.wagner@pilotonline.com