Birthday party and product reviews

Cake: I ordered the cake from Sams Club; they get some points because they didn't have a "licensing fee" to use the Cars characters (Giant Eagle did) and their cake was cheaper overall.  My mom was able to pick it up for me on the way to the party, so it was good for convenience purposes.  It was a very affordable $21 for a 1/2 sheet cake (which was waaaaaay too much, I feel like I always over order food!)  The cake was cute (and Jake loved it, which is really all that matters) and the cake part of it was good, not dry at all...the icing was ok.  It almost had a gummy like texture (and I'm used to the gritty, sugary, rot-your-teeth kind of icing from Giant Eagle).  But it was good, I'd order again and just know that the icing has a bit of a different taste to it. 

Favors: Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the favor bags I put together.  The party place provided their own favors, so I only wanted to add a few "Cars" touches to go with the theme.  I picked up Lightning McQueen favor bags from Walmart, then hit the jackpot at Target for the actual favors.  Right after Christmas, they had a bunch of stuff from the dollar bins marked down 75% off (see?  it pays off to stalk the dollar bins!)  and I was able to score some Cars pens and magnets.  I added in some Cars fruit snacks and the bags were all set!

Wildwood Highlands:  I was really, really happy with our choice for the party site.  I had never been there, but I had heard good things and they had decently priced packages for birthday parties.  I was happy that (unlike most places) the price per child included food.  They received admission to the play place, tokens for the arcade games, a bag of goldfish, lunch (hot dog or pizza), dippin dots ice cream and drinks.  We had the room for an hour and a half, then the kids were able to stay and play as long as they wanted to (or until their parents could drag them out) the room was a good size and we had 2 party coordinators the whole time, who led the kids in games, took food orders, cut the cake, wrote down all of the gifts and who gave them and loaded them all up for us to take home.   They let me drop all of my stuff off there earlier in the week, so literally all we had to do the morning of the party was show up with the cake and the birthday boy.

Obviously, we were there in the winter, so we were limited to indoor activities, but they have a ton of stuff to do there.  And I'll be keeping it in mind for one of his older birthday parties, I think he'd love a laser tag party.