Giggles and chortles with kids at Party Fantasy
BY IRV LEAVITT ileavitt@pioneerlocal.com January 27, 2012 4:10PM
Irv Leavitt, The Unemployee, joined the crew at Party Fantasy Jan. 22 in Mundelein. | Brian O'Mahoney~for Sun-Times Media
Party boy
Party Fantasy
342 Townline Road
Mundelein
Article Extras
Updated: February 10, 2012 8:28AM
As I walked around pouring Sprite for 20 little kids at a birthday party, a 6-year-old looked up at me and asked, “Are you a clown?”
I was taken aback.
Most ladies who ask me that are much older.
“You talk funny,” she said. “Say something funny.”
Let me understand this because, you know, maybe it’s me. I’m a little confused, maybe, but I’m funny how? You say I’m funny like I’m a clown. I amuse you?
This got a good little giggle, because first-graders have not yet heard this stuff done to death.
But the truth was I looked like a clown not because I was funny, but funny-looking.
It was the stupid hat. Mostly.
Malerie Cope, the general manager of Party Fantasy in Mundelein, had given me a blindingly bright yellow baseball cap. I was the only employee who wore one. All my fellow workers had left theirs on the bus or something.
I also got a matching two-sizes-too-small T-shirt to model while I labored at the big playhouse at 342 Townline Road.
“This is plenty big for our employees,” Cope said, holding up the shirt and smiling sweetly. “They are mainly 16-year-old girls.”
The hat actually came in handy: Many parents figured that nobody wearing such a thing could possibly be in a position of power. So they left me alone.
But there were plenty of others who ignored the hat and noticed the obvious signs that I was by far the oldest employee on the floor.
There were times when I couldn’t walk more than a few steps without being stopped.
“Where should I put his boots?” “Are you sure there are no peanuts or tree nuts in this?” “Do you have to wear shoes in the go-carts?” “Our party starts at 3. Why is there someone else in our party room?” “This game doesn’t give out as many tickets as it says it does. So can I have two free tokens?” “Three tokens?” “Five tokens?”
The kids are fine, said one of my fellow employees, Jordan Fahrner, 19, as we both worked at the go-cart track. “It’s the adults that act up.”
A short time later, a bubbly blonde mom demonstrated what he meant. When my back was turned, she sashayed in front of another mother so she could get to a two-seat go-cart first.
Mom No. 2 had a lot of unkind things to say, but Blondie was oblivious as she puttered around the track with her offspring. I assured the wronged woman that she would ride next, and the steam stopped coming out of her ears.
But if this bothered her so much, I thought, I’d hate to see her when she gets a letter from the IRS.
Cope told us at the start of the day to keep smiling, and to never say No.
“Talk to the kids, talk to the parents,” she said. “Give it 110 percent. Show you’re excited to be here.
“At the end of the party, we’ll know very well who to schedule (for work shifts), who not to schedule, and who to send home immediately.”
Murphy lays down the law
All the arcade games are new — Party Fantasy opened in October — but we had the bad luck of four of them going haywire at exactly the same time.
For most, the problem involved the tickets that you can trade in for stuffed animals and such. The prizes are nicer than at most similar places — one lady liked a plush frog so much she bought it with cash — but the intensity with which the parents worry over their ticket winnings is bizarre. Especially because the kids don’t squawk much at all.
One gent apologized for complaining that a pink gizmo that looked like a radioactive hassock for Cinderella didn’t put out the way the numbers read.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m into it. I’m a gamer.”
I’m not a gamer. The following is how I remember what he said had happened.
“When it hits No. 6, it reverses, then a laser beam runs around the metal track until the little cricket player hits it to the short-center fielder. Then you get 3,000 Penguin Points, which entitle you to a ride around the Higgs boson. The little flipper explodes, automatically dialing the National Security Council, and a Halls Mentho-Lyptus slides down this chute, and either goes into Barbie’s mouth or the second circle of Hell. Either way, you’re supposed to get at least 40,000 tickets. I got seven.”
I went to get Cope.
She reloaded the machine, then pressed a large flashing button, and tickets started tripping out. This disturbed the gentleman.
“Aw, that’s not fun,” he said. “I wanted to do that.”
If I knew where they kept the lollipops, I would have given him one.
Party Fantasy does something many other establishments of its ilk do not. At the parties in the private rooms, the guests don’t ever have to leave their seats, because they’re served by a staff member, who stays the whole time, except to restock pizza and pop, etc. This way, the kids tend to remain relatively stationary and actually hang out with each other.
Drink to the foam
As I walked back from the kitchen with a pitcher of Sprite, I noticed it was half foam. I went back and tried to whip off some of it with a flick of my wrist, but accidentally hit the Diet Coke lever. A gout of brown pop discharged itself into the right side of the pitcher.
I jerked to the left, and injected a red stream of Hi-C Flashin’ Fruit Punch into the other side.
I ran through a couple of gallons of pop this way.
Stuff like this is likely the reason that Cope wouldn’t assign me to hooking up kids who wanted to scale the climbing wall.
My favorite parent, Ciprian Hogea, wouldn’t let us do all the party-room work. He walked around happily with a pan of pizza, bringing seconds to the kids helping his twins Eddie and Ray celebrate their eighth birthdays.
He was full of the moment. “This is so wonderful,” he actually said at one point.
I have to think people appreciate things like Party Fantasy more if they’ve lived in a place like Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania, where people woke up two hours early to stand in line for a bottle of milk.
For the kids, the happiest part of Party Fantasy may be the simplest, the big inflated devices that take up half the building. This should be no surprise to anyone who’s organized a charity carnival and spent thousands on elaborate rides only to find most of the kids lined up at the bouncy house.
Samantha Gottlieb supervised that area all day. She didn’t have to be told to smile. Her world was filled with giggles and cackles and racing, stockinged feet.
When you see little kids put on Velcro-striped suits and hurl themselves at a Velcro-covered inflatable wall, and stick, how do you frown?
It was Gottlieb’s third day at Party Fantasy. She’s 40.
“I was working at Gap Kids, and I couldn’t get enough hours, so I tried this,” she said.
“I figure I might as well just work here. I like kids.”
I told a couple of little, non-competitive girls that I wanted to see who was faster on the big slide, and as I watched them try to best each other, I thought, “I could do this all day, too.”
I got on the jousting platform, and roughhoused with three little boys. After about 10 minutes, they had me cornered.
The toughest of their little band, Kevin Iordan, 6, said, “It’s OK. I’ll be on your side.”
You never know when you’re going to develop pride in a generation, but the time always arrives.
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