Krazy Village/Jungle Wonder

On Saturday afternoon, all fired up from many weeks of Wii Bowling, Tater asked if we could go "real" bowling.

So I called the famous Downingtown Bowling Palace and, not all that surprisingly, all of their lanes were booked until 8PM. Too late for kid bowling.

So I used the handy-dandy Google search feature and put in "Bowling 19425" to find nearby bowling venues. There were a few lanes on there, but more interestingly, the search turned up a place called Jungle Wonder.

And when you see Jungle Wonder on the search results, you have to check that out, right?

So I clicked through and saw that Jungle Wonder, in Limerick, PA boasts and impressive 25,000 square feet of fun things like Black Light Mini Golf, Laser Tag, and "Mini Bowling".

Clicking through on their site there is a related place called Krazy Village, at the same address, offering exactly the same things. Odd.

Of course Saturday passed by in a blur. We had a new DVD of the Muppet Show that had to be watched, and then there was some reading and some playing with the dog. So we decided that Sunday would be the day to check out Jungle Wonder/Krazy Village.

It took just about 40 minutes to get there from our place - if you have an concept of where the new Philadelphia Premium Outlets are (and you should find them if you don't!) KV/JW is a few miles down the other direction on Ridge Pike (if you take a Left from 422 to go to the outlets, turn Right to go to KV/JW).

After a fruitless attempt to find a McDonald's for lunch (is there seriously not one right in Collegeville?) we had a quick introduction to Sonic before heading in to play.

It is a little confusing because there is a big sign on the upstairs of the one side of the building that says "Krazy Village", but no indication of where to go in. On the opposite side of the building is a smaller sign for the entrance to "Jungle Wonder". They are really pretty much the same facility - I am not sure why they don't just pick a name and go with it. Free marketing tip there.

Not knowing how long everything would take we decided to do the Black Light Mini Golf and the Mini Bowling.

Black Light Mini Golf was very cool. The room that the course is in is dark, and the edges of the "greens" and the scenery are all painted in neon so they glow in the black light.

It is very hard to judge distance in black light, but the kids enjoyed it and we didn't actually keep score. That little white stripe on the left side of the picture is Sprout's shirt...hard to take pictures with a camera phone in the dark...

There are only 9 holes on the course, so - cool as it was, Black Light Mini Golf took about 10 minutes to complete. I think we could have easily held onto our balls for another round, but that probably wouldn't be sending the right message to the kids...right?

So we moved on to Mini Bowling. It is essentially arcade bowling. The balls are smallish - kind of like Ski Ball balls. The pins are also smallish, and hanging on strings. The dynamics are quite different from regular bowling and WAY different from the Wii Bowling that we have all gotten used to. So we kind of sucked at this. But it was still fun.

And that took about another 20 minutes.

So we went back and signed up for the Balladium and Laser Tag. If I had realized ahead of time that we were going to be burning through activities I would have gotten the "Fun Pack" which essentially lets the kids do everything for $19.95. Our total tab was right around there and they didn't get to climb on the big "Jungle Gym". Live and learn.

Anyway - Balladium. This was a room full of air-shooter things. There were balls all over the floor and the kids had to gather up the balls, put them in the shooters and shoot at targets on the other side of the room. They loved this.


It would have been more fun with a bigger crowd of kids so they could have teams and compete. But my two guys just were right next to each other shooting away. Still fun though.

There were safety glasses in there, but we didn't see them until they were almost done. Safety glasses would have been good.

Finally, the kids went and played Laser Tag, which they say was fun, but I have to take their word for it because there was no way to observe. They went in happy and came out happy, so I have to assume they had a good time.

Krazy Village/Jungle Wonder seems to be quite the birthday party destination and in addition to the attractions that we enjoyed, they also have an extensive arcade, a big climber/Jungle Gym and pool tables. There are about 10 party rooms and they have only one entrance/exit so it is fairly easy to make sure no children escape (and yet again, I would have to ask, why 2 names and only one entrance? Confusing!)

We were happy with our little discovery and will have to go back again sometime soon. But I already promised Tater, next weekend we will do REAL bowling!