What's the worst kids party you've been to

[T181]

Please give me some examples of the worst kids party you've been to?? Im hosting one on Sunday for 25 children and actually am so worried about it I need some real life stories to calm my nerves

No really terrible parties but one struck me as quite odd. Ds was in nursery and got invited to a 1year old party of a classmate. He was also 1. They were babies so weren't friends of course but I thought perhaps parents wanted to do a party but didn't know many people/wanted to make friends etc so I went along.
It was in a soft-play and I had to ask a member of staff to point out party mum to me. She was surrounded by a group of friends, said a quick "oh thanks" when I handed the gift over then completely ignored us both for the rest of the party. No cake time or any sort of activity where the group sat down together so it was literally free entry to soft play in exchange for a gift.
I had a nice enough time as another boy and his dad from nursery were in the same situation so we chatted and the babies played but I'm still puzzled about why she invited us.

They are all shit, ask anyone any age about their best childhood party and they’ll all struggle because no one remembers them, a 10 year old will not remember any before their eighth and by 18 all memories are wiped.

We've been to two lovely ones in the last three weeks...

I think you're going a bit light on the food if I'm honest. My little boy would be ravenous after 2 hours running around and eats lunch at 11:30/12. Personally I'd add a sandwich and a piece of fruit per child to that and lose the alpen bar, it's quite a strange thing to give a child in the middle of the day, a small yoghurt might be better.

They just eat all the sandwiches the kids eschewed in favour of cake at the parties I've been to.

Luckily we are at the stage now where we can leave the oldest and pick her up when party finished. I always wondered what the etiquette was with taking your own snacks to a party as it is the child that is catered for but if it is over a lunch time say I would be hungry.

Years ago for a 3rd birthday party, someone hired a football club hall.

All good. Except it was the middle of winter and they wouldn’t pay for the heating so it was bitter cold.

The music was an iPod docked in a station.

The entertainment was colouring pages which were scattered across the floor by kids running around.

I had to leave dh there with dd (who was the main party guest) and go home with 1 year old ds because he had turn blue from it being so cold.

That's horrendous. I was reading down looking for my DD's various parties to be mentioned. We've had a few corkers, but all guests have survived so far.

In no particular order, disasters have included:

• ExH being his usual incompetent, passive aggressive self and taking DD, DS and DD's friend to the wrong zoo (instantly outs self), meaning she was 1.5 hours late for her own 2-hour party. All the other children kept asking where DD was and I was so upset.

• DD getting so excited about having a 'real princess' at her party that she was overwhelmed and sat quietly on my lap at the side of the room, refusing to take part in any games.

• DD and friends running riot around the house, screaming at top volume and throwing popcorn at eachother while I tried and failed to get them to watch a film. I gave up and we had a glowstick disco in the living room instead.

I think I've managed to selectively forget the rest. I told both DC last year that there would be no more birthday parties. They're far more stress than they're worth, particularly when most people don't RSVP so I have no idea how many people are actually going to show up.

I went to one years ago. Two year old party. In a library. Kids were fed only raw vegetables and fruit, and allowed to just look at the cake when the candles were blown out. About an hour before the supposed end of the party, the birthday child was bundled out and taken home to go to bed because it was their nap time.

Some people are crackers.

My DH (Spanish) still doesn't believe me that we used to dance to the Macarena at eeevery kids party or school disco when I was a kid because it's actually a pretty raunchy song. The chorus and first verse translate to:

Give happiness to your body Macarena
'cause your body is for giving happiness and nice things to
Give happiness to your body Macarena
Heeey,… Macarena! Aaay!

Macarena has a boyfriened who's called…
who's called the last name Vitorino,
and while he was taking his oath as a conscript
she was giving it to two friends…Aaay!

😬 Needless to say he's banned the song from DCs parties 😂😂

😂😂 ok I properly laughed out loud at this one

They were all awful, whether or not I was the host or invitee. The best one was at my younger bother's party when his friends threw sausages around, marking the newly papered dining-room wall. Mother was horrified! Oh, how I laughed (aged 10, bother got into a lot of trouble). But as a parent, they were the bane of my life. I hated holding them or attending them. Thank God that part of my life is well and truly over.

A few years ago a Mum in DC’s class was panicking as she’d hired a hall for her child’s party but had no time to set up and was worried as she’d never hosted a party before. A few of us (suckers) offered to go along to help and basically had to run the entire party.

We set up the hall, blew up the balloons, put up the decorations, made the sandwiches, organised the entertainer and were expected to wait on her family hand and foot whilst they sat there like royalty. The parents didn’t pay any attention to their child or even make sure they had something to eat.

The final insult was when the mother decided to set up a party planning business.

I think you're going a bit light on the food if I'm honest. My little boy would be ravenous after 2 hours running around and eats lunch at 11:30/12. Personally I'd add a sandwich and a piece of fruit per child to that and lose the alpen bar, it's quite a strange thing to give a child in the middle of the day, a small yoghurt might be better.

I agree with this. 10-12 you really need to be feeding kids lunch. Not sure why you've chosen a softplay venue with no kitchen, presumably because it's cheaper? You need to add a sandwich and some fruit/veg sticks and alpen bars are a really weird thing to feed to 4 year olds. They're not kids food or party food

Mine is nowhere near as bad as others but recently went to a 4th birthday party in a leisure centre with a bouncy castle which kept collapsing with kids inside! Two staff members were sat on chairs directly in front of the bouncy castle and just sat chatting while it slowly deflated, trapping a dozen four year olds under suffocating plastic. Fortunately some parents rushed forwards to try and hold it up while all the kids scrambled out. After the 5th time it happened birthday mum told the staff she'd be asking for a refund of her party cost as the bouncy castle was unusable and they finally dragged themselves off their arses to fix it.

Then we moved to the "food room". Food all laid out but staff didn't want the kids to eat until they'd sorted the music, which they couldn't get to work. Eventually birthday mum told the kids to eat. When they did finally sort the music it was completely inappropriate for a 4th birthday party. So loud the kids couldn't hear each other speaking and it was all Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion (not radio edits). Completely gross and inappropriate for 4 year olds

So mean-spirited of you to take the gift away. It's hardly the birthday child's fault that their party was shit

One where the kids had a quarter of a sandwich, a few crisps and slice of cucumber dished out by the parents, nothing else. Also no entertainment other than a couple of party games but no prizes.

Another where the mum was so proud about cutting costs by making each child a paper food bag but the food was awful and sparse, she’d made her own gluten free & vegan chocolate cupcakes, none of the kids ate them. They did the happy birthday and cake but didn’t cut the cake as they were saving it until the next day 🤷🏼‍♀️

last one, I would not say awful, there was a DJ, bar for those who wanted it, plenty of games but the parents did the food but hadn’t prepped or taken into account cooking times in a tiny kitchen they had never used before. They had obviously invited a lot of friends and family and were also trying to feed the adults. The kids got a little food 10mins before we left. It was in the evening too around tea time so the kids were famished. The DJ helped a lot by giving out lots of sweets and lots of crisps bought at the bar.

if your doing food, my advice is plenty of prep, and do the basics, parties are for kids pigging out on crap. After doing lots and trying to be fancy, I now keep it basic, bowls of crisps, some carrot & cucumber as a healthy option, sometimes I will do fruit kebab sticks, cupcakes & biscuits all out of packets. For main it’s usually plain sandwiches, ham, cheese etc… my last 2 parties I just put all the snacks out and preordered pizza, it’s what the kids wanted. If your doing hot food yourself make sure you have preheated the oven in plenty of time, pizza, chicken nuggets & fries are my go to. Another it is hotdogs, the parents love them too.

always ask for dietary requirements though. My last parities (with new children and parents I hadn’t previously hosted) there were a number but I was able to make sure there was sufficient for all.

Host had spent loads of money on bizarrely giant balloon display, but hired a very cheap entertainer who insisted on playing top volume music on her disco deck even though the children were complaining, some crying about headaches, and 5 of them had their hands over their ears. My husband asked her to turn the music down which she sulkily did but then she turned it back up again. The same entertainer was also doing face painting, tattoos, and blowing up balloons, which meant the children spent huge chunks of time in a looong queue. Weirdly there wasn’t anything for the children to actually ‘do’ apart from dance around to the insane music.

We left after 30 min and never accepted an invite from that host again!!

I think thats too much sweets theyll be off their faces you should have offered sandwiches and juice

The party sounds fine OP. I’m not sure about the Alpen bar if I’m honest but I’m general it sounds good.

What!? They still do this one at the kids disco in pontins

Not me but a party dd went to when she was about 5. Dd hates cheese with an absolute passion. Right from when she first started eating she wouldn't touch the stuff. She's 15 and she has still never eaten it. This is relevant....

So I dropped Dd off at a party in a church hall. There were only 12 kids there and party mum had recruited the next door neighbour's teenagers. I had warned party mum about the cheese and was assured this was fine as there was a party buffet and there was plenty for dd to choose from. So I come back later to find dd still at the party table, a curled up dry cheese sandwich and nothing else on her plate, dd in absolute floods of tears and party mum absolutely furious. Apparently dd was a spoilt rotten child, party mum didn't believe in fussy eaters or wasting food and dd wouldn't be getting anything else to eat until she had eaten the cheese sandwich. Neither was allowed to get up and join in the fun until she had finished the sandwich. This had been going on for 45 minutes at this point. Dd was absolutely inconsolable and took her most of the evening to calm down as apparently party mum had shouted at dd several times infront of everyone including getting everyone to look at the silly child.

When it was dd's party a few months later she was adamant neither sandwiches or cheese would be featuring. Platters piled high with absolutely everything else dh was eating party food in his lunchbox for a week. And I didn't give a toss if kids mixed chicken nuggets, crisps, fruit and sweets on the same plate.

The whole class football party I took my daughter to when she was 6. We got there and the dad had arranged a whole football tournament, complete with medals and trophies, but only for the boys. This would have been fine if they were the only children invited, or the girls that were there didn’t want to play, but they’d all gone wanting to play. The girls were just hanging around with nothing to do and not getting why they weren’t allowed to play. I still get angry about this years later.

Probably my eldest sons 5th birthday party. Invitations handed out before the half term week, 1 child attended 😩 out of the 20 or so invited. Awful for him. Luckily a couple of older cousins also attended and tried to make the best of it for him. So much party food left and loads of party bags not handed out.

Followed by a flurry of apologies from all the mums on the first day back at school on the Monday, who’d found the invitations languishing at the bottom of their kids bags when clearing them out, ready to come back to school.

My fault entirely, I sent the invitations out WAY too late, and didn’t give myself a chance to chase them up with the mums at the school gate. Rookie error! Lesson learnt, I never made that mistake again!

You are definitely light on food for a 2 hour party with kids running around. I would expect a lot more.

We had a slightly similar scenario, it was a party in a football club. The whole class was invited. When they arrived they separated girls and boys, took the girls off to do art and crafts whilst the boys had a full on (taken very seriously) football match.
Ds spent ages gazing wistfully at the art activities. The birthday girl's mum was bemused and annoyed, she'd booked a football party because her dd was super sporty and loved football. Some people are strange!!