A train trip to the Empire State Building with two girls, age 3 and 7, is not something to do on a whim, with little planning and few thoughts about crucial details, like survival.
Of course, that’s exactly what I did.
It was a noncamp week for the kids, which for parents is more painful than looking at pictures of a newly-skeletal Courtney Love. So I decided to try some fun day trips. The first one, to Mystic Aquarium, was a big success and made daddy feel like he could accomplish anything, such as free tickets to Xanadu.
The kids are frequent NYC vistors, but had never taken the train or visited some of the major tourist attractions, like the observatory on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.
So off we went, ready for adventure. The train ride was fine, if you can deal with constant squirming, fighting over lukewarm juice in a Hello Kitty water bottle and withering stares from the PDA crowd.
Walking nine blocks from Grand Central Terminal to The Empire State Building with two young kids is like being in a car with Lindsay Lohan — you know it’s going to end bad.
7-year-old: “Why can’t we cross?”
Father: “The sign is still a hand.”
7-year-old: “Everyone else is.”
Father: “They’re all going to get hit by buses and die.”
3-year-old: “Daaaaad, pick me up.”
This went on for nine blocks.
We arrived and found that a good chunk of the population of Europe had the same idea. Thankfully, my wife got tickets online, which allowed us to bypass one of the 16 lines you must stand in before reaching the observatory. The payoff: 20 minutes of awesome views, some nice photos and the guards repeatedly warning me to stop the 3-year-old from climbing through the fence barrier and plunging to her death.
My advice for visiting the Empire State Building with kids: Don’t go in the summer, buy tickets online and try Mystic Aquarium instead.