Isn't Cake and Ice Cream still FUN?

I saw this story online at an Orlando paper. 
What do you think?
Annette

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Peer pressure pumps up parties
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Laura Brost and Mark Chediak
Sentinel Staff Writers

April 14, 2007

A balloon-covered ceiling will greet Kaitlyn Buddemeyer when she walks into the
Nickelodeon Family Suites hotel room on her 10th birthday next weekend.

Hand in hand with three friends who will be along for the milestone party,
Kaitlyn will visit the hotel's food court, play on the water slides, be treated
to a manicure and finish off the day snug in a colorful suite with popcorn to
top it off.

It's a birthday party far different from one that involves Pin the Tail on the
Donkey and a few cupcakes. But birthday parties that are more akin to mega
events don't seem to be out of the ordinary for today's children.

"I would have a sleepover at my house," said Kaitlyn's mom, Krystyn Buddemeyer
of Winter Garden, who borrowed the idea for a party at the Lake Buena Vista-area
hotel from a friend. "But I think that, honestly, the kids would be bored there
the way the parties are today."

To be sure, parents have been throwing birthday parties at pizza places, bowling
alleys and other kids' hot spots for years.

But these days, moms and dads say they feel more pressed for time and pressured
to keep up. They're increasingly willing to spend a little more on a party for
junior if it means less hassle, work and cleanup for them -- and that their
party will be as spectacular as the one the neighbors threw.

All this party planning, party hosting and gift giving means one thing: big
spending. Americans likely spend billions of dollars a year on birthdays. And
when children are the guests of honor, the costs can really soar.

One blog post on a Web site that urges parents to curb their spending mentions a
Windermere party that cost more than $200,000 for a 7-year-old's birthday.

Buddemeyer estimates she'll spend "$800, minimum."

Industry of birthdays

Not surprisingly, an entire industry has sprung up to cater to the demand, with
businesses promoting everything from video games to inflatable slides as the
best party option. And that doesn't even include the theme parks, where birthday
packages at Walt Disney World and SeaWorld Orlando can run hundreds of dollars
or more.

"Birthdays self-generate," said Shylo Sorensen, co-founder of Beat the Box in
Winter Park, which boasts more than 150 video games on big-screen TVs and
theater-style chairs for players. "If you do well and the parents talk about it,
it's like free marketing."

Sorensen said parties have become a bigger slice of his business in part because
parents enjoy not having to worry about the details of hosting the event. "They
can sit back and have a glass of wine," he said.

The cost of celebrating at Beat the Box: from $5.25 a person to $250 an hour for
a private party.

At Farris and Foster's Chocolate Factory in Orlando's Baldwin Park neighborhood,
parents and children pack the Willy Wonkalike store on weekends for
chocolate-making parties that cost $10 to $11 a person.

"It seems like the parties are bigger than I remember when my kids were growing
up," owner Jon Foster Lanenga said.

Suzie Sublette, 41, took her daughter Alex and Alex's friends last week to Club
Libby Lu, where rock-star-style makeovers for young girls can cost up to $35 a
person. Sublette chose the Florida Mall store for the fun -- the girls dressed
up in glitz and glitter for Alex's ninth birthday -- as well as the convenience
and time saved.

"Nowadays, we're just too busy," said Sublette, whose husband, Bill, is a former
Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives. "There's very little
time anymore to clean your house, shop for all the stuff. Kids today are much
more precocious than we were."

At SliderZ Adventure Center, a 10,000-square-foot facility in Oviedo filled with
inflatable houses, slides and moonwalks, birthday parties make up about 90
percent of sales. The cost to throw a party ranges from $150 to $450.

Co-owner Darcy Umstead, mother of three, said she thinks the parties at her
facility are sometimes more about the parents than the kids.

"I would say a lot of it is [pressure]," Umstead said. "Sometimes it's not about
the kids anymore. . . . There is that occasional family where they're trying to
measure up to Mr. and Mrs. Jones -- and that's where it loses its focus on the
kids."

'Can be really damaging'

Lynn Hartle, associate professor of early-childhood education at the College of
Education at the University of Central Florida, said all the emphasis on the
material side of parties could end up doing more harm than good.

"They can be really damaging in terms of children's outlook about what's
important in life," Hartle said.

The quest for bigger and better celebrations led one Midwestern professor to
co-found Birthdays Without Pressure, a group that helps parents find ways to
respond to social pressure and tone down parties.

William Doherty, a professor at the College of Education and Human Development
at the University of Minnesota, said he has heard from hundreds of parents
across the country who are concerned that birthday parties have gotten out of
control.

"It's an arms race -- and it's driven by a small percentage of parents who push
the envelope deliberately," Doherty said.

It was on Doherty's Web site -- BirthdaysWithoutPressure.org -- that the lavish
Windermere party showed up in a blog entry. The posting described a $250,000
event taking place in a rented ballroom. Highlights included limousine rides to
the event as well as helicopter and horse rides.

Oviedo resident Cheryl Hittel didn't spend quite as much on a recent party at
SliderZ for her daughter Sierra's eighth birthday, but she said the price tag
still seemed steep.

"This is an expensive party," Hittel, 45, said, estimating she spent about $200
for 18 kids to bounce, open bags of goodies and eat pizza and cake.

But along with the convenience of not having a party in her home, Hittel sees
other reasons for such parties.

"[It's] the socially acceptable thing to do. This is how it is now," she said.
"I don't see it going back to having cake and ice cream."

Laura Brost can be reached at lbrost@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6063. Mark
Chediak can be reached at 407-420-5240 or mchediak@orlandosentinel.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, Orlando Sentinel

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