FAMILY OUTING
Three ways to make your kid’s next party extra cool.
Forget the magic tricks. Parents looking for birthday party entertainment that stands apart from the rest can order snowfall in their backyard, allow 12-feet-tall walking dinosaurs to roam, or bring in a real-life snake handler.
Ice Express, the locally owned company that provides ice for commercial purposes, offers birthday parties that are the ultimate cool factor.
In flat Houston, they’ll provide snow hills and tobogganing. By way of snow blasting that creates ice flakes, they create a snow pile in which kids can make snow angels and snowballs year-round.
Or, they install a steel ramp with a ladder that the staff covers with 10,000 pounds of ice. Disks are provided for a toboggan ride down the hill.
“We sincerely have the best job out there because the kids have not experienced snow,” Paul Carpenter says of most children in Houston. “When it’s 100 degrees outside, it is a fantastic response from the child.”
When “Frozen 2” is released in November, he expects to be inundated with party requests. Some hosts provide snow gloves for guests or ask kids to bring their winter wear, no matter when the party takes place.
For a Cool That Pool party, hosts can go to the Ice Express headquarters and pick up 2,000 pounds of ice for $200 to put in their swimming pool. The bags act as floats, Carpenter says. This is a cost effective alternative to snow blasting, which begins around $800 (iceexpress.com).
“Anybody can get a bounce house, anybody can get gaming trucks,” Carpenter says he tells parents. “It’s an outdoor interactive experience that you’re going to provide for the parents and the children, and it’s going to create a really cool memory.”
Prehistoric fun
Oscar Bravo founded Jurassic Extreme in 2015 when he was helping his then 3-yearold son research dinosaurs online and came across a dinosaur costume on YouTube.
The family-owned business now owns 11 sculpted-foam dinosaur costumes that their adult staff members wear to birthday parties.
With blinking eyes, roaring sounds and tails that sway smoothly, the 12-foot-long costumes are realistic enough that young Jurassic Extreme
children often ask if they’re real, Bravo says.
The kids “walk” the dinosaurs, race with them, get tickled by the beasts and put their hands inside the costume’s mouth opening to feed the dinos popcorn.
“It’s just something that we’ve never seen in person,” Bravo explains of the universal appeal of dinosaurs to kids.
The most requested dino is the Tyrannosaurus rex. The triceratops is the largest costume and takes two people to operate. It’s wider than the other dinos and conceals the operators’ legs for a more realistic gait.
Other male and female dinos have names such as Rocco, Razor, Reese, Riley and Roxie. Babies are available, too.
Many parties incorporate a “Jurassic Park” theme. At one party, the guest of honor blew out candles on a volcano cake that erupted with lava. “Some parents go all out,” Bravo says.
Parties start at $375 (houstondinosaurs.com).
Slithering friends
Clint Pustejovsky, owner of Texas Snakes & More, begins his party presentation with a rhythmic, auctioneer-style list of all the animals that he says are more dangerous than snakes, including dogs, cats, guinea pigs, horses, sheep, rabbits and cows.
It’s a way of acclimating guests to the nonvenomous snakes he brings for them to hold, such as corn snakes, pine snakes, gopher snakes, pythons and boa constrictors. Yes, the kids hold boas.
A snake of that size is always the grand finale of the party, and the host gets to hold it first. Or, if he or she is too small, all of the guests will line up to hold a section.
About 35 percent of kids’ birthday parties he attends are hosted by girls, he says. For one hour of entertainment, pricing is $200$225, depending on ZIP code (texassnakes.net).
Parents in attendance often want to hold a snake for a photo op, too, he says. They tell Pustejovsky they want to use the picture for their social-media profile.
“Usually the kids are braver,” he laughs. “The grown-ups have to kind of ease into it. ‘If that kid can do it, I can do it.’ ”