Community Corner

Moms Talk: Best Places to Have Birthday Parties

Some suggestions from Potomac moms on the great places around the area to have birthday parties for any age.

Birthday parties are a time to celebrate your child’s accomplishments and another year of health and happiness—but sometimes the real dilemma is where to host the parties!

While homes may be a great option for birthday parties in Potomac, many families may want to try new venues for birthday fun no matter the age.

We turned to the for a few of their suggestions, but the list doesn’t end here. Don’t be a party pooper! Add your opinions, experiences and thoughts in the comment section below.

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: Rockville SportsPlex is a great place to hold a birthday party for elementary school age kids! They make it easy for the parents and fun for the kids. Your sports-loving kid can choose his favorite sport like soccer, football, basketball, dodgeball or a mix of two, and you don't have to stress about the weather because all the fields and courts are indoors!  

Once you're there, the SportsPlex has a coach ready to engage the kids and run the game, and all you have to do is bring the cake. They have a party room ready and make sure the pizza (if you've chosen that) arrives at an exact time. At the end, the kids get tokens to play in the game room while you wind down and chat with parents picking up their kids. You cart the gifts to the car and you're done. No clean up and a good time had by all.

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: We are hosting our very first child's birthday party outside of our house this summer at the ! We are very excited about it and expect it to be a great time.

: We just celebrated my daughter's 7th birthday at Adventure Theater in Glen Echo this past weekend. I'd highly recommend it for the 7-year-old crowd! Her class had just been to see the previous production there and they raved about it so I figured this would be a hit. The production was excellent and the kids had a great time. 

They have two party rooms, one smaller and one larger, which was nice because I knew we wanted to have a smaller group. Plus the smaller room is less expensive so that worked out well. One of the best parts of our (or at least my) experience there was that the party comes with a "host", i.e. a person there to meet you and your guests, help with the party and generally make everything run smoothly. That was great! I had totally underestimated how nice that would be. It meant I actually got to enjoy the party rather than run around corralling kids and cutting and serving cake like a madwoman.

In the process of planning the birthday party, we also looked into Imagination Stage in Bethesda, Lilly Magilly's cupcake place at the Rio Washingtonian Center and in the Cabin John Mall. Lilly Magilly's is really cute but I didn't think there was enough for 7 year olds to do. I think it would be much better for 5 year olds. My daughter went to a party at TropiCuts and loved it so that was a strong contender, too. And, I'm sure Imagination Stage would be good too -- we love their productions. 

In the past we did a party at The Little Gym in Potomac, which is a popular place, clean and well run. We've never thrown a party at Build a Bear but been to one and my daughter liked it. Before the Little Gym last year and Adventure Theater this year we always did them at our house which worked out really well -- we always seemed to luck out on weather. I was happy I didn't plan that this year b/c it was rainy on party day.  

A few years ago, we went to a party at the Cabin John Park Volunteer Fire Department's Fire Station on River Road, which was fun and very hands on (i.e. trying on fireman's boots, hats, etc and getting on the trucks) -- a great party spot for little boys. And, for my 2-year-old son, we started his 2-year-old party (which was small, mostly family) at Cabin John Park with playtime and a ride on the train and then went back to our house for dinner and desert. I found it surprisingly expensive to rent a picnic pavilion at the park and going back home for food and cake worked just as well. 


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