Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center — Local services in Cedar Hill

This review is to help anyone thinking about planning a birthday party for a young child at this center. We were assessed a $100 “cleaning fee” because there were a couple smears of frosting and pizza sauce on the chairs and some spilled juice on a door mat. We were provided with no cleaning supplies (not even so much as a paper towel) to clean the room and I apologized for missing the spots of frosting when I cleaned up with baby wipes from my diaper bag. I suggested that a $100 cleaning fee is a bit excessive for 5 minutes worth of cleanup work and was then given a list of children’s behavior that inconvenienced their staff and justified the high fee. They accused us of leaving children unattended in the gift shop (said children were not with our party), breaking a white board (the white board was already broken when we arrived and “broke” several more times throughout our party and required about 30 seconds to fix) that they obviously knew was already broken, and drawing on their walls (I didn’t witness any children doing this, but their staff did think to leave the room well stocked with dry erase markers within children’s reach but claims they couldn’t leave a sponge, paper towels, hand broom/dustpan, soap, or any other type of cleaning supply on the countertops in the room for “safety reasons”). When I pointed out that their accusations about the unattended children and broken white board were false, instead of apologizing as any mortified false accuser would, they suddenly began to insist the fee was solely about the 5 minutes worth of cleanup work and not the rowdy children. This party was for a child turning 5. There were children as old as 7 in attendance. The staff has low tolerance for young kids and for admitting fault (the complete absence of cleaning supplies suggested to me that they wouldn’t be overly concerned about a missed smear of frosting). Their staff and facilities are poorly equipped for dealing with young children in light of their expectations about how the room should be left. Save yourself some money and book...

We had such high hopes for a nice Sunday morning hike here. I don't mean to sound like a total city slicker, buuuuuut the narrow trail we took from the Audobon Center parking lot was completely lined with poison ivy and so thick with spider webs (complete with absolutely giant spiders in them) literally blocking the trail, making it impossible to make it past even more than a few hundred feet and really make it into the preserve. Giant mosquitos, gnats flying in our faces... It's a really beautiful area, just incredibly dense with bugs and poisonous plants, made all that much closer to you by the narrow nature of the trail. It's very natural, yes. But for our 4 and 6 year olds, it just wasn't the family friendly hike we...

Today was the first time I hiked at the Dogwood Canyon Center and I found it confusing. The parking lot is shared with the Cedar Mountain Nature Preserve. While I thought I was on a Dogwood Canyon trail, I was not. As a rule, if you are on a paved surface, you are not on a Dogwood Trail. In fact, when you get to the parking lot, head to the building to the west of the parking lot (it is not hard to miss). You access the Dogwood trials via the building. Once we found out we were not on Dogwood trails and actually went to the building, we actually walked the West Loop trail. It is an enjoyable walk and I recommend it. Since I now know how to access the Dogwood Trail, I am sure I will find it...