Monkey Joe's Camp Hill — Local services in Lower Allen

Rowdy patrons aside, this place wasn't terrible. The food was standard fare that one would expect from a children's venue. Why these places think cardboard pizza and gluey cheese fries are acceptable for children is beyond me.

The staff was friendly enough, albeit stressed out and openly complaining about their low wages. Personally, I don't blame them. Professionally, it's better to leave for greener pastures than to stew in misery. However, they had absolutely no illusion of control over the raucous crowd and the entitled little monsters ran roughshod over the more well mannered guests. If the male staff members spent more time exhibiting a sense of crowd control and less time embarrassing themselves by making the beleaguered mothers uncomfortable with their hamfisted attempts to "score" with them, I'm certain everyone's experience would have been better. Except for the state of the equipment...

These air filled wash rags were filthy, threadbare, and stickier than molasses. With no exceptions, every child I saw attempt to take a trip down any slide was met with severe disappointment as their expected thrilling ride was halted immediately upon contact with the gooey plastic. Physics reared its ugly head time after time as their forward momentum often caused them to abruptly, violently roll down, careening from wall to wall. Occasionally they plopped down, expecting to slide, only to look like a wacky sticky hand slapped unceremoniously onto a kitchen wall: stuck fast. Not one child slid. Not even the ones in pajamas.

All of this was lost on the staff and the other parents. Mostly, the other parents were busy making sure the group of bully children weren't accosting their little ones while the staff was busy with anything but that.

The piece de resistance was the abhorrent stench emanating from the soiled plastic when I ventured into one of the charnel pits to retrieve my daughter's scrunchy because the bully kids were preventing the other children from entering while the staff looked on in amusement.

Needless to say, we're won't be recommending this...

Beware of this establishment if you have pre schoolers or timid/smaller elementary kids. The facility itself is good, but it was overcrowded this Saturday. Do they limit the number of kids that can come in? Not one of the houses had a staff member monitoring how many kids were in each house or monitoring poor behavior of very aggressive older kids. This set up for an unsafe environment. There were clear limits written on the # of kids that were to be in each house, but there is no way the kids, or even a guardian/parent, could monitor that themselves. Some kids were literally jumping up and over some of the walls in one of the houses without a care as to whether a smaller child was on the other side. There are age limits on some of the houses, but the older kids didn't care and wouldn't listen when told they were too old. Until a staff member could be found to tell them they were too old, the kid would be gone... Until the staff member left. This could have been a great experience if there was some system to control the crowd. I'm just thankful my little ones came out with just one crying episode from roughness of a bigger kid and no lingering injuries. I wont be back until I hear that the Management's safety standard has improved from absent to...

Just got out of urgent care because my five year old son slipped off of the equipment and landed so hard on his elbow that he dislocated it. I had to watch him scream in agony as they tried to reset it, which they couldn't, so tomorrow I have to go to a specialist and watch him go through it all over again. And because they make you sign ridiculous wavers ahead of time, nothing can probably be done about it.

The equipment is super slick and they have a policy that kids must be in socks only. If that's the case then they should provide socks with skid-proof bottoms. Just charge a buck or two extra to cover the cost. The reason they have these terrible wavers is because they know kids are going to get hurt.

So what should have been a fun, special, treat for my son turned into a lot of pain and trauma. Hopefully people read this and stear clear of this place. I'm sure this doesn't happen to every kid every time, but I don't think it's worth the risk.

Update After taking my child to an orthopedic specialist, it turns out that his elbow is fractured, not dislocated and he'll need a cast for the next two and a half weeks. So weeks to recover from a half hour in...