What is more wholesome than an American Girl Doll?
- There’s Josefina Montoya who tries to preserve what is precious after her mother passes away on a New Mexican rancho in 1824.
- Molly McIntire who wants World War II to end so her soldier daddy can come home.
- And let us not forget the plucky Kit Kittredge who takes a job as a cub reporter when her father loses his job during the Great Depression.
It’s the historical gravitas of these dolls, along with the tiny, historically-accurate clothing and furniture, that make them so magical and educational.
So when our daughter, Bridget, said she wanted an American Girl Doll Tea Party for her seventh birthday, who were her father and I to say no?
Didn’t we want her to treasure traditions passed down through her Irish immigrant family with the Nellie O’ Malley doll?
So we went online and ordered the Deluxe Birthday Package at the American Girl Doll cafe at the Grove.
The Deluxe included a “delicious meal,” “a fun table activity,” “a creative craft,” “the signature pink-and-white cake,” “goody bags”and all of this in our own “private dining room.” Fun!
This is how, two days later, I found myself following six little girls, wearing tea dresses, carrying six little dolls of varying shapes and sizes, and a chirpy American Girl Doll hostess, through the lively main dining room.
The moms and their daughters in the main dining room looked so pretty and festive in their fancy clothes as they snarfed tea and lobbed signature pink-and-white cake into their mouths.
Then our party arrived at our ‘own private dining room.’
It was quiet. Too quiet. The stark white room, reminiscent of a padded cell, had a party table and just one window at a precipitous height from which a mother might leap, should their party flop.
Bridget asked, pointing back at the main dining room, “Why aren’t we out there with all the fun?”
Maybe I should’ve opted out of our “own private dining room”!
Our tea-dress-clad bottoms had barely hit our chairs when a frazzled American Girl Doll waitress, who we’ll call Tipper, appeared and asked if we’re ready to place our lunch orders.
“Not quite yet,” I said, “We just sat down. And by the way, two girls couldn’t come, so can we remove the two extra chairs?”
Waitress Tipper’s eyes rolled back in her head and she twitched spasmodically, as though suffering a myoclonic seizure then wordlessly disappeared.
I waylaid her hare-like as he attempted to flee and asked him when the “fun table activities” would begin? He darted his hand into his pink-and-white-icing smeared apron and produced a greasy little box full of cards which he tossed at me.
He was gone faster than a parochial schoolgirl’s virginity.
The label on the box said, “Fun Party Questions”. I yanked one of the cards out and looked at it. Affecting the tone of a Camp Weehawken counselor on crack, I held the card aloft and asked the girls, “What makes you a good loser?”
Six sets of seven-year-old deadpan eyes looked back at me. So I asked the question again, as encouragingly as possible.
“I never lose,” responded little queen-bee, Phoebe.
“Yes, you do. You lose at tetherball all the time,” said little queen-bee-slayer, Olive.
“Only to Roberto and he cheats,” Phoebe countered.
“I beat you six times,” Olive blasted back.
“But you didn’t beat Celia and I beat Celia,” Phoebe queen-bee-‘splained, “which means I beat you, which means I’m the Master Tetherballer.”
“You’re not the master, I’m the master, ‘cuz I beat you six times and you’re acting like a jerk!” Olive shouted.
As things escalated, I heard a tremulous voice on my six. “Ma’am?” it said.
I looked up to see Waitress Tipper hovering behind me holding a crinkled, food-slathered bunch of papers clutched in her sweating fist. “You’re going to have to pay for the extra two.”
“Huh?”
“Right here,” Tipper said, pointing down to the papers, where I could see my signature floating in between a bunch of small type:
“You signed a contract for eight girls and one adult, so you have to pay for nine total.”
From the din of the Master Tetherballer ruckus, I saw an Eyesore-like expression on little Dahlia’s face as she held the Fun Party Questions she had lifted from my fist. “Is this all there is? What else do we get to do?”
Shit. I thought. Bored seven-year-olds can very quickly go full Lord of the Flies on each other (and possibly well-meaning, unsuspecting mothers).
“Honey, we’re going to order some food and then we’ll do a really fun craft,” I answered cheerily.
“I’m not hungry, I already ate lunch,” said little Sophie.
“But this is a lunch party,” I reminded her.
“But I already ate lunch.”
“I ate lunch too,” Phoebe chimed in.
“Me too,” said Olive.
“You’ve got to pay for nine,” Waitress Tipper whispered in my ear. “Nine lunches. It’s in your contract. Which you signed.”
So we ordered nine “delicious meals”: two salmon, crusted in something that looked like grout, two dishes of limp pasta noodles smothered in cheese-substance, two pizzas drenched in something that looks like menstrual effluvia and three dishes of chicken nuggets I thought I recognized as the stools my horse “Champion” dropped on the Lake Cachuma Trail circa 1972.
The kids ate the pasta noodles, I ate everything else. As Tipper and the busboy cleared the plates, several children sighed. Little Georgina actually said the words I dreaded most out loud, “I’m bored.”
“Tipper, when do we get to do the ‘creative craft’?” I asked, unadulterated fear pushing my voice an octave higher than usual.
“Oh, yeah,” Tipper said, in a tone that seemed to come from the afterglow of her seizure, “it’s on the table.”
She pointed at one rectangular piece of pink felt lying on top of an identical blue one in front of each setting. The pink and blue felt rectangles each had little flaps around their circumferences. I’d used my pink felt rectangle as a napkin, since there hadn’t seemed to be any other options.
“These are the creative crafts?” I asked.
“Yes, when you tie the flaps together…”
“You mean those hundreds of little, tiny flaps?”
“Yuh, huh. When you tie them together, they become sleeping bags for the dolls.”
I stared at Waitress Tipper mutely. She didn’t blink. Then turned and simply left. The girls looked at me.
“I already tied one of these at Ariella’s Dolly World party,” sniffed Phoebe.
“I don’t wanna tie anything!” cried Olive.
“My doll hates camping,” said my very own Bridget.
“My brother barfed in my sleeping bag last time we camped,” shared Georgina.
As I frantically began tying all the sleeping bags together, a second American Girl Doll waitress named Cobie appeared, her expression as glazed as a Crispy Creme donut.
She held a tropical-looking American Girl Doll before her. “This is Kanani,” she trilled, “the 2011 limited edition American Girl Doll from the beautiful isle of Hawai’i that if you don’t buy this year, you can never, ever – in the history of American Girl Doll – buy again. Ever.”
I saw a covetous glint in six pairs of greedy little-girl monkey eyes.
Cobie continued, “Kanani Akina loves welcoming visitors to her Hawai’ian home. So when her cousin Rachel …” (at which point a Rachel Doll emerged from behind Cobie’s back) “… comes to stay, Kanani is excited. But Rachel never seems to feel at home. Can Kanani find a way to connect with her and share the Aloha Spirit?”
“No, she can’t,” I brayed, my fingers tying pink-and-blue felt faster than the cursed feet dancing forever in Hans Christian Anderson’s Red Shoes. “Now bring us the stinking ‘signature cake’!”
****
Carrying six dolls and ‘goody bags’ (with cheap plastic doll tiaras and hard blue plastic balloons – we weren’t allowed to take the plastic doll tea cup and saucer because they weren’t included in the Deluxe package) I exited the private room.
I was followed by six little girls, all in sugar-comas and depressed because I wouldn’t buy them Kanani and Rachel. We passed by all the Main Dining Room mothers and daughters, who laughed and hugged each other.
I drove the girls back to my house where they had more fun playing handball against our garage door than they had all day.
Later, after all the little girls had gone home, I looked at the American Girl Doll Deluxe Birthday Party bill. For that kind of money we could’ve sent Bridget and two close friends to Europe for the summer. After her graduation from Princeton.
While Bridget and Clare watched Phineas and Ferb in the living room, I snuck into Bridget’s bedroom and quietly throttled her Kaya doll — a Nez Pearce Indian girl who cared for horses and befriended a wolf in 1764.
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22 thoughts on “The American Girl Doll Birthday Party Rip-Off”
That was too funny! Oh Poor Momma! At least you tried. I totally suck at birthdays and birthday parties.
Holy crap, this is funny, but so sorry you and your daughter had to endure such a lameass experience. I have passed by that store many times, and since I have absolutely no reason to EVER go in there (and hopefully never will), I was unaware that it holds a fully operating Junior League for Five year Olds in there. They ought to be ashamed. This just confirms that whoever came up with those creepy dolls is an ass.
Thanks for the sympathy Alison and I love the 5 year old Junior League metaphor The Sweetest. We've gotta expose the AGD corruption. It goes all the way to the top people.
Okay, that had to be the funniest thing I've ever read. EVER!!! In fact, I think I wet my pants, I laughed so hard. I just love hearing about all your "adventures". You brighten my day, every single time. Thank you!!! 😀
Thanks, Posiegirl. If we didn't laugh we'd just keep eating that signature cake!
this makes me extra happy that my 8 year old never liked the american girl stuff. she enjoyed the books, but that's it.
i've found over the years that when you get a private room for birthdays, you pay more & are away from the fun. always go cheap & stay in the big room with all the chaos & excitement!
Yes, I need to be with the people SherilinR!
Interesting. We had an AG birthday party & our experience was far different than yours. Perhaps it was the individual store.
For the record, there never was a “Rachel” doll created.
Funny story, though.
Effluvia, horse poop. Oh motherhood, isn’t it a treat? Yah, it’s worth it for our kids.
I know Melissa. If we knew what we were getting into in the beginning we might have balked, but one day and one special event at a time are manageable!
Wow, i was just there and none of that happened so if there are any little girls or moms who want this well go on ahead and get it because it was very fun
Wow I never had an experience like that at the AG Bistro! We’ve been there with our daughter several times and had her last birthday party there and all the girls loved it. Our food was good, the girls loved their craft and gift bags and then enjoyed looking through the store. They never felt down about not being able to buy anything there and our staff hostess was very friendly. Either you greatly exaggerated the details of this story or you went to the worst possible AG store ever! Either way, it sounds like you have snobby kids with high expectations that probably should’ve just stayed home! Not to mention that some of your analogies are completely disgusting!
Oh Alicia — why don’t you tell me how you really feel? Don’t hold back! And do you work for AG?
HAHA!! This was great! Our daughters are both AG addicts! I have contemplated that party a few times but can’t seem to justify it in my head! After reading this, I will avoid it like the plague! I live in Seattle and haven’t heard the best reviews of our bistro! I think I can pull of an “AG Tea Party” at home and even with a few epic fails, pull it off better then the store!! It’s sad that you didn’t get the “picture perfect” party, but at least you have an upbeat personality so you can see the comical side of things!
Hi Melissa — what’s been frustrating for me is that we’ve purchased American Girl Dolls and their paraphernalia for our youngest daughter and she just doesn’t play with them often enough to justify the cost. I guess I couldn’t have predicted that, but it’s added to the “ripped-off” feeling.
This is why I went to one of their Tea Parties, took a glance how thing are. Bought everything I needed, and made everything we ate. My daughter had an Amazing American Birthday Party at home. And it lasted for ever. Not just 30 min nor 90 🙂 And some of the girls had matching pajamas with thier dolls and we made it a slumber party…
Anastasia that is exactly what I should have done! Hindsight. sigh.
What an awesome read! My daughter is 7, and is going to her first (hopefully only) AG party tomorrow. As teachers, we don’t have many of the upper class frills, like AG dolls, so when I read on the invitation that they should bring theirs, I panicked and ran out and found a $15 knock off. God, help my child to just appear…normal…with these girls from a world that is so entirely foreign to me. To the writer – thanks for making me feel like having a free party at Claire’s (which we did!) is good enough.
Louisa so glad I could be of service!The whole American Girl Schlamazel would me fine if it weren’t so outrageously expensive. I just don’t think that’s necessary!
This was so well written, thanks for the much needed laugh. My {almost} 7 year old loves American Girl, we took her for Christmas for her 1st visit ever and to purchase her 1st doll Isabelle. It was a good experience overall. The store is SOOO overpriced. There is nothing “special” about the doll clothing other than the labels saying AG on them. The brand has a great concept and I like that it’s encouraging for growing girls to be the best they can be and to inspire talents and hard work but for the love of God, why do the dolls and accessories have to be so expensive. My daughter wants to have an AG birthday party and we are planning on having it here at our house so that I can make it a fun experience and keep the costs low while allowing her to invite more than just 2 friends (which is liekly all i could afford to take to the actual AG store for lunch).
Oh and to all those ladies who commented with negativity about the post, lighten up… it’s a little humor to brighter your dull ass day… pull the stick out of yer behind and laugh a little.
Inked Mama thanks for having my back!
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