The concept is genius! It is a 2/3's scale city, designed for kids to experience jobs and how an economy works - but totally fun!
It starts off by buying an airline ticket into the city.. kids pass thru airport security (like in the good ole days) and then walk thru to the city of KidZania.
Once there, its like Emerald City in the land of Oz... everything is amazing and perfectly awesome looking...WHAT TO DO FIRST??
Go cash in your ticket at the bank for $50 Kidzo dollars. You can then go out and start supporting the economy by buying stuff or services. My kids were so overwhelmed by choices they ran around looking at stuff for a while. First thing they did was to go rock wall climbing - but it was actually building climbing. They could choose which of 4 building faces to climb. Inside the building was an obstacle course and some fake windows to look like a dentist office etc. At the end of the obstacle course - and one of the building faces to climb - was a free-fall bungee drop of 2 stories! Of course that was something next for my kids to do & a fave of the day!
Danielle went to a Radio station to be a DJ / news reporter, she got a CD copy of her program. Zach just had to go to Domino's to make his own personal pizza. You could go to the chocolate store to make personal chocolate candies in a mold, or go to Coco-Cola and sterilize a bottle, take it thru the stations of filling and capping and labeling and leave with your own bottle of coke!
You could experiment with cereal and make your own variety, or go to McDonald's & make your own personalized cheeseburger or shop at Walmart.
When you run out of money.....You have to GO TO WORK!
So then you can go apply for a job - at places like DHL delivery services, and make deliveries to the stores all over the city with the schedule you are given and if you get all the required signatures, you will get paid upon your return. Danielle & Zachary were Security Guards. They had to go collect money from stores and take it back to the security department for deposit to the bank. Zach was also a Fireman. This job had more training and would pay more than the security guard. After the training, the firemen got on an actual firetruck... that drove... around the city!!! It was so cool! Then they came back to the burning house and put the flames out with their hoses spraying real water! Each kid was wearing a real, kid-sized fireman uniform - so stinking cute!!! Now this was not Zachary's finest moment. After all, we are living in Mexico, where everyone speaks Spanish, so naturally, everyone in KidZania did too, and so... training was in Spanish BUT, there was a video too & really, you did not need to know Spanish to understand. And sooooo he was not "feelin' it" and thus NOT the BEST fireman. When it came time to get paid, Zach noticed the kid before him was paid more than he was... And so I had a little talk with him, about the realities of life... his poor attitude was seen and thus it was reflected in his pay!
If the kids had wanted to make really good money, they could have gone for training to be a doctor! That's where the big $$ is made! Those kids rode in the ambulance, brought back patients, performed fake surgeries, the whole 9 yards!
So as parents, you can either come into the city (paying a lesser fee, but not participating at all), OR COMPLETELY DROP YOUR KID AT THE DOOR OF THE CITY! All kids (& parents if inside the city) wear electronic tracking devices/watches. Each time a kid participates in any activity, as a job or as a customer, their tracking watch is scanned. They know where your kid is all the time. When your kid leaves an activity, they are scanned again. We went into the city, because we had no idea what the place really was, but other parents merely dropped and went shopping, at the fabulous Santa Fe mall with 300 stores in it (yup, you read it right, 300 stores, including 2 full size McDonald's, 8 different frozen yogurt or ice cream stores, 6 levels!)
So we realized we were going to be at Kidzania for A WHILE... we stopped trying to make the kids (ours and the others near our kids' age that we were sorta keeping track of) stick together .. we realized nobody was leaving the city without us... So the kids were 'on their own'. They were in heaven....Utopia!
We stopped looking at our watches, we gave into the reality of their joy and before we realized it, another 2 hours had passed since last looking at the clock, and the mall was closing. We had spent 7 hours in KidZania, and the kids had only scratched the surface of all that this place has to offer!
The kids left with their official driver's licenses from go-carting and a few dollars left over. We realized too late that we could have gone back to the bank and deposited the money in an account in their names and not have to keep track of the dollars at home and remember them for next time...chuck-e-cheese coins & tokens come to mind. We also realized too late that they could have gone and purchased a Passport. With that, every time you complete an activity, the store stamps it, that way you can keep track of what you still need to accomplish inside KidZania...
This place is the brainchild of a Mexican entrepreneur who solely owns 3 of these heavenly locations in Mexico City alone. He has franchised them in other parts of the world now, Asia, the Middle East...The Facebook page does not have a site or date listed for the USA, yet.... Maybe I should contact Bill Gates? Many thanks to our friends, Bhavani & Aravinda Thota for inviting us to experience the world of KidZania on Sunday, it was awesome, great, more fun than we could have dreamed of.....UTOPIA for kids!
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