Looking to beat the heat, I took my son to Great Kids Village in Silver Spring. My wife had been to the Columbia, Maryland location and said that while expensive (15 dollars for the first child), the place had a lot of rooms and activities for the kids (including a real and full-sized fire truck). I was excited to try their new location because of so many wonderful looking pictures on their website. However, while the Columbia location is great (according to second-hand reports), I was disappointed with most aspects of the Silver Spring location.
The location of Great Kids Village is not in the best of areas in Silver Spring, and when looking for the building, I found it by the address on the door instead of by a sign (There was no sign and the emptiness in the window made it look like an abandoned warehouse). Then we went in and in fact, it was not far off from an empty warehouse. I was disappointed to learn that it was one big room with a bunch of stage 2 children’s toys (which we could play with at the displays in Toys R Us for free). Apparently, this is why it is five dollars cheaper at the Silver Spring location, but I was unimpressed nonetheless. I asked the lady where the toys from the website were and she said that they were in the Columbia location. The website should have delineated which activities or lack thereof were in each location. Additionally, I had called several times to see if the place was open and got only an answering machine. When I got into the place and asked the lady near the desk, she said that they don’t even have a phone at the location, which scared me for safety reasons.
Please note that all of their locations have closed down.
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FYI - they moved locations to where Mayorja coffee used to be and if it could be it is even worse then when you went. We got there about 30 min. after they opened and none of the toys where in there places, the space for crawlers/infants was gone and half the toys where in such poor condition that it wasn't even worth playing with. I haven't tried out the columbia location yet either, but will not be going back to SS site.
ReplyDeleteRecently found your blog -- just wanted to post an update - GKV is closed (both locations).
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