The EX with Young Kids

The birthday weekend celebrations included a day at The EX with young kids! Having visited each year since Little Monkey was born, we figured we’d pop by to eat the latest dishes and perhaps take her on a quick ride before calling it a day. Eight hours later… I’m here to report that there’s no way to escape spending an entire day at The EX!

Having partied on Saturday our Sunday was off to a very slow start and so it was 1 p.m. by the time we UBER-ed our way to The EX. My brother and his girlfriend also joined us so it was a family affair! Luckily for us we were greeted by a craft beer festival the moment we walked in and that quickly corrected any wrongs we had going on! $20 worth of tokens got us each a couple samples while Baby Boy and Little Monkey napped in the double stroller. It seems they were both exhausted too!! Given the hot weather both of them kept napping during the day and that worked out well for us.

We headed straight to the Food Building, ignoring he food trucks and was greeted by a hot muggy hall. They really need to figure out a better ventilation system there during these hot months. While it was busy, we managed to easily find a bench for us inside along with space to park the stroller.

Hot on my must eat list were the Snow Crab Fries with Jakes Lobster and my brother loves the Thanksgiving Waffle from Frans… both had line ups and we quickly realized that the best way to avoid the line up was to hop on the Grabb app. WIND’s network is shoddy at The EX but luckily the hubs’ Rogers reception was solid. Grabb made our life so easy because we quickly picked the items we wanted and everything was connected with our credit card, so we didn’t have to deal with cash. With many vendors demanding “CASH ONLY” this was much appreciated with those of us who walked in with no cash! I like that the app enables us to avoid the line ups and still get the food we want. The app is well thought out and makes ordering very easy …even with one hand maneuvering the stroller! The app said it would take 20 minutes to get our orders but within 10 minutes (before we even made our way through the food hall!) the order was ready for pick up. I was shocked to see people standing in line for over an hour when they could have used the Grabb app!! Use the code BABYANDLIFE to get 25% off your next order or use the code VV5DN to get $5 off on Grabb!

Mind you, the popular Jamaican Patty Burger was not available through the app so I stood at the Bub’s Bad@ss Burgers for half an hour to get my lips on their Patty burger that not only had a Jamaican beef patty but also a beef burger patty and fried chicken patty! I ate 3/4 of it and my brother and his girlfriend ate the other 1/4. We did share a bit with Baby Boy who loved the fresh beef patty.  I was too stuffed to make my way to get the XXX S&M burger from Corrado’s though!

Eating was the game plan but we soon realized that there’s no escaping the other fun stuff out there. Baby Boy snuck into a couple rides (he was a smidge under the 36″ requirement but they didn’t mind him tagging along on the slow toddler car ride) and Little Monkey chose four rides to go on as well. Next year we’ll have to get the all day ride bands which are well worth the $38 discounted price versus the 24 tickets for $26 that we purchased. With most rides costing 4 tokens each, it can get pricey. For those 3 and older there’s quite a few rides and we explored many of them last year. Since we were at Centreville a couple times this year we decided she didn’t need more rides this summer!

As always we ended up shopping for all sorts of random items at the halls and grabbed a couple Christmas gifts as well. We also hung out at the wine bar and enjoyed some tunes over pints of beer while the kids napped. This is also the spot for our annual family picture so of course we stuck to tradition! Given that it was a hot day and that I was nursing a slight headache, we opted to ignore the farm animals this year and the kids weren’t any wiser!

Before we knew it, it was 8 p.m. and we were all withering away…neither Baby Boy nor Little Monkey complained when we came back and tucked them into bed after a quick shower! They were exhausted…as were we! If you think you can leave The CNE after two hours…you’re kidding yourselves! End of summer is near folks!