Some people ask us why we charge for adults, so I wanted to share the three main reasons:
- We at Itty Bitty City are focused on learning through play, and we hope that as children play and have fun, their adults will come along side them to play and have fun as well. Providing supervision for other people’s children is definitely not in our business model – we are not a daycare, nor do we ever plan to be. Our wish and plan is for parents to actively interact with their children as they play and learn. As a parent, I think there are few things more enjoyable and valuable than sharing my children’s new experiences and watching them reach new milestones as they develop through play. Charging adults a nominal fee is thus a gentle push for adults to see Itty Bitty City as a place where they too are encouraged to play and experience their children’s imagination in action.
- To assure that every child at Itty Bitty City has the opportunity to fully enjoy and explore our center we have a capacity limit. This means we limit the number of total people, adults and kids, that can be in the center at any one time to provide adequate space for kids to play as their imagination leads them. Rather than risk overcrowding and dampening that imaginative play, at times we have to turn business away and recommend people return at a later time or even another day. Sending paying business away is hard, but we feel it is the right thing to do for those kiddos already playing. Often children arrive with several adults in tow – in fact, at the time I wrote this, over 1,300 more adults have entered Itty Bitty City than children. If we didn’t charge for those adults, who are taking up capacity in our center, we would not make enough to cover our overhead, and not surprisingly, be out of business.
- It is our goal to make Itty Bitty City as accessible as possible for the families in our community. We spent many hours researching and developing our price structure to meet that goal. Our consideration and research led us to implement the current system. Charging a little for each adult allows us to charge less for each child. We feel this provides the best possible pricing structure to keep Itty Bitty City open for families of all shapes and sizes.
I hope that this note helps bring light to why our admission rates are arranged as they are.
-Fawn
Owner, Itty Bitty City