Roberta B

Roberta

Years spent at Nickelodeon prepared Roberta to launch Mommy Poppins' Los Angeles branch. She served as LA Editor for GoCityKids, National Editor for ParentsConnect, and Editor for NickMom. After two years as Mommy Poppins' LA Editor, Roberta became Editor-in-Chief at Mommy Poppins - which works out well for her son, who enjoys his role as Chief Guinea Pig for all things fun in LA and beyond.

Latest posts by Roberta

Kids Eat Free: 21 LA Restaurants with Free Meal Deals for Families

Submitted by Roberta B on Sun, 09/29/2019 - 12:47am

Kids eat free: three little words that make a restaurant dinner feel possible. Even if we suspect that a box of mac and cheese and a couple of chicken fingers have lured us into buying a $10 margarita, how can we regret that margarita if it comes with a free kids' meal?

We’ve put together a list of restaurants throughout the Los Angeles area that offer free meals for kids at least one night a week (and up to four!). The restaurants vary from local joints to national chains, from the Valleys to the beaches, from Italian to Hawaiian, and from seafood to steakhouses—enough to satisfy picky and non-picky eaters.

Also check out our lists of birthday freebies with more free meals for kids (and adults!), and, of course, some kid-friendly happy hours on the Westside, in Silver Lake and Los Feliz, and in Orange County.

Halloween Festivals and Theme Park Haunts LA Kids Can't Do Without

Submitted by Roberta B on Thu, 09/19/2019 - 11:06pm

I have a mama friend who refers to this time of year with all the Halloween Festivals and Theme Park Haunts as the High Holidays, and she ain't talking Yom Kippur. She's also not wrong; there really is no higher holiday on the kid calendar than Halloween. And Southland families can enjoy a long slow build to All Hallows' Eve with more spooky celebrations, haunted happenings, and evil events per capita than any other urban area. Little ghouls and goblins have their pick of pumpkin patches, haunted houses, corn mazes, and ghost trains—but wait; there's more! SoCal theme parks get all creepy at this time of year, too, and the annual festivals below scream Halloween like nobody's business.

Halloween's Best Ghost Trains and Spooky Rides for LA Kids

Submitted by Roberta B on Mon, 09/16/2019 - 4:24am

So you've already been to the pumpkin patches, and you're ready to take Halloween to the next level; you're ready, in fact, to put it in motion. We know several deadly ways to take this haunt on the road before it's time to trick-or-treat, with everything from an old-fashioned train ride through fields of pumpkins, to a spooky tour through the bowels of a haunted ship, or even a scream-filled hayride through fields of zombies. Whatever Halloween means to your family, you can make it a ride at one (or more) of these vehicular annual haunts. After all, the family that hunts down armies of zombies together stays together.

Two LA Halloween Haunts Give up the Ghost in 2019

Submitted by Roberta B on Sun, 09/15/2019 - 10:04am

There's no way to sugar coat this: the Griffith Park Ghost Train and Boney Island—two of the most family-friendly haunts of the LA Halloween season—are both taking a hiatus this year. The two spooky-not-scary experiences seemed perfectly paired last year, when they first became neighbors in one festive corner of Griffith Park. We had been looking forward to seeing how the partnership would grow this season, but alas the skeletons are staying in the closet.

Best Pumpkin Patches for LA, Ventura, & Orange County Pumpkin Picking

Submitted by Roberta B on Fri, 09/13/2019 - 4:05pm

Ready to talk pumpkin patch? Yes, the time has come to surrender to the Great Pumpkin—who is, frankly, spoiled for choice around the Southland in Halloween season. We would never presume to call one pumpkin patch more sincere than the others, but LA’s pumpkin patches (and pseudo pumpkin patches) run a satisfying gamut from small to large, folksy to commercial. Whether you're hoping for a hit-and-run Halloween photo or a day's outing in autumnal reverie, your pumpkin picking destination is below...

Along Came a Spider Pavilion: Big Spiders Are Back at the Natural History Museum

Submitted by Roberta B on Fri, 09/13/2019 - 5:02am

While some may ring in the Halloween season by smearing shrubs with 99-cent store fuzzy webbing and plastic spiders, the arachnid purists over at the Natural History Museum have a more organic approach. This weekend the screened pavilion on the museum’s South Lawn becomes seasonal home to more free-range, eight-legged tenants than anyone in his right mind could want – in short, an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare and an eight-year-old boy’s version of heaven.

Say Boo at the Zoo: 5 LA and OC Zoos with Cool Halloween Week Events

Submitted by Roberta B on Mon, 09/09/2019 - 11:57am

Let the record show that there is more than one way to smash a pumpkin, and handing it to a hippo is definitely one of them. A gorilla does the job pretty well, too, as does a tiger, or—well, just about any other animal at the zoo. This discovery by our nation's zookeepers has led to a peculiar Halloween tradition—that we highly recommend!

Each year Southern California's zoos (and Griffith Park is only one of the options, as you'll see below) plan Halloween events, usually treating resident critters to their favorite delicacies stuffed inside pumpkins. For some, the delicacy may actually be the pumpkin itself (chomp chomp), while the more carnivorously inclined seem to view the pumpkins more as wrapping paper (smash smash). Either way, zoo animals smashing pumpkins ups the ante on traditional pumpkin patches. Check out all the beastly fun at Southland zoos this season.

Scary Halloween Haunts in LA for Big Kids: Horror Nights, Dark Harbor, Knott's, & More

Submitted by Roberta B on Thu, 09/05/2019 - 4:29pm

What goes on at LA's theme parks in October is nothing like the wholesome thrill of a Tigger-clad child ringing doorbells for candy. It may seem like Los Angeles celebrates a night that's all about children with an awful lot of entertainment that is clearly not for children, but these frightful haunts keep the Halloween fun going for older kids, for teens, and even for adults who indulge in guilty gruesome pleasures. But how to know which haunts are best for which ages? We've braved a few of them to share our reviews of just how scary is scary.

Looking for something not quite so scary, and a good deal cheaper? Check out these haunts that are mostly free and in private yards.

Roberta B

Roberta

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