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| - Having never been to either Charlotte or Ikea in our lives, we decided to do a spring break trip to cover both in one. We planned to hit Ikea on our way home from Charlotte at opening time on Tuesday. So we had our choice of parking spots, which seemed unneccesary at 9:45 am, but genius at 2:00 when it was time to leave! We parked in the Family Friendly area right outside the front door and headed in. Two adults, a 6 year old and a 2 year old.
We passed up the child care area when we first walked in. One hour? Right off the bat? No thank you, we'll need that later! So on we headed into Childrenland. I had done some online homework, and had a printed out wishlist. We found several items for kids' stuff storage right away. We did get bogged down and spent way too much time in this area. Hard to walk away from all the kid size furniture and toys. A mini-bed for the 2 year old was NOT on the list, but too cute not to get. She is after all, just about to need a replacement for her crib, and these beds are big enough to use until at least 10 years old, at a fraction of a nice twin bed price.
The kids started getting crazy, so we hustled the 6 year old off to the child care room. 2 year old was too small. :-( Oh well, one is easier to handle than 2! Our son loved the child care area and had a super time. They probably have the right idea limiting it to one hour. I could get use to shopping all day child free!
With one hour of semi child freedom, and refocused after escaping Childrenland, we moved on. Only to get bogged down in textile/kitchenland. Rookie mistake! I really did have a set of sheets on the shopping list to try, and was interested in checking out their towels, but I wish we had moved on to the showroom more quickly. As it turned out, we raced through the showroom area and furniture, looking for what was on our shopping list, on our way back to child care. After springing the boy, we headed up to lunch in the cafeteria.
With 4 hungry, tired, grumps we were a little intimidated by the cafe. There seemed to be a lot of people waiting. As we got in there though, it wasn't so bad. A little wait to get our food and pay and no trouble finding seats. We'd heard the food was good, and it did seem to be. I was tempted by the chicken breast Ceaser salad, but held out for meatballs. (The 2 year old's chicken was delicious too, btw.)
Having heard from another frazzled parent in the cafe that the store checkout lines were really long, we decided to finalize what we wanted to get for bookshelves and lighting and start making our way out. We followed the signs through the spiral pathways to the warehouse. Dragging a 2 and 6 year old through the warehouse, we found our stuff and headed to the check out. Hosanna! Several registers open with only 1 or 2 waiting! We were assured at check out that there would be TONS of "yellow shirts" roaming the parking lot to help us load.
We were amazed to see that the giant parking lot was pretty much full, being a Tuesday early afternoon. This place draws the crowds!
With no mythical "yellow shirts" anywhere to be seen, we loaded our boxes into the back of the truck on our own. No biggie. It was a nice day and we parked close.
Overall, I could see making the 3 hour drive from Raleigh to Charlotte for an Ikea visit a regular event. We're very happy with what we got. I have a list started for our next trip already. I can see that you do have to be careful not to get caught up in Ikea Fever and buy things just for the sake of buying them. I almost fell for the $4 umbrella, and did get 3 reuseable shopping bags. It is definitely an event, and I'm glad we finally had the opportunity to visit!
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