3 Year Old Birthday Party Ideas

You could definitely have a Disneyland party at home. That would be really fun. You may have to get creative for some of the stuff. We had a Clifford birthday for my daughter's 3rd birthday last year and because Clifford stuff is no longer being sold, it was fun trying to come up with ways to make it a Clifford party.

What about Adventure City? It's a tiny theme park not to far from Knotts that is completely age appropriate for a 3 year old, and admission is less than $15 and they have incredible party packages that include a hostess to help you in their private party room with pizza and cake. They have a cute puppet show and a magic show and if you tell them it's your birthday they'll include the kid in it and give them an Adventure City T-shirt. The rides are mostly very tame. There's a Thomas the Train area where your child can build train layouts all day if he wants, and a petting zoo. They sell undecorated cookies with a tub of frosting and candy bits kids can decorate themselves... When my twins were your sons age they actually preferred it to Disneyland. Just before the economic crisis hit they threatened to close it down to build apartments, but it's still running. Jump on it while it's still there! http://www.adventurecity.com/

Not sure that you would definitely have time to do it, BUT have you checked into doing the Disney Give a Day Get a Day program??? You can find details about it on the Disney site. Basically you volunteer a day of your time for a local charity through their set up site & you get a voucher for a free day at Disney. My husband & I both volunteered for a local food bank and took our two children to Disney just a couple weeks ago.
Also with Disney under 3 is admitted free! They don't check documents to see if your child is actually under 3, so if he is borderline I wouldn't feel guilty about saying he's still two. When we went for that day we only paid for our five yr old daughter as our son won't be 3 until the end of this month.
The down side is that depending on the actual charity or organization that you volunteer for it could take a few weeks to get your voucher emailed to you. Our local food bank filled out the necessary forms on their end the very next day and we have the vouchers emailed to us in less than a week from the day we volunteered. Get on their website & check it out.
**On a side note, if you do do Disney, you can pack food & waterbottles and have a "picnic" there in order to save even more money.

I agree with bringing Disneyland to him. My daughter turned 3 in April and we threw up a Dora party. She had so much fun because we done a "dora" show for her and Nickjr had great party ideas and i'm sure that you can google Disney themed bday parties and find great inexpensive ideas.

We're doing a combined party with 2 other friends whose birthdays are the same week. So, it's "our three are three" and we're doing it at a local farm. It'll be about $250 for each of us moms which is pretty reasonable for our area and for what's included.

Bring Disneyland to him. Have a disney theme party. You could go to the disney store and find some great ideas in there.

We had a pinatta at our 3 year old's party. You can make one or buy one. Each kid got 5 hits starting with the birthday kid and then going youngest to oldest. If the kids don't bust it open give the stick to some of the mommies and daddies. We had a lot of fun watching the parents hit the pinatta. And you'll get some great pictures too. You can fill it with stickers, raisins, crayons, and markers if you're opposed to candy. And then you don't have to make goody bags either. It was awesome!
We also played some parachute games with a ten foot parachute. The kids liked that a lot too. Again lot's of photo ops. I also heard of someone doing "TOT Olmpics." He had parent child teams perform simple tasks like transferring water from one bucket to another using only a cup. You run that kinda like a relay. He also set up a really basic obstacle course that teams had to get through with the parents putting the toddlers on their shoulders, back, etc. I think he also had the kids on parent's shoulders and passing a ball off to another kid on another parents shoulders. Stuff like that.
If you decide to do games and what not, make sure you leave about 40 minutes at the top of your party for the intial meet and greet. 15-20 minutes of games is plenty. Then you have cake and everyone goes home happy. If you don't have a yard or good space for the kids to run around, you might look for a convenient playground. Good luck and have fun!

Hello J.,
The trip to Disneyland would be fun but he will enjoy it more and remember it more at a little older.
We just had my 3y/o granddaughter's party here at my house and mom and dad let me do it ( could be that I begged or am a party planner) we had the best SCAVENGER HUNT! We kept it in a explorer's theme use Deigo or Dora as your guide. I bought most things at the Dollar Store to keep prices down and we had them like you would an Easter Egg Hunt find different items-- flashlight, bounceing balls with colored glitter, bags of candy, horns, bubbles, story books ( for the child that was older I got a work book)and magnigying glasses! The kids spent hours checking out leaves and flowers under the magnifying glass and then they got to take all their treasures home!
If you use a pirate theme have bandana's ,I got at walmart in a package reasonable, items from the Dollar store and pirate candy coins and each child went home with 10 pennies thinksing they were kings. You can even get a large box to decorate as a priate ship-- we cut up old sheets for the sails but you could use plastic tablecloths from the dollar store as well and they have wonderful colors!! As for cakes I have found that cupcakes are a child's favorite even thought the adults might prefer something else. Feel free to contact me if you want any more information I would be happy to help. I believe it is the memories not the fancy stuff that one has at a party that makes the day special. For the next grandchilds party we are going to have the theme "Its a Bugs Life" and center it all around nature and are going to make a giant cupcake then hollow it out and fill it with gummy worms and let them have fun eatting it. So think about the number of children unless its family not to many becasue they burn out on over load and then get someone to blow bubbles and let them play in that or since its almost summer get a small pool and invite them to a beach party -- one child always wants a halloween theme so people come dressed up so that is always fun, one child is a Christmas baby which makes birthday even harder so we have a specail Birthday tree and have requested people send birthday greetings he got one from President Bush, and one from Al Gore once that hung on his tree!!! So enjoy and relax. Being my favorite topic I could go on forever!

Birthday party at a super fun park w/ $10 Costco pizzas ... $50 all day bounce house at your home. We just did that last weekend for my 5-year-old's bday and had it from 10 a.m. - 7. The kids had some crazy fun!!

We had a prehistoric pets party... there is a place in Fountain Valley called Prehistoric Pets.. you can either have your party there or they can come out to location and bring the creepy crawlers.. we had our party from 10:30-Noon the show is 1 hour, we did cake and it was over...The kids loved being able to interact with the animals (even my shy lil guy) It was great~