Mommy and Me Trip to the Weed Maze: Normalizing Cannabis for Toddlers

New York City is sardined with Mommy and Me events ranging from “Typical” (music with Bev at the onesie store) to “Huh!” (drag story hour at the library) and it expands from there. You can take your kid to a fancy lunch with other richies for a couple hundy or take a special unicorn cupcake making class.

But that’s not how I roll. Rather, my toddler son and I showed up early for the hour-long Netflix Narcos: Mexico Experience event and were greeted by a crew of strapping DEA agents. They were much friendlier in real life than I expected. They commented on how cute my son was and offered to help us in various ways. If that’s what a drug bust is like, count us in!

There were two points of entrance for the maze: the DEA or Mexico side. We chose Mexico.

Spoiler: The Narcos weed maze is made of fake (sad face) cannabis and there wasn’t a stitch of the good stuff anywhere on the premises, but the large-scale canna-maze, built on the roof of the City Winery at Pier 26, reminded me of a seasonal corn maze—except, you know, made of fake weed. Slogans, such as “The future will find you!” and large mirrors decorated the walls, while sound clips and the show’s theme song played over the speakers, giving the vibe that you were on your couch at home, Netflixin’ and chillin’. But we were on a rooftop in 36-degree windy winter weather—the most literal form of chillin’.

Corridors led to hidden areas. One of which was a (somehow) charming, 1980’s-style DEA agent’s office that was sprinkled with the spoils of a major bust, replete with (fake?) automatic weapons, giant bricks of what appeared to be cocaine and piles of weed.

My son was perplexed by the maze and was curious about the plastic cannabis leaves that adorned the tall walls. I, too, was perplexed. How did they find that much artificial cannabis, and where? There must have been thousands of dollars worth of fake pot there. What a waste. Why not use the money on actual cannabis? Hello?!

My little guy roamed the maze, a bit shy and confused at first, but slowly became more adventurous throughout the experience. Admittedly, the maze is for adults and not kids, but when you’re a freelancer, every day is bring your kid to work day.

At the end of the maze—which was less of a maze and more of a pretty straightforward path—I was given a tee shirt and a sweet deck of cards that had 54 Spanish words on them. See? There was some educational benefit to taking my child to the weed maze, after all.

Bros especially are going to love the Netflix Narcos: Mexico maze, where they can pose with lots of pretend contraband, which is free and open to the public, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Nov 15 to 17.

Narcos: Mexico premieres worldwide Nov. 16 on Netflix.