MISS PIGGY COMES TO IRVING

“C’est moi … in Irving of all places!”

Miss Piggy will grace the Dallas area early this summer upon the opening of a $10 million educational play park for preschool to preteen-age children. La Pig and the Mup-pets will be the hosts of the nation’s second Sesame Place, now under construction.

The best news about the amusement park is that by opting against expensive advertising campaigns, the owners will be able to keep the admission in the $5 range, according to John Hunter, Sesame Place marketing director. That price gives parents of younger children a welcome alternative to Arlington’s Six Flags Over Texas, where this season’s admission has climbed to an unwieldy $11.95 a head.

But Sesame Place will be a very different sort of park – there will be no mechanical rides, Hunter says. Instead, “everything will be kid-powered.” The joint venture between Children’s Television Workshop (producers of Sesame Street) and Busch Entertainment Corp. will feature 40-odd outdoor attractions.

A “pool” filled with 80,000 hollow plastic balls will provide a place for kids to romp and “swim.” A bed-bounce trampoline, 4-story tiers of cargo nets, a tactile maze, slides, tunnels and a 120-foot-long pulley ride are all designed to let children play using their imaginations and physical skills.

Indoors, the park will have hands-on science exhibits and a computer game room, where children will be able to use keyboards and programs to learn color names and ABCs. A replica of the Sesame Street set will include a closed-circuit TV camera.