Blow out the candles on pin the tail on the donkey.

If your idea of a child's birthday party is a few cone-shaped paper hats and an off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday" around a birthday cake, there's a 15-foot-high inflatable castle or a game of laser tag with your kid's name on it.

While the trend does not appear as pronounced as in other parts of the country, increasingly elaborate — and expensive — birthday parties have gained popularity in the Madison area.

It's easy to spend as much as $400 on an all-inclusive party that will almost certainly keep your child and guests engaged and having fun but that critics say can reduce the opportunities for creative play and engender a sense of entitlement among children.

And depending on whom you ask, they can either add to or reduce mom and dad's stress level.

"On a dollars to dollars basis, this was more expensive," said Bryan Winter, who last month had a combined birthday party for sons Casey and Jack at BounceU, 4009 Felland Road, which offers giant inflatables including a slide, boxing ring and obstacle course for children to play on.

The business, part of a national chain, opened in July on Madison's Far East Side and so far has been doing brisk birthday business, said owner Bob Andrew.

"The kids love it," continued Winter, who lives in Madison. "The kids know what's expected of them. They know what they're going to do."

Parents can have it all

BounceU and a similar business, Pump It Up in Fitchburg, bowling alleys, sports centers and laser tag venues all have birthday party packages that not only offer entertainment, but in some cases food, cake and ice cream, guest treat bags, even an employee to write down what the birthday boy or girl got and from whom, for use later in writing thank-you notes.

There also are party professionals who will come to your home to outfit a group of girls for a "princess party" or help guests create their own stuffed animal.

"They're always looking for something new," said Kecia Fladger, who last month started as an independent contractor for Noah's Ark Animal Workshop, a national company that provides in-home stuffed-animal-making parties. "With this, you're walking away with something."

At Village Lanes bowling center in Monona, proprietor Kevin Carey said the birthday packages his business offers are "kind of like a combo meal at a fast-food restaurant" in that parents know up front what they're getting and how much it will cost.

That kind of convenience is a selling point for parents, and promotional materials for party venues often highlight the fact that as the party hosts, parents won't have to do anything but open their wallets.

"No set-up. No clean-up. No stress," promises the Web site for Ultrazone Laser Tag in Madison. "You provide the guests and let us do the rest!" says a brochure from Vitense Golfland, also in Madison.

Is the fun getting lost?

But when parents agree to a more elaborate, more expensive — although arguably less work-intensive, less stress-inducing — party, children can miss out on opportunities to make their own fun, said David Riley, a professor of human development and family studies at UW-Madison.

Riley said that if you look at parties like toys, the best ones provide children with raw materials, not the finished product.

"Instead of a really fancy cake, have the kids make the cake," Riley said, or have them make their own kites at the party.

"The problem with the big spectacles, besides the price, is what they displace," he said.

Adam Frey, co-owner of Pump It Up, contends the party packages at his business, which typically range from $199 to $269, are comparable in price to putting on a decent in-home birthday party. He also said staff at Pump It Up and the inflatables themselves "give the kids an opportunity to create their own fun."

Web site exposes hype

Birthday party as "spectacle" and the pressure on parents to come up with something special for their child's birthday led a group of St. Paul, Minn., parents to create www.birthdayswithoutpressure.org, a Web site devoted to exposing what its members see as the hype surrounding birthday parties and how to simplify them.

"There's this gradual escalating of kids' expectation for parties," said Julie Printz, a parent-member from St. Paul who has two young girls. "I think we've lost touch with what it means to celebrate somebody."

The site offers examples of "out of control parties," including one from Chicago in which an invitation asked for gifts worth at least $35 and another where a cougar rented for a 7-year-old's birthday in Florida mauled a 4-year-old guest.

Birthdays Without Pressure advocates a return to simpler, cheaper, home-based parties as something of an antidote to a culture that is "a bit out of whack," Printz said, as evidenced by the attention paid to a child's birthday party.

Don't laugh — it's serious

Printz said the popularity of her group's Web site and the attention it's received from media — including CNN and USA Today — is evidence of how hot the birthday party issue is among parents.

"Everybody responds to it," she said.

Some of that angst was evident in interviews with Madison-area parents.

"As a parent I was so anxious about their party because I was so anxious about what other parents would think," said Beth Jennings, who had a combined birthday party for her two boys, ages 3 and 4, in April at Madtown Twisters, a gymnastics center on Madison's Far East Side.

Jennings and Sue Sherman, who lives in Monticello and is the mother of 6- and 2-year-old girls, said birthday planning is a common topic among parents.

"In our play groups, we talk about it quite a bit," said Sherman, with costs of parties, where to have them and what kind of food to serve among the topics.

Winter said while he and his wife appreciated not having to do a lot of planning for their sons' party, neither felt pressure to come up with something special.

Some parents who do, though, are rebelling.

Jennings said her sons' party cost about $80 and consisted of six kids, including her sons, and that she didn't rent out a private gym area at Madtown Twisters as some parents do.

She and her husband "consciously chose not to go" the route of the more expensive, elaborate party.

So did Sarah Abramowitz, 33, who is from Rockford, Ill., but was visiting the Vilas Zoo in Madison recently with her 3-year-old daughter, Annabel. "We are very adamant about doing the home thing with the cake and the ice cream and the family only."