Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Going to the Circus

Last week we found out the circus was coming our way (sort of...) and we had promised Cameron that we'd take him to see it for Family Home Evening. WHAT A TRIP!
First off, they trick parents into taking their kids to see the circus by offering the kids "free" tickets with a paying adult. What they DON'T tell you is that the price PER paying adult is $16!!! So for the 4 of us to see the circus, it was $32. (We had only taken $20 with us....we had to write a check for the rest...)
Getting there, people had parked all along the street...BOTH WAYS. We had to park a block away and walk. No biggie, except that once we got to the front, the lines were LONG and slow moving (probably because people had to write checks because they didn't know it was going to be SIXTEEN freakin' bucks to see the show.)
Once we had paid, we went in to find a seat....they were hard to find. We ended up on the FAR left side of the building...almost OUT the doors. We were sitting next to HUGE piles of poo. :P
On the way to our seats we passed many balloons, toys, slushies, and other things they were selling. Cam was NOT very good about us telling him no.
They had their clown trying to get the audience excited...but he just wasn't THAT funny.
Then the show started. It was actually pretty cool. Lots of acrobats, animals and trick performers. Out of all the acts, our favorite was this HUGE metal ball that they raced motorcycles around. They had THREE in at once. I was SURE we were going to see a crash, but thankfully, we didn't.
Half-way through the show the ringmaster announced that they had some cool glowing swords for sale, and then the sale's people started down the aisles.....Cam had a COMPLETE melt-down with this. We told him that we couldn't get him the sword, and he bawled. He bawled and bawled. He even said he wanted to go home. I was NOT happy with Mr. Ringmaster after that!
They had intermission where people could buy rides on the elephants, toys, rides with the horses, a picture with the bears and lions and tigers, and even to play on a giant bouncy slide. We sat back and just watched. Cam was too afraid to see the elephants up close, but he was fascinated by them.
After the intermission, a little boy decided to climb on the fence in front of us, and blocked our view. Steve yelled at him a few times, but it was so loud I don't think he heard him. So I got up, walked over to him, tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to get down because we couldn't see. (Really, I was upset because I had paid $16 and was seeing some little kid's butt instead of the show...) He looked at me with a blank stare. Either he didn't understand English or just didn't care. Finally, he got down, and by that time we'd missed the act. I was NOT happy with the irresponsible parents who did NOT have respect for anyone around them or their kid to keep him safe beside them. Seriously, annoyed!
Finally they announced that they were going to have their grand finale. UM, they did the High School Musical dance for "We're All In This Together." Grand finale??? :P
Overall, it was something I'll probably never forget....probably not do again either, but now I can say I've taken my kids to a circus...and it WAS a circus.

3 comments:

Jewelle said...

I know exactly what you are talking about. We heard about the "free" tickets last year and that you could pre-buy the adult tickets at Albertsons. When I heard they were $13.00 a piece, I said no way no how. I remember back when I was a kid my dad took me several years to the Circus. His ticket was like $3.00 and mine was a buck! What happened to cheap good quality family fun? At least you can say you've gone to the circus my kids I think will be deprived the rest of their lives unless they want to cough up some of their savings so we can "all" go! :)

Mattsmom said...

I knew the tickets were $$$$$$$$$$ so we passed it up last time. This time it was out of the ?, but after reading this I think we will save our $ when it comes again.

Kim said...

Wow, that's a bummer but I can't say that I'm surprised. With the cost of everything going up, including movies and a dinner out the price seems about right as long as the quality of the experience is good, which obviously it wasn't.