Storytime Live

While visiting my parents in Florida, my mom, MM, BJ and I had the chance to go to Orlando to see Nick Jr's Storytime Live. MM and BJ loved the music and their favorite characters- Kai-lan, Backyardigans, Wonder Pets and Dora- were the featured stories. In addition to these, there were interludes with Moose A. Moose and Zee D. Bird. There were favorite songs, dances and puzzle time. MM was very happy and BJ "danced" on my lap. It was my first experience with going to a children's only event and must say that they behaved very well for being mostly under seven.

Now, my mom always says to say something pleasant before criticizing, because nothing is all bad, there is always good. And there was, but some things could have been improved upon, especially since they were asking for $28 per person (including for my 7 month old!).

Our adventures began with Moose and Zee doing puzzle time. If they had just had the actor's face covered, it would have helped, but seeing his face and hearing his Urkle voice, made some the the older audience members boo him. Yes, boo him. Why not pre-record the voice of Moose, make the costume cover the actor's face a-la theme park style, and then it would have been great!

The first story was Kai-lan. It was fun and MM really liked the story; however, the speed at which the story was delivered was break-neck! It was almost like they chose a 30 minute story and felt the need to condense it to 20 minutes. Now, I know that children do not have a long attention span, but it was hard to follow the story because everything was done so quickly. There was not easy transitions from one thing to another, it was even hard to understand what they were saying because they were speaking so quickly. Now, I teach language as my profession and if I was was having trouble with it, I am sure that my 3 year old was. If they just slowed the delivery a little, it would have been super.

The second story featured the Backyardigans. The costumes were great but they showed the actors' faces which became an issue when they changed into their costumes for the adventure. If they had just put on a little face make-up to go along with the character they were portraying, it would have helped. Once the Backyardigans were in "Filthyham" it just looked like people in over-sized costumes; you no longer made any connections to Tyron, Uniqua, Pablo, Tasha or Austin. The story was good though.

After an intermission, it was time for the Wonder Pets. From the advertising on Nick Jr. I knew that I would be seeing puppeteers. I was prepared for that; however, the advertising made you think that the puppets were much larger. Perhaps if we were in the first 10 rows, it would have been better, but once you got up a little, all you could really focus on were the puppeteers pushing their puppets around. The story was good, but the puppeteers were too distracting. Even MM, when telling her father about it later, said that they were not the real Wonder Pets but pretend Wonder Pets! It was going to be a huge leap anyway, so why not make the puppets larger or find shorter puppeteers?

The final story was Dora. It was great; could have been slower, but it was not as fast as Kai-lan. MM loved it and the audience did too. They loved Swiper the Fox and Map. The production did a good job making the audience feel like they were seeing an episode of Dora. The show ended with a dance finale with most of the characters on stage (some of the actors did double duty so not all characters could be on stage). When it ended, we were able to quickly leave the theater and find the bathrooms.

We decided to use the bathrooms before heading back on the road; not wishing to push our luck with the recently potty trained MM. While in the bathroom, MM suddenly began playing with a Wonder Pet doll. Neither Mom or I knew where she had gotten it from. We asked several people, but could not find it's owner. So we cleaned it off with wipes to be on the safe side and let her have it. She has since played with it every time she watches the Wonder Pets on Nick. After the bathroom break, we got her a Storytime Live bag to remember the experience and then headed out into 98 degree Orlando heat.

Overall, the experience was good. It is a shame that they did not show this to a test audience of children before they headed out. Maybe they did, but I bet you that they did not ask the right questions!