Up with the Twins

When our Friend from Las Vegas visited a few weeks ago, we bought 2fer tickets for Disneyland (for one price, we could visit one park one day, then visit the other park within 30 days). With him already back in Las Vegas, Caesar and I thought it might be a fun idea to take our friend MM and her twins and her new beau to California Adventure. Long story short, she had a free 2fer ticket from her birthday a few weeks before, our extra ticket would be for the beau, twins get in free. So we arranged to meet them in the afternoon at the main gate, giving the twins a chance to rest up before a busy day.

But before we met, Caesar and I decided to catch a matineé of Up at Downtown Disney, just to completely overload ourselves in the Disney experience. So along with a theater filled to almost overflowing with kids (and their parents), we settled into the 3D-ness of the film.

Up tells the story of Carl Frederickson, a widower trying to enjoy his old age in peace. If the city developers have any say about it, however, he'd be resting in a retirement home somewhere. Unluckily for Carl, the city's opportunity soon appears when he attacks a construction worker trying to repair his mailbox, and he soon finds himself getting ready to be shipped off. Carl comes up with a plan -- one that would make his beloved Ellie proud -- and he somehow sneaks hundreds of balloons into his house, the helium carrying him to South America to fulfill a promise made to Ellie. But unbeknownst to Carl, he has a stowaway -- a Junior Wilderness Explorer named Russell. Together, they set off on an adventure to bring Carl's house to Paradise Falls in South America, but find themselves entangled in a hunt for a rare bird and fighting off talking dogs.

Once again, Pixar has crafted an amazing animated film. Great computer work, an incredibly moving story (as always), and 3D that didn't rely on the cheesy, jumping-out-of-the-screen effects. Rather, the 3D added depth to the entire film, making it come alive, seem more realistic. The voices were equally great: how can you go wrong with Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer? But Jordan Nagai as Russell and Bob Peterson as Dug the Dog really made the film for me. Their voices seemed perfectly matched to their computer-generated counterparts.

I think it safe to say that we both enjoyed the movie.

As for the day in the park with the twins, what a workout that turned out to be! We spent much of the time in Redwood Creek, which is a foresty play area modeled after various California State Parks. Trees to climb through, lots of slides, rope bridges and even a tunnel-- the kids wore themselves silly. I think they each slid down the slides at least 10 times. We wandered from there over to A Bug's Land where Disney offered another play area to wear out for the kids to jump and play. This time, they even rode Heimlich's Chew Chew Train and some flying thing that spun and tilted in the air. They laughed and smiled, only fussing a few times (thankfully), and by the end of the night, they were sufficiently pooped out. One of the kids fell asleep in the stroller while we stopped to listen to a guitar player, and the other was fighting valiantly to keep sleep away. We finally left them around 8:30 and headed into the crowd to find something to eat.

Image from I Watch Stuff.