We had a playdate this past Sunday at the Discovery Cube in Orange County, Santa Ana to be more precise, in the shadows of the CA-22 and I-5 freeways:
It's a pretty neat exploratorium-type place, only not as spectacular as the SF location. Older kids may not have been too impressed, and Camille was too young really, but Cass and his buddies loved it.
There was a Halloween themed event happening as well, with "corn mazes" and other things:
The longest wait was for the bumper "cars," which were devises with steering controls similar to Ron's ride-on mower at the Farm. We waited in line for nearly an hour, since it took only four riders at a time and each group got three minutes:
They had a bed-of-nails attraction, where you laid on a table that was smooth, and once activated, the nails would emerge en masse hoisting you up, holding for a few beats, then returning to the table. Cass saw me doing it, and wanted to try himself, which is when I took the following picture:
Outside they had a giant dinosaur you could walk through, with pieces of flesh and meat stripped away scientifically, and a makeshift GI tract inside the belly zone.
One thing that was kind of an issue was that the whole outdoor space looked like a playground, but it wasn't really anything like that. That didn't stop Camille, of course, from doing Camille things:
Inside the giant cube itself was a replica of a space exploration module from a generation or two ago, with fake steam and smoke that made the kids flee quickly after arriving at it:
Cass and some of his buddies all go to different schools now, and it was cool they got to hang out:
They even did a laser-room sneak-attack thing---see them on the monitor below, trying to avoid the beams:
All in all it was a nice trip to see some things. I think the Halloween aspect was, eh, not as spectacular as they billed it, but the kids had a good time, which is what we're really trying to do.
