Zoo Boo!

So, last fall we joined our county zoo. It is quaint and small, near our house and has a train that James LOVES to ride. (Having grown up by one of the nation's top zoos, I'm a bit spoiled.) There's also a pretty fantastic playground in the same park. Anyway, we've enjoyed our membership and renewed it this year. In our membership packet we got information about Zoo Boo, and understood that tickets sell out fast. We weren't entirely sure what the festivities would include, but we figured all those ticket buyers couldn't be wrong, so we used our membership pre-sale advantage and got tix for the non-scary Saturday afternoon slot.

Note: the choices were Fri. or Sat. night from 6-9 (bath & bedtime) or Sat. from noon-3 (lunch & naptime).

Well, Saturday was rainy and yucky, so they postponed it until today. Yea! We got James fed and all dressed up (putting his mustache on was much easier today than it was for his school's party Thursday night-- having Daddy here to hold him down was key) and headed over. The tickets said, "Be prepared for long lines" and they weren't kidding.

Basically it is just one long line.

The line starts outside the zoo as you're waiting to get in, then you stay in line as you go past the various displays and treat stations (it is all roped off, so there's no real way to wander along; you have to follow the path). We bypassed the magician and storytelling because both were already underway when we got to the locations, and by the time we'd made it through the path once, we didn't want to go back. We're pretty sure that James was much happier to take a train ride (another line) than to go watch a magician or hear stories.

He was thrilled to ride the train, of course. Not sure what he thought about all the displays and costumes. When we were near a giant inflatable jack-o-lantern & cat, all he kept saying was, "Triangle! Triangle!"

He conked out in the short time it took to get home. He was so out of it that he stayed asleep as we brought him inside and took off the outer layers of clothes. He then slept until about 5 and woke up for dinner with a mustache.

A tired boy & his daddy.