DAY OF PIXAR AND DINOSAURS

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In the fall and winter my traveling partners are at school or at work so I have to plan short trips close where we live.  The most recent was to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.   I was excited when I found out that the Science Behind Pixar was going to be opening at the Museum Oct.11 and be there through April 2020.  I mean who doesn’t like “Cars”, “Monsters Inc.” and “Toy Story”, just to name a few. I decided it would be a fun place to spend a Friday.  My grandkids have a 4-day school week, so Fridays are perfect. The 2 hour drive from Pueblo to Denver is long enough for the younger ones.

As luck luck would have it, when we first arrived at the Museum, right as we gave them our ticketstickets and walked in, the fire alarm started going off, and the magnetic doors closed and everyone started coming down the stairs. They started announcing that is was a fire alarm and they were checking to see what the problem was and they would keep us posted. So nobody seemed too concerned so we decided to start with the exhibits on the first floor. So we started with the wildlife. We had 2 hrs. before we could go to the Pixar exhibit. We had to pick a time, that way the exhibit doesn’t get overly crowded.

We loved all of the wildlife, most of them are set in true to life habitats. Some of the favorites were the wolves, bears, Paislee liked the turkeys because she says she’s going turkey hunting with her dad!

Braxton found a new buddy in the Sea Lions.

After cthhecking out the wildlife for about an hour we decided we’re hungry. That’s okay, there is the TRex Deli and the TRex Cafe. The museum was very busy that day, the garage parking was full, and so were the places to sit to eat lunch. We were lucky, we found an empty table and took turns sitting with the kids and going and getting food. The food was pretty good for Museum Grill food. They have a lot of kid friendly choices. My oldest granddaughter, Brianna chose a buffalo burger with sweet potato fries. She said it was very good. The little kids had hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. Rylee and I played it safe and ordered grilled cheese, and I had sweet potato fries as well. It was very good.

After lunch it was time to check in for the Pixar Exhibit. It was really fun and amazing at how much work goes into making cartoon movies. There is a lot of art, technology and mathematics going on behind the scenes before we get to see the finished product. They also startstart with a story idea. For instance the story behind Toy Story was the theory that when you went to bed at night, the toys came to life.

We spent most of the afternoon in the Pixar Exhibit. There was a lot to see and do. For Example the kids could build their own robots. This was one of their favorite stations.

Other stations included working with the technology of shapes. How lighting can affect what we see. Also the art of animation.

Well it was time to move on to the dinosaurs! It is amazing to see how big those prehistoric animals were. It’s also astonishing to learn that 250 million years ago, Denver was totally under water, and many thousands of years later these prehistoric animals roamed all over Colorado.

10 THINGS TO DO AT THE MUSEUM

If you go , you can save money buying your tickets on line, it will save you about $1 per person, the same is true for your special ticket to get in to certain exhibits such as the Pixar exhibit.

• Science Behind Pixar (Requires extra ticket)
• Extreme Sports Beyond (Free)
• Prehistoric Journey (Free)
• VR Arcade
• Egyptian Mummies (Free)
• Discovery Zone (Free)
• Imax Theatre ( Requires extra ticket)
• Planetarium (Ticket)
• T-Rex Cafe/Deli
• Gift Shop

We had a great time, but now it was 3:00pm already and we had to leave so we could Rylee home in time for the 71st Traditional Bell Game between Central and Centennial HIgh Schools! Rylee is cheering for the Centennial Bulldogs, hoping for the 4th straight win for Centennial.