Pumpkin Prowl

Christina and I went to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle this evening for their annual Pumpkin Prowl.  It's an event where a portion of the zoo is decorated (the rest is blocked off), and there are lots of designated spots for kids to "Trick-or-Treat" and get candy.  A friend of mine went last year and said it was lots of fun, so I thought I'd check it out.

Man, was it crowded!  I mean, I expected it to be popular - I guess I just didn't expect that such a small portion of the zoo would be open, so there were lots of people in small spaces.  We had to wait in lots of LONG lines in order to get any candy.  Not to say that it wasn't a good time - actually, Christina was surprisingly patient waiting in all the lines.  She really enjoyed looking around and seeing the other kids' costumes.

Christina saw the wandering peacock shortly after we entered the zoo.  It wandered off (naturally!), and she didn't realize it was in the bushes right behind her.

Then, it almost came out of the bushes right in front of her.  Don't worry, I moved her out of the way before he stepped out!

I got a couple pictures of her in front of some jack-o-lanterns.  (In case you can't tell, they've got glow sticks inside them.)

Then, we headed over to the "Family Farm" area of the zoo.  We saw some goats while we were over there (the only animals that we saw the whole time).  And Christina enjoyed playing with the (non-working) water pump, while having a lollypop.

After that we went to the "Bug World" building and saw all the bugs, and by the time we got out of there, it was pretty dark.  We got in line to go into the "Boomazium" (typically called the Zoomazium).  It's usually a play area for young kids, but tonight it was decked out as a (fairly tame) haunted house.  It goes without saying that we had to wait in a HUGE line to get in.  So while we were waiting, I snapped some pictures!

Here's some jack-o-lanterns on spikes!  (And the reason the picture is so washed out is that it was TOTALLY dark by this time.)

A nice gentleman offered to take a picture of Christina and I in front of a huge jack-o-lantern.

Here's a creepy scarecrow that was just outside the building (sort of "Nightmare Before Christmas," I thought).

Once we were inside, it got pretty spooky.  It was one big, dark room, with BIG displays.  Christina was a little scared when we first walked in, what with it being so dark and the noises over the speakers so LOUD, but I explained that everything in the room was "pretend.".  I pointed out that the ghost and the bats flying overhead were attached to strings, so they could only go in a certain path.  That seemed to help her feel better about it.

There was a tall witch decoration that reached nearly to the ceiling, and over the speakers near her you could hear her cackling and saying, "Watch out for my spider friend over there, heee heee heee."  I didn't know what she was talking about until we rounded the corner and saw this:

A HUGE spider!  And keep in mind that the room was very dark - the display was only lit by some spooky blue and green lights.  The only reason the picture is so bright is that my camera's flash was on.  And not only was it a big, scary spider, but it was robotic, so it MOVED!

Christina didn't want to get too close to that one, and I don't blame her!

This scarecrow was quite spooky as well, but Christina didn't seem to mind it very much.

Christina was pretty relieved to exit the "Boomazium."  She said "It was scary in there!"

After that we did some more trick-or-treating and then headed back to the car.  All in all, we had quite a good time.  I'm not sure if we'll go back again next year, just because of all the long lines, but it was definitely worth checking out.  At one of the trick-or-treating "sites," we even got a beanie baby toy (Soybean the pig, whose birthday is January 3, 2007, just a couple weeks before Christina was born.  I thought that was pretty neat!).