Sunday, September 24, 2006

Fun at the Circus!

So even though my mom claims that I have been to a circus before, I don't have any memories of it. So when my friend Jen recommended that a group of us go to the Alzafar Shrine Circus this weekend, I decided to go for it! Phil was volunteering at the Valero Texas Open, so he could not come along, and I brought my good friend Lena instead.

We all met up at Chris Madrid's for a yummy (albeit greasy) dinner before the show. Then we headed over to Freeman Colliseum, bought our tickets and our shrine circus hats, and headed inside for the show.

Before the show, people had indicated that this circus was inferior to the Barnum & Bailey circus, and that we may not have a good time. Some even called the circus "poor". However, we had also heard that there would be an opportunity to ride an elephant at this circus, so we didn't care what else happened as long as we could get a fantastic photo of us on the elephant!

Now, the first half of the show was great. It started off with a man on a motorcycle way up in the air going round and round, and he was attached to this pole, which on the other side swung a woman from a bar that she hung from. They both took turns turning round and round going up and down, all hanging high up in the air. Pretty impressive. There was also a tiger show (which leaved something to be desired to be honest), but there were some great drummers, really cool acrobatic tricks, the hula-hoop lady, etc. By intermission, we had decided this circus was great!

So during intermission we rush down to center stage to get in line for the elephant ride. Literally, picture 7 of us fully grown men and women running across the floor to get in line. I guess I should back up and tell you that we had also picked our seats at the beginning of the show accordingly so that we would have the easiest and quickest access to the floor as possible to get in line easily during intermission! So we get in line and are told that tickets are required. We send a few of the group to get tickets but in the meantime find out that it is not $7 per ride, but $7 per person!!!! We decided that we would not pay $50 for our group to ride on the elephant for 3 minutes. But we also realized that this circus was making LOTS of money, and maybe we were in the wrong business! Maybe I'll talk to my boss on Monday about investing in an elephant...

So needless to say, we did not get our cherished elephant ride in, but we got some photos pretty close to the huge animals, so we were still happy.

After intermission was our absolute favorite act! The elephants came out in two rings, 7 total. There were 6 adult elephants and one baby! They did great tricks, like spinning in circles, "holding hands" which was done by using their trunk to hold the next elephant's tail, laying down on their sides, getting up on their hind legs and putting their paws on the next elephant in line to form a train, sit on a chair, etc. It was soooo cute!

2 comments:

Diddy said...

Awww I wouldn't have paid for the elephant ride either...but I would have been disappointed!!

Diddy said...

Oh yeah ha ha ha ha Karthik told me that I can ride one in India!!! :)~ Jealous?