Our big vacation this year was to take the kids to the West Edmonton Mall. We drove there from Havre on July 5. We were there for 5 days. Grandma and Grandpa Beckstead and Melissa joined us part way through.
We camped in the Rainbow Valley Campground right in Edmonton, but we were hardly there. We spent all our time at the mall. We had a family pass that gave us unlimited access to the amusement park and water park. We also had access to a full sized replica of the Santa Maria (one of Christopher Columbus' ships), bowling, the ice skating rink, the aquarium, the sea lion show, and two miniature golf courses. The best part is that all of this is indoors. Another plus was that there were hardly any lines anywhere, so we got to do whatever we wanted with very few delays.
We spent a lot of time in the amusement park. Typically it was Annie and one adult going to the stuff for smaller kids. On the map below, it is most of the stuff on the left hand side. Alise and Zadik would go with another adult on the bigger rides. Most of their stuff was on the right side of the map. Brenna would bounce back and forth.
Annie really loved the carousel and the Playpark (think a McDonald's play place, but around 3 stories high, and 100 times as big). Brenna seemed to enjoy everything, but especially the fun house. Zadik and Alise wanted to do all the more intense rides. Unfortunately, there were several rides Zadik was too small for. Alise was only too small for one ride, the Mindbender (the biggest roller coaster).
Here are a bunch of pictures. (some are not great quality, but they were cell phone pictures on moving rides)
The Family at the main entrance to Galaxyland
Loving the carousel
This is the ball pit in the playpark
Brenna is trying to give a thumbs up.
The little girls enjoying a train ride through the park on the Galaxyland Express.
On board the Balloon Race
You can see the family in the middle row of the Flying Galleon
On the Cosmic Bounce, the tiny version of the Space Shot
They had a really cool ropes course. You are strapped in to a harness. You then go back and forth over different balance beam type paths across each of 3 different levels.
The Space Shot. And yes, I screamed like a little girl when I did this. Thankfully, the camera person missed that.
The Mindbender. This ride was awesome!
As I mentioned before, the WEM has two miniature golf courses. The first one is Professor Wem's Adventure golf.
The flying balloon contraption bears a striking resemblance to the one in the far flung adventures book series.
The second one is a brand new black light golf course.
You are supposed to stay off the decorations, but Jenny and Annie ignored that.
In the center of the mall is an ice skating rink. We spent one morning playing on the ice.
We spent a little time exploring the ship. You only get to explore the one deck, so it didn't take us long.
This is overlooking the Sea Lion area (directly behind me), the aquarium (to the right), and the ship (far right).
If you look closely, you Grandma and Grandpa in the background on the first floor, left hand side.
The aquarium has a shark petting tank.
There is also a tank for touching invertebrates. It is cool to watch the anemones shrink up when you touch them.
We had tons of fun at the World Waterpark. There is a huge wave pool, several kiddie areas, a really fun splash park, and tons of slides. We didn't get many pictures since electronics and water don't get along very well.
No comments:
Post a Comment