Showtime - 12/16/2006

Jake's 13th birthday is this coming Thursday. Thirteen! A Teen! AAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKK! I remember 13. At 13, people my age were old farts. *I* am an old fart!

Jake gets to pick what he wants to do on his birthday. Usually, he chooses a restaurant & we go eat. Olive Garden was his pick a couple of times, Kobe Japanese Steak house (where they cook right in front of you) was another he's chosen. This year, though, he wanted to go to Disney Quest. It's an interactive, five-story....arcade, really, located at Downtown Disney (one of my most favorite places to take out-of-town guests. Downtown Disney is almost like going to Disney, but you can walk around the shops and places for free. When Jake I were were alone and on a tight budget, we'd go down there just to walk around and have fun, without having to spend any $$). Five floors of video games, interactive computer games and rides, the perfect place for a 13 year old.

This picture is actually the back of the place. I wish I had taken pictures of the front of it. It is huge, and dark inside. Isabel had a ball too. Check out her cute shirt. We started out by going on a white water rafting trip. A virtual white water rafting trip. It was fun. We got in a raft and the "water" moved us around. The raft was on an air-mattress, if you will, that inflated and deflated to simulate the motion of the water, as it pertained to the video we were watching on the screen.

Then, Jake & I went off to create our own roller coaster while David chased Isabel. You get a scan-card and go to a console. You create your own roller coaster, with loops, twists, drops, jumps, black hole jumps, etc. Then the scan-card saves your roller coaster and you go to the ride simulator. They load your roller coaster into the simulator and you get it. This simulator recreates the roller coaster you created. The thing had us upside-down, twisting & flipping.
David found the "retro" arcade, so I chased Isabel while he played Pac Man, Galaga, Frogger, Q-Bert, etc. You remember those, dont you? You're showing your age, my friend!

David and Jake went on a virtual Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride, while Isabel and I went to a room where you could "color" on a computer screen. She loved it. It was a touch screen and after two seconds, she had the whole program figured out. She made 5 masterpieces by the time David & Jake were done. We did a lot more running about. Jake found the DDR machine....NOT WORKING!! Gasp! They did have a different game called Pump It Up, similar to DDR, but the arrows were diagonal and there was a 5th button in the middle. Took him a bit to figure out the moves. There were a few other guys there playing too. They had been playing that game for a while, because they were all over it.

We went up to the 5th floor and ordered a slice of cheese pizza for Isabel and a whole pie for the rest of us, plus some sodas. Isabel ate all her pizza and was beginning to act loopy. David finished the pizza while Jake and I went to....battle some aliens? A virtual game for 4 people where you are in a spaceship and 3 of you have to shoot down the aliens while the 4th person, the pilot, picks up colonists. Jake ran into a few school friends who were also there, on the way to this game.

After killing aliens, David and I left with Isabel to go to the Jeep and change her diaper. David stayed in the car with Isabel while I went back inside to meet Jake. We stayed for a 20 minute drawing class (a Disney animator taught us how to draw Donald Duck) and then went back out to go home. Isabel had already fallen asleep in the car.

That was our fun Jake-Day celebration, a few days early.