Topics

16

General Silver Dollar City Talk / pass trade in

« on: March 09, 2014, 10:06:26 AM »

We didn't use our passes last year.  Yeah.  I know.  We were crazy busy.  Anyway,  what do we need tondo to trade them in for passes for this year?  I know there is also a small cost involved.

17

General Silver Dollar City Talk / Snow in the city

« on: December 07, 2013, 03:36:04 PM »

A friend is there with his infant, toddler, and wife today.  No way would I take my kids in such cold weather.  Anyway, he said he'll be posting more photos after dark.  I'll update with more photos later.

18

General Silver Dollar City Talk / City closed today

« on: December 05, 2013, 06:47:53 AM »

Kolr is reporting the situ will he closed in the interest of the safety of the citizens and visitors. 

19

Random Talk / yay for being back!

« on: June 17, 2013, 08:13:45 PM »

I hope the craziness is over.  We still haven't made our first trip to the city this year. 

My mom, busymom4kc, had an almost life ending bleeding ulcer in march.  After they replaced 11 units of blood and 2 units of platelets and a 2 week hospital stay, she was finally in the road to recovery. 

Fast forward 5 weeks to the beginning of may.  My dad, charliehorsejigs (he's a lurker!  Lol), had a heart attack that went from let's put stints in to an emergency triple bypass at the age of 52.  There were no warning signs and his bp and cholesterol levels have been normal at every yearly check. 

3 weeks later I reluctantly went to Wisconsin for 11 days for vacation and family wedding.  I knew something was going to happen when I was fine.  Yep.  I was right.  My cousin Dan was in a 1 car accident.  Yesterday, his father, mother, and brother had to make the decision to take him off the vent.  He died last night at 11:15 pm CST.

It has been a long hard 3 months.  I am so glad to be back to normal.  Although how normal can I be if I hang out with you all?!   . so, even though I don't post a ton, you know the reason for my absence.  Now I'm off to put the three loud children to bed!

20

Random Talk / Maggot Therapy? You have got to be kidding me...

« on: January 20, 2013, 08:46:03 PM »

http://bransontrilakesnews.com/news_free/article_d2ba926e-61ae-11e2-9d69-001a4bcf887a.html

They put live maggots under a dressing on your wound that won't heal.  Ew.....

21

General Silver Dollar City Talk / Opened the mailbox to find...

« on: December 19, 2012, 09:16:37 PM »

Next year's SDC passes!  WOOHOO!!!

22

Branson Talk / Blue Man Grill

« on: October 13, 2012, 10:30:07 PM »

You have got to eat at this place!  It is located next to Ride the Ducks.  It is a small restaurant and will seat maybe 50 people.  Don't order an  appetizer, you won't need it.  Tony got a burger and homemade potato chips.  The chips were obviously fresh and he couldn't figure out how to eat that huge burger.  I had the macaroni and cheese.  Best I have ever had in a restaurant.  It even had bacon!

23

Other Parks / Lego Land-KC

« on: June 02, 2012, 10:49:24 PM »

We took the twins and the baby to visit KC last weekend.  If you are interested in a Sea Life, Lego Land, hotel package, Both the Westin Crown Center and Sheraton Crown Center offer packages starting at 149.00.  Totally worth it considering you can walk everywhere from Crown Center.  Be aware that the Sheraton is undergoing an $18M renovation right now, so the lobby is torn apart, but the rest of the hotel is not being worked on at this time.  The reason we chose the Sheraton is because it offered free parking with the package, while the Westin did not.  Anyway...

This was the first time at Lego Land for any of us.  I would imagine that most lego lands are much larger than this one.  The first thing you need to do is buy your tickets online.  If you don't, you are at the mercy of the lines that form and we have heard the wait can literally be hours.  The same thing goes for Sea Life, which we did not go to. If you get the hotel package, you can go to the attractions you paid for any time, without making reservations.  It sounds stupid, but considering the entire thing is indoors, there are fire codes they have to consider.  The only rude employee we came across was the guy admitting people into the building.  There was no signage, so we assumed we should go on in.  He certainly let us know that we were incorrect on that matter.  Also, you may not enter without a child, unless it is an adults only night.   

We were on our way up to lego land within 15 minutes of arriving.  Not bad considering I had to change our tickets in for "official" ones.  The lego "structures" are awesome!  The first thing you come across when you get off the elevator is the "factory tour".  It demonstrates how legos are made and is interactive which kept the kids attention...for a little while. Each child walks away with a souvineer lego. 

Then a short wait in line to go to the "Save the Princess" ride as my daughter called it.  You ride in a vehicle around a short track and shoot things, reminiscent of the Shootout.  Beware it is not quiet in there.  Cate never took her hands off her ears and Caleb flat out refused to ride it. 

Next you have your choice.  There is a small amusement type ride, lego city (or something like that), and then the big lego area.  Lego city was AWESOME!  They have done all of the major KC areas in legos.  You will see downtown KC, Union station, Sprint Center, Arrowhead and Kauffman Stadiums.  Around the corner I stepped into my favorite movie...the Wizard of Oz.  They have done everything from a house that spins and drops to Emerald City to the Witch's castle.  The sound effects are great and there are also munchkins!

There is a small play area for small toddlers, and lots of lego "pits" for the kids to play in.  There is an area to build cars and race them.  Cate loved the girls lego area, complete with lego cupcakes and princess castles.  There is a really cool area where you can build a lego building and make the board you build it on shake, just to see how well you actually build.  Caleb's favorite part was the play area.  There are slides, bricks to play in and jump on, etc.  There is an employee guarding the closed gate at all times and they will not let a child out without the child identifying a parent that is there to get them. 

There is also a 4D movie.  It was so cute!  You will get a bit damp, but it is a ton of fun with kids.  Cate loved it.  Again...Caleb refused to go.  He built cars instead. 

You can also watch the master builders and take a master builder class.  Apparently they are going to be building R2D2 soon...a full size replica.  Lego Land is located on the 2nd floor and Sea Life is located on the 1st floor.  One of the master builders said that they are already working on expansion plans for Lego Land to include the 3rd floor. 

The only improvement I would suggest is for them to have something like Chuck E. Cheese.  Each person gets a matching stamp or wrist band and you cannot leave or pick up your child from the play area without matching your child. 

Overall, we loved Lego Land and will likely visit again next year!

24

Random Talk / Meet the newest Martin SDC Fan!

« on: March 14, 2012, 02:38:37 PM »

Anna Grace was born on March 2, 2012 at 7:45 am.  7 lb 7 1/2 oz and 21 inches long. 

This pic was taken a week ago, so she was about a week old here. 

25

Branson Talk / Extreme Cheapskates

« on: December 29, 2011, 02:28:44 PM »

TLC had a show called Extreme Cheapskates on last night.  These people are a little...frugal for me.  lol!  One guy was from Branson and barters for everything.  He decided to help a friend and his fiancee have an engagement party for free.  The friend's name is Josh and he is part of the 12 Irish tenors.  He traded a private performance of an Aria and 2 tickets to a 12 tenors show for a party space, cake, and other sweets for the party!  The other guy refuses to pay for a haircut.  So he walked into a random salon and offered to take out trash and clean the salon for a free haircut.  At least he isn't the woman from KC.  She refuses to buy toilet paper so they just cut up cloth to use as toilet paper.  They wash it and use it again.   She also bargain shops for food.  I do that too, but I refuse to use items that are 3 years past expiration!

26

White Water Discussion / Trip-May 29, 2011

« on: May 29, 2011, 10:44:49 PM »

So, I'm not sure if you normally do an "official" thread on WW visits, but I wanted to update everyone on how everything was going today at White Water.

We got there around noon.  Our first stop was to rent a locker.  There are now 2 sizes of lockers, family size and regular size.  They have reformatted the way you find lockers.  Each key is on a certain color lanyard.  Your lanyard matches the paddle over the set of lockers you use.  Pretty efficient, but they don't have a map of where everything is.  We ended up getting a locker that was far away from where we spent out time. 

Next stop-Aloha Bay!  It was great!  I was very impressed with how great it looks.  The only downside is that there are only 2 exit and entrance points.  They are very close together.  However, we saw that there was really no place to put another exit and have it make sense.  The current isn't too strong, but moves everyone along well.  The pictures show it a lot more "active" than it really is.  The spouts that pour out water are easily avoided.  The lifeguards were great, making sure that the teens didn't tip over others' tubes or bump into people, which didn't always happen in previous years. 

We took the twins on their first water slide!  They loved it!  Next, a stop at first aid.  Caleb cut his toe.  They were on top of everything and he had a great time showing off his bandaid!  After that, we had lunch at Hannah's.  Prices were great this year and the refillable cup is totally worth it!  The four of us ate for under 20.00.  You can by the cup for 5.99 and then fill it up for .99 for the 2011 season only.  If you get a nice checkout person, they also give you the SDC 10% off, making your refill only  .89.  You can only use this cup at WW.

The kids had a great time in the toddler area.  Dad and I rode all of the slides except the Towers.  I think it's time to get rid of the Bermuda Triangle.  It's really not well used and it is hard for taller people to ride it.  Dad came out with a scraped foot because he couldn't get his legs to switch sides fast enough.  There were always tubes available. 

Overall, it was a great trip!  The staff was nice and very helpful.  You may want to take water shoes that you can wear on every ride.  The bottom of the pool areas are really rough, as is the zero entry to Aloha Bay.  It feels like they just took bags of the roughest sand they could find, dumped them out, then painted over it.  Our feet are completely torn up.  That's how Caleb's toe got cut.  It wasn't enough to make our trip bad! 

Now, I'm going to sleep so we can have a fun day at the city tomorrow.  Caleb is staying in  my parent's cabin, which means we have a pretty good chance of Cate sleeping til 9!

27

General Silver Dollar City Talk / Monday's Schedule at SDC

« on: May 27, 2011, 03:39:51 PM »

I am not able to get silverdollarcity.com to pull up.  I am trying to find out if they are doing the GAC show on Monday night.  I know they normally do have it every other night (besides Sunday) that they are open, but it is a holiday weekend and they often have special events.  Does anyone know?

28

Branson Talk / Highway across Table Rock Dam to close for 2 weeks

« on: April 30, 2011, 03:50:34 PM »

http://www.carthagepress.com/news/x602919985/Highway-across-Table-Rock-Dam-to-close-for-14-days

BRANSON, Mo. —
Highway 165/265 across Table Rock Lake will close at 6 a.m. Tuesday for 14 days while repairs are made on the downstream embankment of the dam.

Repairs are necessary because recent heavy rains have caused surface “skin” slides of topsoil that covers the embankment.  The dam is sound, but the slides must be repaired.

Officials at the Army Corps of Engineers Table Rock Project Office said they regret any inconvenience this may cause, and they ask for public cooperation until the work is complete. The officials ask travelers to plan alternate routes and allow extra time to reach their destinations.

The closure is being coordinated with emergency services and law enforcement agencies.