Thursday, February 17, 2011

Monster Jam Anaheim

Went to my first monster truck rally this past weekend. It was the Monster Jam at Angel Stadium. Very cool. I took the family with the expectation that my son (age 4) would love it. He's currently interested in monster trucks. The Disney Cars movie recently made monster truck variants of the popular McQueen and Mater characters. My son loves playing with his monster trucks.
We spent a good portion of the day at Monster Jam. There are Pit Passes available for $5/each where you can see the trucks and drivers up close before the races and freestyle. It was great for photo-ops. Being a gearhead, I loved getting to see the trucks up close. Also, our seats were in the nose bleeds, so it gave my son a chance to get a real feel for the scale of a true monster truck. The drivers were very friendly and great at selling themselves and the sport in-general.
The Monster Jam itself started with single elimination heat races, to determine a race champion for the night. Then the judged freestyle portion of the even took place, with each truck going off the jumps and crushing cars to please the crowd. To my surprise, my daughter really loved the Monster Jam. My son found it a bit too loud, even though we came prepared with earplugs. To me it was similar in smell and sound to Top Fuel Dragsters, but had the action and carnage that appeal to a broader audience. A lot of the trucks broke down or flipped over during the freestyle event.
It was a great night. The only downer was that Jurassic Attack, the triceratops shaped truck, broke down right after the introduction laps. My son loved that truck in the Pits and we bought him the plush version of it. So, not watching the dino-truck compete was disappointing.
It was a very family friendly event and there were tons of families with younger kids. I would probably go back again and recommend it to anyone with kids age 5-8.

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