Family Day Out
Having your holidays from work can be amazing. Time to sit back and relax, put your feet up and veg out in front of the television or do all the things you never seem you never seem to have time to do.
At least that was the plan until you find yourself having the same holidays as the kids and suddenly your relaxation becomes nonexistent.
Recently we have been quite hard up for cash and barely getting by month to month, but with some extra shifts thrown in, I managed to have a little spare cash floating around and decided that the kids needed a treat.
At the end of the day, it is the memories that you create that make it all the more worthwhile!
So today we decided ( and quite late on may I add) that we would take them out for the day. That is not easy though as then you have to plan where you can go and what you can afford. So after much Googling and debating we decided that we would go and watch a movie at our local cinema but after a round of crazy golf at the golf range.
Crazy Golf :golf:
In our home village, we are lucky enough to have a golf range which has a 9 hole pitch and putt, driving range, footgolf course, and crazy golf so for a small cost, we decided to have around on the crazy golf course which gives you 12 holes of fun but challenging golf.
The kids loved the game and were surprisingly good too. My daughter cheated a little bit but as she is so wonderful I let her off. She still finished last, bless her!
My son (although he has coordination disabilities) surprised me too with a wonderful hole in one of the last hole. My partner was the laugh of the day though as she tried to walk up the hill of the last hole and ended up on her hands and knees, sliding back down with everyone looking and laughing at her. fair to say she was embarrassed :joy:
Totting the scores at the end resulted in me winning by only 1 point but it's not about winning (at least that is what I gracefully told them :smirk:) its about having fun.
Food Time
The most important part of the day for me is when I get to fill my stomach with delicious, yummy food and my plan was to go for a nice sit-down meal at a nice restaurant, somewhere nice but unfortunately, this is where the day started to take a downward fall.
We ran too short of time to go to get to the restaurant and hope that on a Sunday (the busiest day for food) we would get a seat or be served in god time for us to still catch the pre-booked movie.
So Donalds drive through it was for us and after waiting for an unusually long time we finally got to eat.
I never seem to get full of Maccy D's and always order extra to compensate and this time my daughter choose to have a large meal too instead of her cost-saving Happy meal she would normally get. How can you say no when you are ordering yourself enough to feed a family anyways.
Movie Time
Should have known then when I decided to book The Lion King because Aladdin was not available, that our day was not going to go to plan
Although I was looking forward to watching The Lion King, it was not the movie we all wanted to see as Will Smith playing the Genie in the movie Aladdin was always going to win hands down. Unfortunately for us though, the cinema had the only one showing that day and it was early on in the day so we had missed our chance. But not to worry as The Lion King was in 4dx and we had never seen a movie in 4dx before.
Having the feeling of wind, rain, smells and smoke with strobe lighting effects, going off around you while being emersed in 3D and your seat moving around as the camera pans in and out, sounds fantastic and my thoughts where that The Lion King would be a great movie to experience that for the first time.
After paying a small fortune on popcorn and drinks, we sat down to wait for the screen to open and my son decided that a large Pepsi would be better on the foyer floor and split a god 1.5 liters all over the carpet. I suppose we are used to that though as he does have his difficulties being dyspraxic and all.
So a deep breathe and quick cigarette, it was time to take our seats.
The seats looked amazing!
I was even slightly nervous about what to expect and had a good investigation at where things would come from. The kid's where excited too. We couldn't wait for the lights to drop and the movie to start and not before too long that is what happened.
Or did it?!
There was sound but no picture. I even placed my 3D glasses on my eyes to see if I was missing something but of course I wasn't. The usher in the cinema announced that they were having technical difficulties and would need 5 minutes longer to get the movie started.
5 minutes is ok i suppose and things go wrong sometimes, no need to get upset about it, I'm sure that they will get it going soon and we can enjoy our day as planned. haha
5 minutes turned into 20 and the lights had come back on at this point. I was losing hope now. The usher came back in and I feared that we would miss the movie altogether.
"sorry for your wait ladies and gentlemen, but the movie will start in one minute and we will skip the trailers for the lost time, hope you enjoy"
"Yaaaay!!"
As the lights dimmed once more and the picture came on the screen, I placed my popcorn on the ground and braced myself for a great experience.
Then only 2 minutes into the movie I realized that the 4DX was still not working and what was going to be a great experience, turned into a 2-hour movie that i did not originally want to see, in nothing but 3D.
It was hard to enjoy it after that as you just kept wondering why.
After the movie had finished I was ready to go play holy hell and demand a refund from the manager when the usher walked back in one more time and made a much-needed announcement.
"Ladies, Gentlemen and children, we apologize for the technical faults we had with your experience and tried our best to rectify the issue but could not, but as an apology, we would like to give you all a free ticket to any movie of your choice at anytime you choose"
Great!! I thought but is that enough?
I chased out the family and stood my turn in the queue of disappointed people, waiting for my free ticket and the podium for a moan. Then i thought why moan though.
I had seen a movie. The kids where smiling and we get to do that again for free so as i approached the well-trained staff member with my disgruntled looking face, She turned to me and said " how many of you?"
well me, my two kids and my partner is 4 so I replied "8 of us love" and without question, she handed me 8 free tickets to any movie at any time.
whoop whoop!!
Finally, I was smiling and so was the family when I shared the news
oh and The Lion King is great haha
