Lights, Music, Animation

Every December, Dayton's Marshall Field's Macy's does a big holiday display, with a bunch of animatronic scenes showing the characters from some well-known story. Last year was Cinderella; this year was Mary Poppins. It was a hit with the girls last year, so we took them again this year. We went tonight, figuring that Tuesday would be relatively uncrowded. Last year, we went on a Friday at around lunchtime, and there was a huge line. Many evenings in December there's a big holiday parade downtown, and that also draws crowds, but they don't hold it on Mondays or Tuesdays.

We guessed right: Tuesday at five is about as dead as it gets. Well, 7 a.m. might also be a good time to go. But there was no line, though there were plenty of other people passing through the exhibit at the same time. The girls liked it. I thought it was not as good as last year's. I haven't been to a ton of these, so I don't know whether last year's was unusually good or if Macy's is slacking off (cutting the budget, maybe? At least they're smart enough to realize that eliminating the exhibit entirely would be a public relations disaster.)

This exhibit has been an annual event for about forty years. People go in part because it's TRADITION. Many also dress up to go, which is striking given that Minnesotans don't dress up for much of anything anymore. Possibly they dress up their kids because you can have Santa pictures taken. (Molly saw the sign saying that Santa was In and was intrigued, but the line for that was much longer. I have been pondering a blog post with my analysis of all the ways in which the Santa custom is completely whacked and bizarre, but I'm not sure I want to withstand the potential resulting flame war, as Santa is one of the great sacred cows of American culture. Suffice it to say that I although I now celebrate Christmas with my family, as someone who did not grow up with the custom, I do not feel the least bit compelled to stand in an endless line so that my kids can sit in the lap of a total stranger and have their picture taken with him. Not that Kiera would, anyway.)

For dinner, we went to the semi-spiffy restaurant on the 12th floor and were lucky enough to get seated immediately, despite the crowd waiting, because we had a party of four and everyone else was with a larger group. I'm not sure how child-friendly this place is the rest of the year, but in December, there are hordes of children in there. (All behaving themselves. I see articles on a nearly weekly basis complaining about the people who take children to four-star restaurants and then ignore them as they scream their lungs out, and I don't know why I never see this happen. Maybe I emit some sort of child-calming energy and should eat out more often, as a public service.) The service was good but the food was...hmm. Hotel-grade, I guess. I ordered a lobster ravioli but only one of the ravioli had enough lobster inside that I could taste it. Kiera ordered mac & cheese off the children's menu, which said that it was macaroni served in a "creamy blend of mild cheeses." It was Kraft. No, seriously. Or maybe a knockoff. We don't keep boxed mac & cheese around, but I did buy Annie's once and Kiera liked it a lot. However, she refused to eat it today, and I'm not sure if it was because she was put off by the glow-in-the-dark orange shade, or because it arrived lukewarm. If I go there again, I'm just going to get a hamburger, I think, or some other basic "you could make this at home and are eating out for convenience, not for the experience" kind of dish. It was, at least, a nice, relaxing experience, which was really what we wanted. Last year, we were up there at lunchtime, and ate in the cafeteria, which was not all that much cheaper but was a lot more work when we were tired and cranky and really wanted to just sit down and have someone bring us food.

Then we took the escalator down to the first floor. We did this last year, and Molly and Kiera clearly view the extended escalator ride to be Part of the Experience.

On our way home, I drove us past the house at the corner of 41s t Ave and 32nd St. magentamn clued me into this: it's a house with flashing Christmas lights that are synchronized to music being broadcast on a radio frequency at very low power. You can tune your car radio in and watch the lights dance to the music. Awesome. I kind of wonder if the guy's neighbors think it's neat or if they want to blow up the whole damn display to get rid of the gawkers -- there were a bunch of other cars sitting at the intersection watching the lights perform.