Animal Kingdom...Tree of Life

At the center of Disney's Animal Kingdom is the Tree of Life. I have to admit that it's pretty incredible. Not only is it huge, but it has all kinds of animals carved into it's trunk. I can only imagine how long it took to make this tree. It's pretty impressive from far away and it's even more impressive up close (where you can see the animal carvings). Unfortunately what was inside was pretty scary. We didn't think it would be, but it was.

It was the Bug Life 3D show. Our friends, the Litchfields, and us were pretty excited for our kids to go into the tree and see the show. In fact right before we went a very nice lady commented to us on how cute the show was. And yes, she clearly saw the small children with us (and still said the show was adorable). We saw a small sign posted outside the entrance warning us that the show COULD be scary for small children. But really, how scary can a 3D cartoon about bugs be? Ummm...apparently pretty scary. It started off nice with pretty 3D butterflies. Lily liked that, but was already a little intimidated by the insects flying right at her. So pretty quickly we took off her 3D glasses. The rest of the show, however, was meant to be a comedy about how hard it is to be a bug (with humans trying to kill you all the time). With the 3D glasses it seemed as if the bugs were really shooting things at you or jumping out at you. If that wasn't scary enough for a child they tried to make it even more realistic by dropping rain on you from above, blowing puffs of air on you, having scary mechanical insects pop up around the theatre, releasing gas smells, and even cutting out all lights completely. So even without the glasses this was pretty scary for our little one. Joe tried to make a break for it with her right about the time they cut out the lights! At the end of the show myself, Eli (who was pretty much unaware of what was going on), our friend Tessa, and the Litchfield's oldest child, Caleb who is 6, were the only ones left. And even Caleb was cowering in his seat. In our group 3 adults and 4 children didn't make it through! I sat and watched the whole show feeling pretty bad for my little Lily the whole time. Even I have to admit that all of the special effects made it pretty realistic. Possibly fun for an adult. Totally terrifying for small children!