I recently read that humanity’s super power is jogging. The theory is that being able to relentlessly run for long distances is fairly unique amongst mammals, many of whom prefer to sprint. This gives us an advantage because eventually, over a long enough distance, our ancestors bored their prey to the point of physical exhaustion.
So based on this cursory glance at an article on Reddit I’m going to assert that running around outside on the grass is part of who we are. It feels right. One can invent reasons why it is good for health, but I don’t need convincing that it makes sense to get the kids out of the house. I know this in my heart to the extent that last month we spent several painful hours landscaping our garden then laying turf and then offering up various sacrifices to the lawn gods for the grassy salvation. This at least gives us the option this summer of throwing open the back door and exhorting the children to go play outside.
However as Bart Simpson said: “The Universe is so… boring.” It’s not enough anymore to take the children to grassland, point them at a passing antelope and leave them to it. So of course we have already taken them to a wide variety of play parks and gardens, but this weekend we had to move to the next level. A theme park.
For probably very sound reasons my parents thought better of taking us to theme parks when I was younger, and so the decision to visit Peppa Pig World was taken very carefully. After all it must be incredibly difficult to overcome the tyranny of the blank page when trying to meet the ambition of such a place. How do you reflect millions of children’s dreams and expectations? How do you create the right balance of entertainment and fear when constructing rides? How do you keep adults happy so they will consider returning? How do you deal with lots and lots of open ended questions?
For the purposes of nihilistic, too cool for school amusement I’d love to be able to say that Peppa Pig World should be renamed HP Lovecraft Land, and, as I watched it’s denizens slowly driven insane under a blood-red sky before turning on each other, the last vestiges of their humanity stripped away, I smiled a knowing smile. I would like to be able to report that the few remaining survivors were found prostrate in front of an impossibly tall Peppa Pig statue constructed from bone and twisted metal.
However by-and-large the Peppa Pig World terraformers did a good job and a good time was had by all. No burning effigies were necessary. Although ultimately the rides were all variations on the theme of sitting on a moulded plastic chair whilst travelling in a circle, you can’t really criticise them for not reinventing the concept of theme parks. They did enough to build atmosphere, even to the extent that while waiting to enter the park they had hypey John Williams style music playing the background to push the children’s already high excitement levels into frenzy.
Obviously this may create a sort of joy inflation for Abe. It’s hard to follow up an amazing world dedicated to your hero one week with a paltry slide an swing combo the following week, but what can you do? Not that Emily hasn’t already investigated the prospect of a raid on Legoland. But then yesterday Abe and Winnie spent 20 minutes happily running in circles round a tree.
Abe&Winnie&Douglas 