Arriving Somewhere...: Visiting with Lightening McQueen and Friends

State Farm Insurance has a touring Cars 2 show and it came to Alderwood Mall. State Farm got the rights to the characters and made a Cars 2 insurance commercial, which happened to coincide with the release of the movie Cars 2. The first day we went, the line was pretty long, but it fortunately moved pretty quickly. There was a table where each person was given a souvenier bag with a coloring book and all the swag could go in there. The next table had a Plinko board where kids could drop a disk in and it would bounce off each peg and into one of several holes where you could win either a mood pencil that changed colors when held, a Cars 2 bookmark, a sticker or some crayons. The next table had a spinning wheel where each kid could win a bigger prize like a beach towel, atlas or bag tag. Then we walked by a table that had magnets and key chains of Holly Shiftwell, Finn McMissile, McQueen, and Mater. We were able to take one of each. The most exciting station had the Cars. Each car had a photographer. They boys stood together in front of each car and got their picture taken. Bob joined us on the first day we went. The final station had big picture of the cars and a screen with game on it. This first day, Bob joined us from work. Both the pictures we took with our camera and the professional ones with Lightning McQueen didn't really turn out, which was a little disappointing. We got a number and got the pictures digitally from the State Farm website. Of course you had to answer a few questions from State Farm before retrieving them.

The next day, we told Eden's mom about the tour and told them if they wanted to go we would join them. I thought we could go again and try for different prizes as well as hopefully get some better pictures. They ended up joining us at Alderwood, but this time the line was ridiculously long. I guess I should have expected it since is was the last day of the tour here. The kids were actually well behaved in line. Jonathan and Eden amused each other. Ethan sat in the stroller most of the time and Jordan stayed with Pamela (Eden's mom). When we got to the fountain, the kids enjoyed looking at it and had to throw in a penny of course. We also got to answer a trivia question about Cars and got stickers and a ticket to spin the Disney radio prize wheel. The difference between the first day and the second day was that the first day everyone got to spin the big prize wheel. The second day, only one person per family was allowed to spin it. The person actually thought that Pamela and I were part of the same family and I had to tell him that it was two separate families so they could spin the wheel too. It's interesting to me that some people assume that all Asians look alike or must be family if they are together. This is not the first time something like this has happened. The first day both boys got bag tags, but the second day we got an Atlas. We also got a bunch of mood pencils. At the magnet/key chain table, the workers were being much stricter about only taking one magnet or key chain. I guess they didn't want to run out of stock. We also got a better picture with McQueen this time and one with all the kids. Well worth the trip! This time Bob was unable to join us. After the picture station, Eden's family took off and the boys and I walked around and looked at the back of the Cars characters again. Then they played the bean bag toss game at the WSDOT Good To Go pass table and got some stuff. We also went to the Disney radio table and spun their prize wheel. We got a Cars matching game and some coloring pages.