Family Fun Weekends: Kickin' Country Style!

Rejoice!  After having missed out on "Fiesta Disneyland" on the first Family Fun Weekend, we were finally able to make it to The Park during a weekend (daytime) yesterday, so we made sure to set some time aside to go check out all of the happenings in Frontierland at Big Thunder Ranch.

A proclamation of future (and past, apparently) events

We didn't get to spend a lot of time in the area, but one thing we did learn was that it's not meant to be an all day place to hang out, but rather a nice little aside and a fun way to kill a couple of hours just hanging out with families and participating in activities.  They have plenty to choose from, and both kiddies (and parents) really seemed to be enjoying themselves.

A look at scheduled activities for Sunday

When we were in the area, it was just in time to see the "Bon Family Cloggers" do their thing on stage.  We kind of hung out in the back just watching things while Chad put on a little show of his own, singing along with John Michael Montgomery's "Grundy County Auction" at the top of his lungs.  Signs of an old country phase we really no longer wish to discuss.  Forget we even said it.  We were also able to see the "Street Party" and "Fort Worth West" perform, and even got to see Mickey and Minnie perform on stage and dance as well.  We genuinely enjoyed everything that the atmosphere provided.

As you can see, there were plenty of other things going on, too.  Craft-making (quilts earlier in the weekend we heard) and plenty of snacks galore.  They were even selling bottles of BBQ sauce at one booth!  There seemed to be quite a few people checking it out as well.  Not too crowded, not too slow, but just right!

The Festival Arena of Festivities

But the thing that was easily the biggest draw for us, and seemed to be for many of the families too, were in fact the "Character Meet and Greets".  The Arena had five (if memory serves) booths set up just for characters.  The Park did an excellent job, at least in our minds, of keeping the characters fresh as they rotated them in and out every half hour or so.  But there was always someone in each and every booth almost the entire time we were there (save Minnie and Mickey while they were on stage clogging away).  We didn't get pictures with all of them, because many of them we already had, but in the hour or so we were were there we saw:  Clarabelle, Cowboy/girl Donald & Daisy, Cowboy Pluto, Cowboy Goofy, Cowboy/girl Mickey & Minnie, Woody, Jessie, and Cowmunks Chip & Dale.  Quite a haul for such a short amount of time!  We had really been hoping for a picture with Clara Cluck, but she was a no-show yesterday.  Still, we got some good ones and we'll be rolling most of them out in the coming weeks for Thursday's "KILT" posts, so keep checking back.  

All in all, even in the short amount of time we spent in the Arena, we really enjoyed ourselves.  I don't think we stopped smiling the entire time.  We just hung out, watched the families interact with everything The Park had set up for them (no way we were gonna get up on stage and clog, though), and took it all in.  

We really hope that The Park will continue to do things like this in the future after all of these weekends are said and done.  We think they have a good thing here and we'd love to see them back on a more frequent basis.

Next weekend:  Character Fan Days!

Good times with Minnie and Mickey

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