Jeremy Allen’s Grand Illusions Show in Wisconsin Dells

A week ago (June 19) my husband and I went to Wisconsin Dells, or “The Dells” as they are referred to by most Wisconsinites. We had some Dells Season Opener coupon books to use up before July, so we decided to go for a couple of days.  One of the things in the coupon book is the Jeremy Allen’s Grand Illusions.  I believe it was $6 per person for general admission tickets.

We decided to go see it Thursday night and we called a few hours before the show and learned the general admission tickets were sold out so we had to upgrade $10 per ticket to get in.  So we upgraded the tickets.  I crossed my fingers that the show would be good since we were spending more on it than originally planned.

We went to dinner and then headed to the show, which is in a little mini-mall right by Timber Falls (if you are familiar with the area).  That immediately gave me a bad feeling, but I told myself not to make judgments yet.  We went to the Will Call table to pick up our tickets.  Based on the size of the inside, I wasn’t feeling any better about things yet.  We also noticed it was pretty cold in the building, and learned from the Will Call girl that it doesn’t get any warmer in the “theater”.   We went back out to our car to get some jackets, which actually came more in handy than we thought.  I’ll get to that later…

10 minutes later we were in our seats, which were fold up chairs with burlap over them.  Classy. We were in the second row, two seats away from the stage on the left side.  The stage has a “catwalk” to the middle of the room, where some of the illusions are performed.  The stage was set up to look outdoorsy and there was the sound of crickets, which annoyed my husband.  There was also top 40 music playing, which was weird along with the cricket sound.  The music seemed rather loud at times, and this is coming from a young woman who likes her music loud!  A bird flew out from backstage at one point and went into the rafters.  We thought this might be part of the intro to the show, but no.  It took awhile for the show to actually start.

When the show did start, some dancers wearing afro wigs and robes that looked like they were made out of quilts.  They did some dancing and drum-beating and then started messing with a wood box. They opened it to show us it was empty, closed it, opened it again and out came a bunch of birds and Jeremy Allen.  The birds flew into the rafters and stayed there for the rest of the show.

Next he had an assistant get into a box standing up and made it look like he was stretching her out, then he performed some levitating tricks with a piece of paper and a stool.  The stool was kind of impressive since he had it go into the audience a bit.  There was a lot of him and his assistant disappearing and reappearing in other places.  I guess I prefer those illusions since I usually can’t figure out exactly how it is done.

He got some kids up on stage and did a marshmallow trick with them and then scared them by having an assistant in a tiger costume come out of a tent.  That was sort of amusing.  Otherwise, it was honestly difficult to concentrate on the show since the birds in the rafters kept moving around.  Some of them were walking around near our feet.  Others were up in the rafters above us, and eventually they started pooping, as birds do.  At that point, I was glad that  had my coat on.  I was able to put the hood up to defend myself from possible bird poop in my hair.  Luckily, I didn’t get pooped on, but it still distracted me from enjoying the show.

On some nights, they have tigers in the show.  I don’t know that I would feel safe going to one of the shows with the tigers in it, to be honest.  Seeing the way they handled the birds…

All in all, it wasn’t a terrible show. It wasn’t a great show either.  I would have felt better about it if we hadn’t spent more just to get in.  I would recommend this more for families with young children that might get more of a kick out of it.  I also recommend that you watch out for bird poop!

Reasons to Live in Wisconsin?

In my previous post, I mentioned at the end that my husband and I are thinking about moving out of Wisconsin.  There are many reasons for us wanting to leave (which I will get to throughout this post) and only a couple of reasons to stay.

1. 1. This is where our families are. Right now we live near most of my husband’s family and about an hour from my parents.
2. 2.  This is the only state we are familiar with.  This doesn’t seem to be a reason to stay for my husband, but I am nervous to move out of state.

Basically the only reason that we live in Wisconsin is because this is where are families are for the most part.  Well, you would think that we would see our families all the time since we are so close.  Especially since my in-laws live a whole 15 minutes away.  Not the case.  We talk to our families plenty, but we don’t actually see them all that much.  We see them for holidays, around our birthdays, and a couple of other times throughout the year for dinners and what not.  This is partly due to weather half of the year.  It is often to cold or too snowy in Wisconsin to go too far from home.  Very annoying.

That brings us to one of the main reasons we want to leave Wisconsin: the weather.  We had three Polar Vortexes this past winter. THREE.  I didn’t even know what a Polar Vortex was before that.  Now I am aware, and I hate them.   I really hate the cold.  You would think I would be used to it after dealing with it for 28 years, but no.  Every winter, my mind and body are shocked by how cold it can get.  I don’t take part in any winter sports like skiing, snowboarding, or snowmobiling.  So, I have no reason to look forward to snow or cold.

I enjoy taking walks and would like to be a more active person outside, but it is hard to get into anything when there are so few days that are enjoyable to be outside.  Honestly, if Wisconsin’s 4 seasons were a little more evenly spread out, it would be lovely.  If we got 3-4 months of each season, winter wouldn’t seem so awful.  But Winter often sneaks up on us when it is supposed to be Fall and doesn’t leave until Spring is nearly over.  It is not uncommon for it to be 30-40 degrees one day and then be 80 the next day.  It is incredibly annoying.  We don’t get to experience much of Spring or Fall, which are typically my favorite seasons.  We get what seems like half a year of the snow, cold and general awfulness that is Winter.  Then we get a few nice 50-60 degree days.  Then we get some more snow in May.  Then we get some rain and then finally (if we are lucky) we get 70-80 degree days in June.  If the seasons could come and go a little more gracefully, it would be appreciated.

Another reason we want to leave is the economy, which is where it is due to our government.  We are being run by Scott Walker, and he has done little to no good for our state.   Half the people in Wisconsin would disagree with me on that.  They are entitled to their opinion.  All I know is that he made a lot of Wisconsinites believe that government employees are lazy people.  This includes teachers and nurses.  I know many teachers and not one of them is a lazy person.  They all work more hours than they get paid for and basically live paycheck to paycheck. My mother is a nurse and she has worked nights, weekends, holidays and overtime since before I was born.  Scott Walker also cut the budget for the education system, including libraries. This essentially the worst thing he could have done.  Now there are many Wisconsin schools struggling.  On a personal level for me, public library budgets were cut.  I went to school for Library Science and I haven’t been able to find a job in a library since I graduated with a Master’s 2 years ago. Not even a part-time job that pays minimal and offers little to no benefits.  Those are the only available jobs, and there are a lot of us fighting for those jobs.  This article backs up pretty much everything I have said so far: Why are people leaving Wisconsin? State ranked in top 10 for out-migration.

Luckily for me, my husband owns and operates an e-commerce toy business, wwww.thegamecapital.com.  I was able to start assisting him with this home business back when we were dating and I first moved in with him about 4 years ago.  The business now supports the both of us.  We have a nice house in a nice area in a suburb of Green Bay. So, we are doing well.  I got very lucky.

Now, on some less serious notes…

I was reading through an article, 29 Reasons You Should Live in Wisconsin, and it was more of a list of reasons why I shouldn’t live in Wisconsin! Of course, this is just for my own personal reasons.

Its Beervana: Wisconsinites love beer so much, our baseball team is named  the Milwaukee Brewers.  I have personally never liked beer.  I know, its weird!  I’ve tried it plenty of times and I just can’t get past the taste.  It is apparently an acquired taste, but I don’t really care to acquire it.  I can tolerate Berry Weiss from Lenienkugels, but I don’t really care much for that either.

The Packers:  I think I made it clear in my last post that I don’t care about sports.  I am a Packer fan, and I root for them, but I don’t care to sit down and watch an entire game.  There is way too much starting and stopping, it just loses my interest. I don’t mind going to a Brewer game a time or two a year, and I enjoy going to our local Green Bay Gambler hockey games.  But, when it comes to watching sports on TV, no thanks.  It has to be a very close game for me to give a rat’s pa toot.  Even then.  Baseball is no better really on TV.  Those games can take forever.

I am not a fan of any athletes.  They are just guys that get paid way too much, in my opinion.  I don’t actively hate any of them, aside from the ones that have done terrible things like rape or murder other people.  I don’t think Michael Vick should have been accepted back to football after what he did with dog fighting.  I don’t think any athletes are gods the way some other people seem to think.

You may think it odd that I live in the Green Bay area and I don’t love football.  To me, a home football game just means that I probably wont want to leave the house for most of that day due to traffic.  Another reason for us to head out of Wisconsin!

Cheese:  OK, the cheese is something I will miss if we leave.  I am sure there will be cheese in whatever state we may end up in, but I don’t think there will be such an abundance.  I love cheese and I like to have many cheese options available to me.

 

 

 

The Water park Capital of the World:  For some reason, Wisconsin holds this title.  We have the Wisconsin Dells, which has over 20 water parks including Noah’s Ark, Mount Olympus, Kalahari, The Wilderness, and so many more.  I have gone on some trips to the Dells and it is a fun and unique place to visit.   Its just a bit odd to me that a state that is known mostly for being cold and snowy is the Water park Capital.

Ice Fishing: This combines multiple things I dislike: Fishing, cold, and often beer.  No thanks.

 

Hunting:  I’m not big on guns.  I just don’t trust myself to not accidentally shoot my own foot off.  I do think its OK for other people to own and use guns, especially to defend themselves in their homes. I don’t think anyone needs a machine gun, but that’s another topic. I love animals.  I cannot imagine getting up in the wee hours of the morning to sit in the woods and wait for an animal to come so that I can shoot it.  I would have to be in a life or death situation in order to shoot an animal.

To summarize, beer, cheese, fishin’ (ice or regular), huntin’ and sports are all very important to most Wisconsinites. Not this one!  I would miss cheese, but otherwise I can do without participating in or hearing about any of the other things.

I’m not sure that I truly belong in this state!

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