Last night my sons and I, had the opportunity to go see Dreamwork's "How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular" event at the Verizon Center in Washington, DC. I was one of the lucky winners of tickets from a blog.
The whole event was nice. Starting with meeting the PR ladies at the media desk where we picked up the tickets, and they gave my son one of the gorgeous program books, to letting us in a side entrance where we were inside and avoided the masses entering the building, to the show itself.
Having seen the movie, I was a bit leery about how they would be able to translate a computerized animation movie into a live show, but Dreamworks really did a great job. They have one main wall that dragons and characters will come in and out of, and they project all sorts of scenes onto the wall to make the stage look a lot bigger than it is.
The performers use harnesses, and there is one bit where the character of Hiccup has to climb on the vertical wall and make it look like he's running through the woods, jumping between rocks, and mountains. I was quite impressed at his ability to follow it accurately, just from being hung from the ceiling!
The dinosaurs were amazing! Our seats were very nice, but I believe that even from the top floors of the building, they'd be able to see the detail that went into the skins and movements of the dragons. Even though they were on little platforms that rolled around the stage area, the feet moved to give the illusion of the dragon walking.
Dragons were on the "stage," as well as flying through the air, and was quite impressive. Sitting there in that atmosphere, you could almost believe there really were dragons there.
The show stuck to the movie fairly accurately. There were two things that immediately stuck out as not being in the movie, and one of my sons would whisper "that's not in the movie," but like I said, I could only pick out two myself.
When I was reading reviews, I remember one woman complaining about there being a Toothless in the air as well as on the ground at the same time. This happened when I was there, but you have to remember that this is a theatrical show, there's logistics to try to maneuver these huge things in and out of small areas without damaging them. The boys didn't even notice it, and I only noticed because I was so busy trying to look at everything to take it in.
If you have an opportunity to go, I would greatly urge you to go. The show was phenomenal, and it draws you in, and even I was cheering by the end.
Website for the show: http://www.dreamworksdragonslive.com
Disclosure: I won these tickets via a giveaway from Jill Berry at http://www.musingsfromme.com. No money was exchanged between me and the blog owner, nor me and the organizers of the show.
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