Big Bird's Beach Party

Big Bird's Beach Party was a stage show at Sesame Place that performed at the "Big Bird Theater" (now "Monster Rock Theater") from 2004 until 2009.

Image from Blogger

The show and has played at Sea World and is currently playing at Beaches resort.

Image from TravelWeekly

The show opened with a human character named Gabby warming up the crowd, teaching them some Spanish words that would be used in the show's opening number:

All images from YouTube

Then Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, Telly, Zoe and Elmo take the stage:

The perform a version of the Sesame Street song "¡Hace Calor! (It Sure is Hot!)" written by Paul Jacobs & Sarah Durkee.

Big Bird complains about the heat, Bert comments that his debarment isn't working and Elmo wishes they had a beach right on Sesame Street.

They take turns suggesting how they could get to the beach (Bert suggests a monorail.)

Gabby polls the audience and they decide to go by car. Elmo produces a steering wheel and they break into song.

The cast performs a rendition of "Let's Go Driving" a 1982 Sesame Street song written by Jeff Moss. They leave the stage and travel through the audience.

At this point the Sesame Street backdrop (a painted curtain) opens revealing a beach scene and surfboards:

The gang celebrates their arrival at the beach, all except Telly who has a fear of water.

Soon the cast sings a Beach Boys medley that includes Surfin USA and Fun, Fun, Fun.

Ernie tells us he is going to hide a sea shell so Bert can  try and find it. Bert thinks of sea shells as "the paper clips of the ocean."

Bert looks for the seashell as the audience yells "hot" or "cold" depending on how close he is.

This leads to the hula dance portion of the show. Three dads from the audience are asked to come forward and put on hula skirts.

The cast sings the hula song "Pearly Shells" as the dads dance with the cast.

Telly returns with an inner-tube to help him with his fear of the ocean:

Still, Telly is afraid and runs off stage. Big Bird spots a flying fish and then imagines what it would be like to be a fish.

Big Bird sings the Christopher Cerf 1992 Sesame Street song "In Your Imagination" as the cast joins him onstage with fish puppets.

Telly returns and Ernie helps him with his fear by getting him to pretend the ocean is "a giant bathtub filled with rubber duckies."

The cast sings the Bobby Darin song "Splish Splash" as they realize the day is coming to an end.

For the final number (a reprise of "Splish Splash") the cast is joined by The Count, Grover, Cookie Monster, Baby Bear, Rosita, Abby Cadabby and Prairie Dawn.

This was the largest cast ever for a Sesame Place stage show.

The show ended with paper streamers shot at the audience:

The "boat slide" at Rubber Duckie Pond (version 2)

Wow. That's a crazy looking title for this post: The "boat slide" at Rubber Duckie Pond (version 2).

Let me give you a quick explanation.

When Sesame Place opened in 1980 it featured a play element that was essentially a giant water bed:

 Image from CardCow.com

It was eventually re themed to be a splash pond (with the same name):

Image from Google Street Views

I did a post about both versions of this attraction covering cute details of what the statues of Bert and Ernie "caught" as they fished. You can read that here.

One detail that I didn't cover was the slide to the left of the statue:

Image from Webshots

The slide was designed to look like a boat that was washed up on some rocks. A ladder entered at the top where a hunk of the boat was missing. Kids then slid down to the bottom where another piece of the boat was open, letting them slide right into the pool.

Panorama photos of Sesame Place

I have been visiting Sesame Place with my family quite a bit lately. We enjoyed the Halloween Spooktackular and this week the Very Furry Christmas event began.

I took a few panorama photos:

Christmas Entrance

Much like they did for Halloween, the entrance logo has been modified for Christmas 2012.

Big Bird's Nest

Big Bird's house in Sesame Place once had peepholes where kids could see his nest and belongings on display.

We visited this topic before with a series of images including this one:

Here is an image I recently found that gives us a better look at his nest:

We can see Big Bird had a gumball machine, a bag of golf clubs, a megaphone and a small statue.