Kaleidoscope (Yet Again)

Mo was asking for Wonderscope, which wasn't economically possible. So we went to the lesser scope, the one with more noise and a time limit, but that's free. The one Hallmark puts on. Kaleidoscope, which as been around since I was a kid, but it was white, and squared off and not anywhere near this cool when I was a little honyock.

I know, it's obnoxious of me to link myself so heavily there.





We got there with perfect timing. Usually we have an hour or more to kill in Crown Center first, but today we got there twenty minutes before a session, and had just enough time to hit the Hallmark Visitor's Center before getting in line.








And they had the presses running! This has not been the case on our previous visits. They had two windmill presses going, one doing foil stamping, the other die cutting. Neat stuff. I loves me some steel rule dies.





I guess because the weather was so great, there were about half as many kids as usual for the Kaleidoscope session. By 'great,' I mean insufferable. It was 94º with a heat index of 101º. That's worse than rain for actually doing stuff outside. Kaleidoscope was chosen by me, in part, because commercial buildings are more aggressively air conditioned than I can afford to make my home.





When we left, Mo was still begging for the other scope. Wonderscope. Which isn't free. I may break down and buy a membership there again. It'd take about five visits to come out ahead of single admissions, but Mo seems really hooked on the place. Particularly the craft room.





Even into the evening, she was asking to go there. Didn't want to go to the pool, to launch rockets, just wanted to go to Wonderscope. When I pointed out that it was 7:00 and Wonderscope had been closed for a couple of hours in addition to being off the menu, she decided to use her last resort: clearly spoken words. 'Wonderscope...is...open.' She wasn't whining, she said this very plainly, slowly, concentrating to make sure she got the right words out.





If she had any latent witchcraft talent, the force of will it took to do this would have instantly opened Wonderscope and beamed us, Star Trek style, into the craft room.