Visit to Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee

** HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELVIS! Long live the King! **

It's really strange to grow up really close to a major landmark but never go see it. Isn't it? I think this is something that a lot of people do. Maybe you just take for granted that you can go anytime so you feel no urgency to go and as a result you never go at all?? Anybody else doing this in your life right now??

I grew up in Arkansas, about an hour away from Memphis and Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, but I just never went to see it. Over Christmas break we had the rare opportunity to spend four wonderful nights with my family and we decided to make a quick trip over to visit the home of the King! 

I was super excited. I had heard soooo much about it. How gaudy it is. How emotional it is. How much it's like stepping back in a time machine. We took the girls with us to teach them a little more about an important chunk of rock 'n' roll history! It's important to us for our kids to be musically well-rounded - they are probably some of few 7 and 9 year olds who know all current pop songs but can also belt out everything from Beastie Boys to Black Crowes to Bob Marley to The Beatles! LOL! 

There is a massive tourist center across the street from Graceland where you park and buy your tickets. There are all kinds of exhibits here and, when you're ready, you load into a bus that drives you across the street and through the gates to climb the winding drive to the mansion. 

The self-guided tour is done with a headset and little hand held control box. It is easy to see how people spend lots and lots of time listening to all of the additional info that's available! 

One thing that's so striking about the inside of the mansion is the fact that the decor is all still exactly as it was when Elvis left the building in 1977. The upstairs is off limits out of respect to Elvis since, according to the tour, it was his private area when he lived there. The mansion is definitely kitschy but it's fabulous and you can see how it was the place to be in his time!! Here are some pics of the inside, decorated for the holidays with the same decorations that were used when he was there. 

Formal Living Room

Stairs to the private area

Any ghosts reflected up there??

His parents' room

Dining room set for holiday dinner

State of the art kitchen, just newly redone in 1977

Basement TV room (with awful creepy monkey)

Basement pool room, looks like inside of a genie bottle!

The much-discussed waterfall in the "jungle room"

The tour continues through outbuildings which include a massive hall of awards and a racquetball court that has been turned into an amazing room of trophies and stage costumes. 

View across the horse fields in the back

Lisa Marie's creepy swingset - can't you just see/hear this thing swinging and squeaking in the night???

Offices

Just a few of his awards.... wow.

The girls with maybe the hokiest painting ever

This paisley tux is pimp. And let's just be honest, I was mostly there for the clothes!

Plaque with just a portion of the many, many charities he helped. I know people personally who can attest to the fact that he gave out new cars all the time to strangers that he found nice or deserving!

Seriously. I want this!! 

Ah-mazing.

Or one of these!! I bet I said "I want a jumpsuit!!!!" about 50 times! LOL! 

The tour concludes at the graves of Elvis and his family. I guess I had forgotten that he was buried here and it kind of caught me off guard. It was a cold, overcast day, which are the worst for visiting burial sites anyway. Before long I had to keep on walking to stop the tears :(

After we toured the mansion we walked through a few of the visitor center exhibits and they were great!

So many fun cars! 

Legendary.

All aboard the private plane! 

Bed on the Lisa Marie. All seat belts have real gold buckles!

All in all, the place is amazing. It is truly breathtaking to see what ONE PERSON'S life can be. He was only 42 when he died but he lived one of the biggest lives imaginable. We spent tons of time over the next couple of days googling all of the drama in his life and the controversies and conspiracies surrounding his death. The whole story is fascinating! 

I would go back again and again and again. If you get the chance, GO! So inspiring and touching and perfect.

Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas Part 4: Onboard Shows

Time for my last installment of our cruise review! You can read Part 1, Part Two  and Part Three to catch up if you'd like! 

As mentioned before, the weather was crazy and we had a couple of days onboard that were severely limited by it. This affected the shows, too, since some were outside and most would have compromised the safety of the performers since the ship was rocking soooo much (yes, THAT much. It was nuts.). 

Once the ship settled a bit, we were able to see a few of the shows. And the two that my kiddo performed in were towards the end of the cruise, so they went on as planned! 

Blue Planet Aerial Acrobatic Show

The girls and I loved this show. It was elaborate and creative and involved a big nature theme where scenes took place in all kinds of environments and a Mother Nature character united all the scenes. I had to find a few pictures online. We were right in the front and I was unable to sneak my own pics of this one! ;)

How to Train Your Dragon Ice Show

This was actually an awesome ice show! It was fun for all ages in our group, from 7 to 67! And we all love this movie, so it was an extra fun one to see come to "life"! 

* There was a different ice show called Ice Games but we were unable to see it on the limited occasions when it was available.

OceanAria Aqua Show

This show takes place in the outdoor aqua theater on the back of the ship. There is an 18 ft deep pool and there are diving stations up to 62 feet in the air! It's like Cirque du Soleil O "light" (and if you get the chance to see that show in Vegas, DO IT. It's freaking amazing!). The first few shows were cancelled due to the ship rocking and the ship was STILL rocking too much for this show in my opinion when we saw it! Yikes!! Glad it wasn't my kid or husband up there jumping (my 7 year old said she'd happily go from the top!? Noooooo). Was a fun show and good value as part of included entertainment! 

The only fools in the "splash zone"! LOL

Special Guests: Stars at Sea Performances

This is the reason we went! For our 9 year old to shine on stage. And shine, she did! She absolutely rocked it and had a BLAST. They got the chance to have a workshop with some of the performers from the big shows and it was really cool to meet and learn from people who are entertaining for a living. Her school did an amazing job and we were all so proud!! 

That little one on the left in the purple, though! ;)

We were unable to see Chicago because so many of the showings were extremely late and it wasn't appropriate for our kids. I was sad to hear that the guest performer on the cruise the week after ours was Kristin Chenoweth! What??? That would have been cool! 

There were other nighttime comedy shows, etc., that we skipped to spend the time in the room with the girls.

So, final thoughts...

Would we go on a cruise again? Maybe... if the kid is performing again, sure. If it's just a trip that we choose and book ourselves? Would probably need to be a more exciting itinerary and maybe places that aren't necessarily ideal to visit on their own (Turkey, Israel..).

Was it what you expected? Yes and no. We expected the tiny rooms, big crowds, buffet food. We didn't expect entertainment quality to be as high as it was nor did we expect weather to be so chilly and swimming options and desirability to be so limited. The whole thing definitely made more sense to us on the days that we were able to get off the ship and see something destination-wise.

Did the kids like it? Absolutely. They LOVED it. They didn't notice any of the things that the adults found less than ideal. They both say they would pick it over a week at a beach. 

Was it worth it? I would pay any amount to provide such an amazing opportunity for my kiddo and to be there to cheer her on. Was it worth close to twice what it costs to book an all-inclusive in a 4-5 star resort someplace like Cancun just for a regular vacation? Not for us.

Let me know if you have any other questions! It was quite the learning experience, for sure! Happy travels! 

Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas Part 3: Onboard Activities

Time to get into the cruise even more! You can read Part 1 and Part Two to catch up if you'd like! 

As mentioned before, due to weather and craziness, we wound up spending even more time onboard than expected. The weather limited lots of outside activities but we were still able to try most things! 

Activities:

1. Swimming: There are four TINY pools. As in, each has a posted capacity of like 25 people. And that's it for the entire ship. They are all on the top deck and were closed for hours and hours at a time when weather was bad. When they actually were open, the water was ice cold and only the most die-hard swimmers swam. I never got in the water. Not once (except for a few minutes in an insanely crowded/gross hot tub) but my girls and their blue lips swam anyways. There was a little splash park area that was fun for them for a few minutes but this whole aspect of the ship was actually pretty disappointing. There's not much my girls and hubs hope to do on an "warm" vacation more than swim.

Free unlimited ice cream around the pools was a daily necessity!

2. Flowrider Surf Simulator: I hadn't seen anything about this online, but there are height restrictions on this. My almost 8 year old, who was just surfing for real in Waikiki a few months before, wasn't allowed to do this at all. My 9.5 year old was tall enough to try it laying on a boogie board but wasn't allowed to try to stand up surf (she was also just surfing for real in Waikiki over spring break). We weren't expecting these rules and it was pretty disappointing when the only one who could do it was Papa. The lines were long and the hours were irregular, so even he only did it a couple times. 

The kid who was allowed...

The biggest kid ;)

3. Ziplining: This looked amazing online but in reality was a super short zipline than ran diagonal over a very short section of the ship. The girls were still super pumped to do it but weren't allowed to. Again, restrictions we didn't know anything about until we got there. Riders have to be a minimum of 75 pounds and neither of them are. 

4. Rock Climbing Wall: Yippee!!! Something they were allowed to do! Haha! And, boy, did they rock climb! This was the first time any of us had tried a rock wall like this and the girls were obsessed! They went multiple times, on all levels of difficulty, and were some of the rare kids onboard that were able to reach the top and ring the bell! 

Climbing obsession! We want one at home now!

5. Ice Skating: The hours didn't really work out for us to ice skate on the rare occasion that the water was calm enough and it was actually open. No biggie, my girls aren't huge fans anyway.

6. Dreamworks Character Experiences: I think there were some meals with characters available, but we didn't do any of those. There were several parades that were lots of fun for the kids. We were able to meet most of the characters by walking up to various times posted on daily schedules. One super annoying thing, though, was that we were often not allowed to take our own pictures. Um, WHAT? Even Disney takes photos with the Photo Pass then lets you take your own. This resulted in me coaching my kids to try to look over at me on the side so that I could snap a quick picture before I got scolded (again) for taking my own. So annoying. A couple of photo ops let us take our own and the couple that I bought from the ship were cute. Whatever.

The girls thought the parades were fun!

So many creeper pics from the side. So annoying.

But a few of my own that were cute! 

7. Kids Club: Another thing we didn't do because of a rule issue. The girls were 7 and 9 and were going to be put in separate rooms, which the 7 year old didn't want. We never use the free babysitting on vacation like this but were going to let them do some art or something for an hour on one of the rainy days. Fail.

8. Dance classes: These were super fun! We went to the Beyonce Class and the Country Line Dance Class. Super informal, all ages welcome, and a nice little surprise workout! There were lots of other options that we didn't do and things like Zumba, that we saw when walking by! 

9. The Boardwalk: The outdoor "Boardwalk" area was a fun place to hang out. This is where the rock wall is and also has a carousel and the Aqua Theater which has shows, shows movies, etc. This whole area was shut down during the bad weather times but when open there were often ship employees here hosting free games and face painting and stuff for the kids. The Mexican restaurant here was amazing, btw! ;)

"brown bear" and "panda bear" :)

10. There are lots of other things around the ship that we tried for a minute or two: ping pong, basketball, miniature golf, karaoke, pay to play Bingo. There is a big teens-only club that my 9.5 year old was drooling over and a pay arcade that we never stepped foot in. 

I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting, but I think I've hit all the big ones! One more post coming on onboard shows/entertainment. Again, if there's anything specific you'd like to know, please ask! This is such a pricey family vacation and I'm hoping to do my part in helping people be informed consumers!! :D