Zaira and I headed up to downtown San Jose today to view the Leonardo: 500 Years Into The Future exhibit at The Tech museum. Leonardo DaVinci is my longest standing hero, so I was very excited about taking advantage of this opportunity to get more insight to the man. But that’s another story for another blog. Just North of The Tech, in conjunction with San Jose’s traditional Christmas In The Park celebration was a full carnival provided by Butler Amusements. While checking out the rides and games (Zaira rode the Tilt-A-Whirl which they call “Hot Wheels”, but, again, that’s another story for another blog) we found something completely unexpected! The story for thisblog has to do with the flier pictured above.

Those pictures are of the Sleigh Ride Portraits booth provided by Eye Candy FX Studio.

Thanks to their “Hollywood Green Screen Technology” we were able to successfully steal Santa’s sleigh right out from under Rudolph’s red nose! That’s us doing so in the picture at the right. Look at how mad Santa is! It’s not like we weren’t planning on bringing it back. Well, at first we were, but then…

We passed this friendly snowman who not only cheered us on, but also pointed out that Santa was chasing us in his very own Santa-copter! That’s when things got really scary as we went completely out of control! Luckily, Zaira figured out how to steer the rogue reindeer (somewhat) and we eventually managed to find our way back to San Jose.

That final pic is us over downtown San Jose’s skyline coming in for a bit of a rough landing.

The photographer at Sleigh Ride Portraits was great and although th eprice may seem a bit steep at first ($20 for a single picture, $30 for three) it’s not really out of line considering what you get, all of the technology involved, and the multiple options in backgrounds you have available. There does seem to be a little bit of confusion over how long they’re going to be in that spot, however. The flier and website say through January 1st while a sign on the booth says Christmas Day. But if you’re anywhere near downtown San Jose while Christmas In The Park is running this holiday season I recommend you get one of these photos taken. They quickly entered the ranks of our favorites.

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Somehow Zaira and I went all the way through the month of April without adding a single ride photo to our collection. But May is certain to more than make up for it with amusement park goodness pretty much every weekend. We kicked things off with something a little different – a visit to the Butler’s Amusements carnival being held as a fundraiser at Santa Teresa High School in San Jose. We hit several rides, but the portable coaster, Orient Express was our favorite (okay, Gravitron was probably Zaira’s favorite but there’s no ride photos from it ).

One of the great things about a carnival set-up is that even though they never have ride photo booths (that I’ve seen) it’s usually pretty easy to get into position to do so yourself. So while neither of these photos were taken by a “professional” machine we’ve still decided to count them as being part of our collection.

Photos #068 & #069

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