Trick or Treat!

Rockwell was the site for two Halloween celebrations last weekend. So my mom and I decided that we would take my nephews out to celebrate Halloween there.

Saturday was ‘Camelot’ day. This event was actually an event of Rockwell club, but it was opened even to non-members. It was held in the Multi-purpose court. It was a good idea to bring my nephews there because both of them are into dragons, so a Camelot setting would be perfect. CJ in fact came in a dragon costume, while Ciera was wearing a king’s crown and robes. We were actually quite late getting to the event mainly because traffic in Edsa was horrendous. So I’m not really sure what we missed when we got there at around 230pm. But there were quite a few activities there that kept both of my nephews interested the entire time. There was a large, er, "inflated dragon" where kids could actually go in and keep jumping and tumbling without getting hurt (argh! I can't remember what you call those things, ah well). CJ and Ciera actually got into it a couple of time. There was also a fishing area – the 'fish' were goody bags and each ‘fisherman’ had about a minute I think to try and snag as many goody bags as they can with a makeshift fishing rod. Again, CJ and Ciera tried this out twice. The first time, CJ actually managed to catch a goody bag by himself which was so cool. I helped Ciera get a goody bag for himself too. The second time they tried it, there were only two goody bags left so the facilitators actually just handed them to us, but my nephews wanted to “catch” them so they did. There was also face painting (CJ had a dinosaur painted on his face), a magic show, photo opportunities (there was a 'Sword in the stone' area), and prizes given out to the best costumes. The program in the multi-purpose court was capped off by a performance by the musical group 'Trumpets'. After which everyone headed out to the different Rockwell buildings for trick-or-treat. Unfortunately, there were waaay too many people and the trick-or-treat event was more difficult than enjoyable – there weren’t too many stops and it took forever just to get a couple of candies. So I told my mom that we should just leave – I still had some chocolates left over from the ones I bought for the trick-or-treat activity we had at work and we would still get to go trick or treating on Sunday. So we just ended up having dinner before heading home.

I told my mom that we needed to be early on Sunday because the ‘Superheroes Convention’ which would be held in the Rockwell tent (next to Powerplant mall) was just from 1 to 5. Ciera came as The Flash while CJ came in as Superman. Since this was a Powerplant event, it had more advertising and as such a whole lot more kids were there. When we arrived at 130pm, there was a large projector showing an episode of Justice League. Face-painting and glitter tattoo were available to all participants but the lines were too long so we decided to just line up for the Velcro Wall. The line was quite long, and each kid would get only 5 minutes in the Velcro Wall but there aren’t lots of opportunities to experience it, so we figured the wait would be worth it. As it turns out, one of the kids threw up in the entrance area right after Ciera and CJ got in. The facilitators took a while to figure out how to clean it up (eventually they just moved the Velcro Wall to cover the area where the kid threw up – the wall was inflatable so it could easily be pushed) so I reckon my nephews were probably there for twice as long as the other kids were.

Anyway, the tent was too crowded and to join the games you had to register (and it was too much of a hassle to try and register) so we opted to just head out to Powerplant and have something to eat while waiting for the trick or treat activity to begin (it was supposed to start at 5pm). On the way out, we had one stop to have a photo op with two men on stilts. Anyway, we headed to Dulcinea (Ciera had a lot of churros, while CJ read the menu and decided he wanted to have a tuna sandwich), and as it turns out, Dulcinea was one of the many trick-or-treat stops on the mall and they ended up giving us some stuff already even if it wasn’t 5pm yet. As luck would have it, lots of the places in the mall were already giving out goodies even if it wasn’t 5pm yet. There were ‘Heroes welome here’ signs in most of the trick-or-treat stops, but some other places didn’t have that sign, so we would just ask the people whether they were giving out treats or not. There were a lot of other families going around as well – I guess they all headed out of the tent earlier as well to escape the maddening crowd in the Convention. But it was good that we ended up getting an unintended head start. We actually just made the rounds of the 2nd and 3rd floor shops before CJ and Ciera’s baskets were filled to the brim with goodies. In fact, my mom and I ended up having to carry some of the other goodies they collected coz their 'pumpkins' had no more room. By the time we had gone through the 3rd floor shops, both my nephews were really tired. And since we already had a truckload of stuff, we decided to head home and skip the basement and 1st floor shops. I ended up seeing some of the shops on our way out of the mall, and the trick-or-treat lines were already really really long. So it was good we got there before most of the other kids.

All in all, a very fun Halloween. Very tiring but my nephews did a lot of stuff and got to enjoy quite a bit so it was all good. And their supply of goodies has still not run out. =)