The Adventure of the How to Train Your Dragon: Live Spectacular

    In 2012, Xander and I had the opportunity to attend the How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular or How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular, an arena show adaptation of the feature film How to Train Your Dragon.  We were both huge fans of the Dreamworks film, I know it's not Disney, but we love it! 

    If you don't know, or remember, How to Train Your Dragon is about a viking boy named Hiccup who wants to follow in the family tradition of dragon slaying. After capturing his first Dragon, a Night Fury named Toothless, he quickly changes his mind and befriends the Dragon. Which leads to adventures and revalations across the island that maybe the dragons aren't bad afterall. Toothless is adorable and reminds us of a dragon version of Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. 

    Being huge fans of the movie when we heard there was a live show coming we just had to check it out. The show is produced by the same team that created the "Walking with Dinosaurs" live arena show. If you haven't seen that and you love dinosaurs you must check it out. Walking with Dinosaurs had huge life-size and life-like dinosaurs, so, translate that over to dragons and we just knew the HTTYD show had to rock! Oh the anticipation!Searching online we found a trailer for the show. It was premiering on March 3, 2012 in Melbourne, Australia traveling to New Zeland after that. After New Zeland it was coming to the United States. 

   We not only found tickets to a show near us but splurged a little to do the VIP experience...I mean come on, this might be our only chance ever to see big robot dragons!

   The Show was December 26th, 2012 in San Jose at the SAP Center (at that time the HP Pavilion). We arrived early as were prompted and were led to a photo area where we got to try on various viking gear and take crazy photos. We had a blast and got a ton of photos. We were then brought to an area where the actors that portrayed Hiccup and his "girlfriend" Astrid told us a story and handeled a Q&A session. Xander was loving that he got to meet and shake hands with the two actors. He appreciated them in the show more and I don't think they were overshadowed by the Dragons. When the photos and Q& A were over we headed to our seats. 

   Our seats were awesome, they gave us a full view of the action. Although as big as the dragons were any seat would of been awesome! The show started and we were quickly entertained by the story we love but with added elements of danger watching live acrobats interact with the huge dragons. Think Cirque Du Soleil meets Jurrasic Park. The show had 24 animatronic dragons of 10 different species. They are amazingly detailed as you can see from the photos below and they move as if they are actually alive! The stunts were awesome especially any of the flying scenes. And when the show ended we didn't know whether to stand and applaud or to pick our jaws off the floor, we were truly blown away! 

    Xander and I were honestly not ready for what happened next. A group of twenty of us were led backstage to "meet" the Dragons...AND...THEY... WERE... EPIC! The detail up close was impeccable. Of course you were not allowed to touch them, so we stood in awe, took selfies and tried to figure out how the Dragons traveled from city to city. The "handlers" explained how the dragons are created, modeled, and made to come alive. They talked about the dragons as if they were alive and other than them not breathing you belived it. It was about 30 minutes long and when we left we went with big dragon smiles! 

     The How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular was totally worth the splurge and we wish the show was still around. We loved the experience and loved being that up close and personal with the performers both human and dragon. Another adventure in the books!