A Day Out at Horrible Histories Christmas Car Panto

As previously mentioned, Kai really enjoys Horrible Histories. After he read his Horrible Histories Horrible Christmas book, we heard about the Horrible Histories Christmas Car Panto, which seemed like a really fun event. We have not been to a drive in before, and I have not been to a panto as those aren’t something we have in America, but I was super excited to figure out how both would work!

Horrible Histories, if you are unaware, is franchise that is all about making history more interesting for tweens and teens. It brings in a lot of humor and horrible/gruesome aspects of history into the story books, which can keep children more engaged. These facts and humorous aspects are blended into a bunch of historical facts, to create something more interesting and engaging to read, watch, and remember. The Horrible Histories Christmas Car Park Panto actually followed a bunch of the points in the Horrible Histories Christmas Book, which was very interesting to Kai.

When we got to the car panto, we were a bit disappointed that they were not really organising the area by the size of the cars, despite saying they would on their website. We have a rather small car, comparatively, but were placed behind a lot of big cars, so the view wasn’t the best. With that said, they had a massive screen at the front, which allowed us to see what was going on. There was a smaller stage next to the screen, which is where the actors were preforming live. If you’ve never been to a drive in before, you actually get to tune your radio to hear what is going on, which is what we did. Dann and I switched seats with Amelia and Kai, allowing them into the front with Kai at the drivers seat, and Robin sat in the back in the middle. From this view point, we could all see, which was a big worry of mine.

Once we were settled in, we actually had chilli in the car for dinner, dishing it out into bowls, which made the experience like dinner and a show! We also had a host of popcorn and snacks. The entire show was 75 minutes long, going back in time throughout history to showcase the different points on how Christmas came to be. The subject of the show was a young girl, who wanted a meerkat for a present, and had gone through her Christmas gifts and realized that there wasn’t one. She only cared about getting this item, and did not care about the meaning of the holiday or how it came about.

So, she travelled back in time to learn about where Christmas came from, who the first person was to say Merry Christmas, and why it is such a big deal. There were lots of facts within the panto, from Charles Dickens to Green-Santa. These were spread through a humors play, that had lots of musical numbers, many characters, and lots of jokes. There was an evil Santa who was trying to ruin Christmas and a silly reindeer sidekick.

In the front of the car, Kai was able to honk the horn (like clapping really) when other cars did the same. This was prompted at times, as a way to have audience engagement. The only real issue we had, once we were settled into our car, was the windows fogging up due to how cold it was outside. This was something that Dann easily fixed by wiping down the windows a few times and rolling down the back ones. It’s good everyone was bundled up warm! All in all, it was a very interesting play – I know I learned a lot! The entire car ride home, Kai kept talking about different facts he knew and aspects he liked, so it really hit well with him.

This post is apart of our Blogmas series, with each and every post being about Christmas or Winter.