Lego Store

If you had a childhood, you have a fondness for Legos. Downtown Disney recently re-imagineered their Lego Store.

It used to be pretty average - nothing worth visiting unless you needed to buy legos. Now it's more of an experience.

See the 'children' building Lego cars

Fist of all, their are giant Disney figures made completely from Legos all over the place. There's even a dragon battling a knight on the roof. WHOA!

Out front your kids (or grown-ass friends) can build cars to race down a tiny incline (be warned that said friends will spend a very long time discussing wind resistance and weight capacity while trying to kick each others' butts at tiny-Lego-car racing).

This nerd expects you to be fooled

Against the back wall is a thousand pods full of the colorful plastic bricks. One can choose between two sizes (both very expensive) of plastic cups and then fill them to the brim with Legos out of the pods on the wall. I was disappointed to discover, however, that the pods are not full of different Legos all the way to the ceiling, but most have a picture that looks like a bunch of Legos in them! LIARS!

All around the shop are different stations for one to play with and build things. Hurray! Germs! 

Guys, there are way too many themed Lego sets. Every fantasy movie ever has thirty different collections. Was I tempted by the Harry Potter sets... yes (I'm not ashamed). I just wanted to play make-believe with the kids from Hogwarts! But, alas, I know that the child inside me dies more and more every day (I stopped feeding him) and so $50 on a Harry Potter toy would be a complete waste.

She's into it

Holograms! Some of the boxes are rigged to interact with a camera and screen in the store. You hold the box in front of the camera and the set appears above the box on the screen. Then you can rotate the box to get different angles of the completed toy inside. Pretty nifty.

I've decided that when I have a child, I will be able to buy a Harry Potter set for "him/her." I just have to be patient (and maybe be a little 'absent minded' for few days).

Little John's

So, I’m a little bit afraid of guns.

It’s because of movies. When do you ever see a gun in a movie that doesn’t eventually shoot someone? Right? Therefore: Gun = get tense, someone be getting shot, Yo (as the character with the gun might say).

Yeah, this thing shot some Nazis.

BUT my dad found one of my grandpa’s WW2 guns. Wow. So we went to a gun store (obviously) to try and sell it. And, in true gun store style, the owner explained, “What you got there is an antique. You need to go see Little John.” Like we were suddenly transported into a video game. “Little John can tell you all about any gun – practically tell you the color of the shirt of the guy who last used it. Hehe…”

“Oh… okay. How do we find this… Little John.”

“He’ll find you.” No, I’m kidding. He gave us directions.

And the pliers are for, what? Retrieving bullets?

Walking into Little John’s Antique Arms is just like being a kid in a Nintendo store IF you’re a 19^th century pirate.

Seriously, if you’re a Civil War reenactor, a renaissance faire attender, a cowboy, or just a seriously creepy dude – go see Little John.

Little John stands 8 feet high, speaks with a lisp and is missing an arm. Sort of. In reality he IS very tall (taller than me, at least) and had his arm in a sling. The man is quite learned about antique guns. But to an outsider who didn't know there was SO much to know about weapons – watching Little John with this gun was like watching a psychic touch an article of clothing belonging to a missing child and then spew out a description of where he is. Magic.

They have auctions about every three months. I bet those are fun. My grandpa’s gun will be in the August auction.

C’mon… BIG MONEY!