The Wild Kratts Live 2.0- A Paw-some Review

Disclaimer- This post contains affiliate links. Any purchases you make can earn me a small commission at no extra cost for you. Although I coincidentally won some free tickets to this show, I was not paid or sponsored to write this post. All opinions are my own. 

With Thanksgiving approaching, I wanted to share with everyone something that happened to me that I was really Thankful for.

I got this wonderful opportunity and won some tickets to go see the Wild Kratts Live 2.0. I'd like to give a shout out to my friend Jessica, because without her, I wouldn't have seen the link to enter the give-a-way- Thank you Jessica!



If you've been following my blog, you know that my son has this amazing memory. He's knowledgeable in all the things that interest him and I've been asked by every one of his teachers where he gets his knowledge. They have even told me, "Your son could have taught this class today. You must read to him all the time." It's usually then that I smirk or chuckle, because truth be told, I read to my kids, but not every day and really, most of the things that they've learned about, they've actually learned from watching television.


When it comes to animal knowledge, my kids have learned most of what they know because of the Wild Kratts. (Thanks Netflix and Amazon Prime!)  So I was ecstatic when I got that tag on Facebook saying that I won the tickets.

To be honest, I had looked into purchasing tickets for this show closer to where I live, but I had no idea what it offered. I didn't know if there would be live animals and if it would just be like what you see when watching talk shows and a zoo keeper or other animal handler brings animals on stage or if it would be totally theatrical. With the cost per person, I was afraid to take the risk to buy tickets for a family of five and then have my kids be totally disappointed. So I held off on purchasing any.

Let me tell you this, My kids were so excited when I finally told them what we were going to see. I had kept it a secret from them until we were standing right in front of the theater.

My oldest is ever dramatic, just like me. So, I knew they'd be excited, but I didn't know if they would be interested in the show once it had started. I was very nervous because my youngest is only four and when we had taken him to his first movie in the theater several months before, he had swung from the bars that were in front of our seat separating our seats from the group below us. I didn't want him running up and down the aisles. Thankfully, that didn't happen. 

Once we got to the show, we realized that it was going to play along with the actual tv series. In order to understand what we saw, you'll need to understand what the tv series is like. 

The Wild Kratt's Television Series

If you've never watched the Wild Kratts, you can view a few of their seasons for free on Amazon Prime Video or you could watch them on PBS. The Wild Kratts starts every episode with the two, very real, Kratt brothers Martin and Chris. They each talk about different topics like "Why do moose look so weird?" and then talk about other animals who look funny and explain why they do. This little snippet is about two minutes long and they say, "Imagine what it would be like if we had faces like a walrus. What if?!?!" then they strike a pose and they turn into their cartoon versions of themselves. 

The Wild Kratt's crew includes Martin and Chris Kratt, Jimmy Z, Aviva, and Koki. Each crew member has an important part to play in the crew. Aviva is the inventor behind the creature suits, Koki does pretty much everything, and Jimmy Z is the tech operator who is basically the modern day Shaggy from Scooby Doo. It is Chris and Martin's job to research animals to find out why they are unique. With Aviva's creature power suits, Chris and Martin are able to transform into any animal and use their unique creature powers to save the day. So, in the Walrus episode, Chris and Martin transform into a walrus and with their tusks and special whiskers, they are able to find something hidden under the seabed floor that they wouldn't have been able to find if they were human. 

Unfortunately, in every episode there is some villain who tries to stand in their way. They have Chef Gourmand who likes to only cook and serve rare animals, Donita who is a fashion designer who only fashions her looks with animals and Dabio who is her not-so-bright sidekick, and Zach Varmatech who is an evil tech inventor that uses real animals to power his inventions and has his Zachbots capture the poor animals. It's up to the Wild Kratts to save the day.

The Wild Kratt's Live 2.0 

The show that we saw began, to my surprise, with the REAL Martin and Chris Kratt. I didn't know if it would really be them, or if we would see actors. So this was the first surprise. 

I hope I never forget the looks on my kid's face when they walked out on stage. The joy and wonder that showed on them made everything worth while.

From the moment the two men started talking, my youngest was literally on the edge of his seat. His focus was on that stage and his face was right next to the boy in the seat in front of him. I had to keep moving him back so that poor boy had some space.

The Kratt brothers welcomed us and talked about how cool animals were. They asked the audience what their favorite animals were and everyone would answer all at once. My kids don't usually interact with the television, so I was surprised when they interacted with the Kratt's prompts.

Then it happened, the Kratt brothers asked, "What if WE could become these creatures? Should we use our creature power suits?" The audience said, "Yes!" The brothers then asked, "Which one should we become? I heard the cheetah. We'll try that first!"

The energy of the room was raised and excited "yays" rang throughout the theater. The Kratt brothers began to show us their creature power disks. Chris's was organized while Martin's were found randomly in his pack and one disk was even in his shoe. It was during the time that he was searching for the disk in his shoe, that Martin clumsily knocked all of Chris's and his power disks through the air and lost them all in the grass.

So, naturally, the brothers needed to shrink down to miniaturized size to find these disks. This is where the live show and the cartoon show combined.

I don't want to give away the show, but from here, the Kratts looked for the power disks and as they found them, they changed into some helpful creatures.

They battled and hid from some Zackbots and in the end, they found all the disks they had been looking for.

Conclusion 

The show involved the whole audience and even though some parts were slow because of the costume changes, my kids were still interested and engaged the whole time.

I highly recommend going to see this show if you have younger kids. My oldest is almost 9 and he was still very entertained. It didn't see to be too young for him. I'd say that the show is for kids ages four to ten.

We really enjoyed the show, even the adults. It was interesting and funny. It had a great mix between live and cartoon. It incorporated many of the same things the tv show has including the miniaturizer and Zackbots. A screen dropped down to give us information on different animals as well as show us the cartoon version of Koki, Aviva and Jimmy Z. So all of our favorites were there.

One thing that I wish I would have known is that the show offers VIP tickets. Since we won our tickets, I didn't know this. Each VIP ticket gets to do a meet and greet with Martin and Chris and that would have been something that we would have really enjoyed doing. Now I know for next time!

Since we saw the show in a town four hours away, I called my kids off of school and stayed at my parent's house since they were only an hour away from there. I was comfortable with this because I felt that it was an educational field trip of sorts and it didn't disappoint. 

Disclaimer: I was not asked to post about this show. The tickets that I won were totally coincidental and ALL opinions are my own. I am not getting paid to write this post.