Blues for an Alabama Sky

Over the weekend, I had a chance to catch a play in Princeton with my Aunt and her friends. The McCarter Theatre’s Associate Artistic Director Nicole A. Watson has staged an ambitious play and knocked it out of the park.

Blues for an Alabama Sky is set in 1930 Harlem amongst four friends that are looking for the same thing that four friends in Harlem, Brooklyn, Chicago or any other city are looking today: Good Friends, Great Nights Out on the Town, Romance and their Future. I was really struck by how the concerns for these four friends, Angel, Guy, Sam and Delia are still relevant today.

Now since it is the 1930’s there is a lot of decorum present. For example, when Delia has Sam over to help her with a presentation that she is presenting at Abyssinian Baptist Church, she lives her front door open because she’s a single woman and Sam is a single man. Again decorum.

Guy and Angel are best friends that have been together since they were child prostitutes at Miss Lily’s a brothel in Savannah. Together the two of them have plans to get to Paris, France where they can live their best lives but first Guy needs to win over Ms. Josephine Baker with his costumes so she’ll send him passage and first class fare so he can get there with his best friend in tow. Across the hall, is their neighbor Delia who Guy and Angel take under their wing. Delia is trying to open a clinic in the community that offers family planning to the women and men of Harlem. Sam is one of the doctors at Harlem Hospital. He has known Guy and Angel for the past ten years. Sam is frequently at their apartment cutting up with them or romping around town outside of delivering Harlem’s newest residents.

Angel finds herself at a crossroads. She’s met a man from Alabama and is tired of taking care of herself. Angel is ready to be taken care of for once and Alabama is ready to do just that. Alabama is a newcomer to the city who is reeling after the loss of his wife and son in childbirth which is still relevant today as Black women have a higher percentage of maternal death than are non-Black counterparts.

What will be the ramifications for Angel if she were to get everything her heart desires? Angel is a crossroads and her decisions will have a lasting impact not only for herself but for the lives of those around her as well.

Blues for an Alabama Sky perfectly captures the temperature of Harlem at the height of prohibition and the ambition of these four young Black friends that are ready to take on the world!

If you’re in the Princeton area, I highly recommend checking out Blues for an Alabama Sky. The play is two hours and 45 minutes with an intermission.

The theatre allows late seating at their discretion so I recommend showing up early so that you can get settled in your seat and snacks.

The McCarter Theatre is at 91 University Place Princeton, NJ 08540

Blues for an Alabama Sky runs from May 6th – May 28th. You can buy tickets here.

Great Wolf Poconos Review

Last weekend, my family and I had the chance to check out Great Wolf Poconos for Langston’s first birthday. We had a good time and below I’ll break down the pros and cons of Great Wolf for our family and specifically the Poconos location. 

PROS: 

• Promotions – Great Wolf always has tons of promotions and codes that a family can use to make the vacation more cost effective. Great Wolf also has a loyalty program and after our two night stay I already have 45 Voyager Points which I can use towards a future trip. I’m always looking for a great deal and the use of many discount codes and Voyager Points makes for a great vacation. There is currently a deal on Groupon for the Poconos and Sandusky location. 
• Splash Pad – Great Wolf has a splash pad for little ones. The Splash pad is great for infants to toddlers. There are many different water activities that a little one can enjoy in the Splash Pad. Maxwell had a blast in the Splash Pad area. Langston isn’t quite yet a water baby but I think the Splash Pad was a good first step for Langston. 
• Toddler Slides – The toddler slides are right next to the Splash Pad so for our family it was easy to move between the two areas with two different kids. There four toddler slides available in the toddler area plus a Toddler basketball area 
• Kids activities: Great Wolf has tons of kids activities outside of the water park. While we were there, we got to do a character meet & greet with Wiley. I noticed a yoga offering in the morning for parents and children. The evenings had a dance party and pajama story time. We only participated in the pajama story time.  
• There is a Dunkin Donuts on SITE! Yay – we’re big DUNKIN people so being able to go down and grab an iced coffee, coconut refresher and a glazed donut was a big bonus for our family. The only downside to the DUNKIN at Great Wolf is that it doesn’t participate in the DUNKIN Rewards Program 
• The Bar – the drinks were good that we had that bar and I thought the pricing was pretty reasonable for two adult beverages and one kids drink. Langston isn’t allowed a lot of sugar so he mostly gets water and white milk but Maxwell got a watermelon concoction that was pretty tasty. I only ordered him that so that he wouldn’t be interested in my mimosa. My plan worked by the way!

CONS: 

• Seating in the Water Park – There is limited seating in the water park especially if you’ll be between the Splash Pad and Toddler areas. Great Wolf does offer guests two opportunities to get into the park early so that you won’t need to worry about finding seating but there is an upcharge for these two options. The first is Rise n Slides ($9.99/person/day) which allows you to gain access to the water park an hour earlier before other guests. The other option is Slides & Scrambles ($24.99/per person/day). I think there is good value in the Slides & Scrambles because you can get seating and access to the park earlier plus you have breakfast in the water park. There are also cabanas available but honestly they are really far away from the area where my kids would be so I didn’t see a lot of value in the Cabana for my family.
• Lining Up – I asked one of the tenants if there would be a line to enter the park and she said yes and we should aim to get in line 15 minutes before the park opened. We got into the line 30 minutes before the park opened and we were probably the 5th family (15 people ahead of us) in line. By the time the park opened the line was around the corner and probably about 50 – 60 ppl behind us. I hated having to wait in the line but because of the limited seating I knew we needed to get there early because there were only 4 or 5 tables near the toddler area and splash pad where I wanted to sit. Again, I wanted those seats for our stuff since my boys would be moving between those two areas. When my husband went back in the afternoon after nap time, he said seating was still very limited and he just put the swim bag on a chair on the other side. 
• Construction – The Poconos location is under a massive renovation which was expected to be completed at the end of 2022. I can tell you right now that it is nowhere near being done. 
• Elevators – The elevators are incredibly slow and it seemed like there was only one elevator in the whole place but my husband did find elevators at the far end of our wing. We never took it though since it was a single elevator. The main elevator in the lodge had two elevators that took absolutely forever. Also with lots of families, strollers and wagons, it got incredibly tight in the elevator. We personally only took our wagon once since we wanted to avoid waiting for the elevator for an extended period of time.   
• Food – We went to two of the onsite restaurants at Great Wolf during our stay. We kicked off our stay with dinner at Hungry As A Wolf. We ordered a large pizza, salad, pasta and wings for our family of four. Our final dinner at Great Wolf was at Fireside which we all really enjoyed. I had the prime rib dip while my husband ordered the salmon. Maxwell had a cheeseburger with raw veggies (carrots and celery), and Mash Potatoes. Langston had grilled chicken with raw veggies and french fries. The appetizers weren’t great – we ordered garlic bread and crispy brussel sprouts. The garlic bread was just dinner rolls smothered in buttery cheese and the crispy brussel sprouts could have been crispier. The brussel sprouts also didn’t need the lemon cream cheese that came on the side. It was overpowering. 
• The Room – We went to GW at the end of April and although the week leading up to our trip had been nice by the time we arrived at GW it was in the high 40’s low 50’s so when we walked into our room I immediately cranked up the heat. Well, our heater didn’t work which sucked. I went to the front desk our first morning to see about getting it fixed and they sent maintenance up to resolve the issue. I will say that maintenance was incredibly quick unfortunately the blower on our unit was only blowing cold air so the whole thing needed to be replaced. The maintenance man was apologetic and got us a dining voucher for the inconvenience. I appreciated the gesture and we used that voucher at Fireside. Also, there is no microwave available in the room. GW has a communal microwave available on the 1st and 3rd floors for ALL guests. The microwave was clean but the idea of having to share a microwave with some many people especially post pandemic is gross. In order to heat up the pizza, we had to go to the 1st floor to warm it up and bring it back to the room. My husband hated that part of the resort. 

So all in all, while we enjoy an indoor water park with all of its recycled water….this is definitely number three on our list for the number of water parks in the Poconos. We have Kalahari and Camelback right in the Poconos areas. 

Have you been to Great Wolf Lodge? Do you agree with my Pros and Cons?

Me and the birthday boy, Langston

Langston enjoying the Splash Pad

Maxwell enjoying the water – honestly this kid is living is BEST LIFE EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

The Cabana. This one was by the bar!

Welcome Back

Hello World! Welcome back to my blog. Allow me to re-introduce myself.

I’m Brittany.

My husband is Aaron.

Our kids are Maxwell and Langston.

I’m ready to start writing again. And thought to myself why not start with writing about what I love – my family and traveling. Two kids and a pandemic later I feel like I’ve got my sea legs underneath me again and we’ve started to increase our family traveling.

So let’s jump back into it with The Pride Pack. Also, thoughts on this name? Does it work? Yay or Nay?

Let me know in the comments! New posts every Monday!