Everything Is Related - Dr. Who

Relating the things that DC loves to anything else just helps to make it more enjoyable for him. DC loves to travel, but if we are not traveling to Disney World I usually rack my brain to come up with something to make the trip more interesting and exciting for him. Recently we took a trip to London and Paris.

One of the items on our agenda would be a trip to Cardiff and the Dr. Who Experience – have I mentioned that before? :) . DC loves Dr. Who, but he gravitates more to the David Tennant Doctor and Rose. He eventually warmed up to Matt Smith, but he is having trouble relating to the Peter Capaldi Doctor.

On the recommendation of Autism-Mom we watched the Paddington Bear movie before we left. The movie is centered in London and I was hoping that he would warm up a bit to Peter Capaldi as he is a very funny character in the movie (two birds – one stone kind of relating for DC). He liked the movie and above all, it gave him a few more relatable items to bring to London and to Cardiff.

Paddington Store – Paddington Station

Paddington Station

So here we have the fourth installment in the “Everything is related” series.

Dr. Who is one of the very few “relatable(s)” that did not come directly or even indirectly from Disney. I happened upon the series quite by accident. I happened to be flipping channels one morning at 5am and there it was, on the Syfy Channel. I had missed the beginning and had no idea what this was or what was going on. (I had to do a little bit of research today to try to determine how long ago this was; I am guessing somewhere around 2008 as they were already into the David Tennant seasons. I assumed that the SyFy channel was showing the season that had just ended and not brand new episodes.). I discovered later that the episode I saw that first morning was“Gridlock” – it is still one of my favorite episodes.

I sleep with the TV on. Listening to whatever is on distracts me from the “mind race” I seem to have every night when I try to get to sleep. I know that I have mentioned that TNT (‘Two-Five’ in DC-speak) is the default channel in our house. I got into the habit of watching (half asleep/half awake) the 4am episode of“NUMB3RS” and then the 5am episode, fully awake with coffee before DC woke up. For some reason the 5am episode was not on the schedule on Friday mornings. Not wanting to give up my “sitting in bed with coffee ‘me-time'”, I started flipping channels searching for anything that was not an infomercial.

I was totally hooked on NUMB3ERS and when TNT removed it from their lineup entirely, I had to just purchase the entire series. But on the upside, due to TNT’s very odd Friday scheduling, I had become an official “Whovian”. I went out and purchased all of the newer revamped seasons that were available at the time.

Quite by accident again while I was watching my newly purchased Dr. Who DVD’s,  DC walked into the living room just in time to see a burping trash can. Over and above anything else, DC is a male, therefore anything having to do with bodily functions is just hilarious to him. He was hooked.

We purchased our Dr. Who Experience and train tickets months before we left on our trip. It was a two hour train ride from London to Cardiff  and then a short cab ride to Cardiff Bay. I have to say that I was just as, if not more excited as DC was.

Inside was a snack area and quite a few very lifelike figures. DC did his best not to “Blink”.

Don’t Blink

I did not know what to expect inside the “Experience”- I imagined something like the old Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas – a virtual ride. It wasn’t like that at all but still a lot of fun. Of course, photos are not allowed inside the “Experience”.

Star Trek Experience Quark’s Bar

The exit from “Experience” brought us into an area of props – TWO Floors (exciting!!!). Photos are allowed in this area so I am going to post a few… Please understand that I am using a great deal of restraint in not posting every single one!

Cardiff Bay, the area around the Dr. Who Experience was very pretty, filled with shops and restaurants. There was a walking tour that was part of the ticket price to the Experience. We chose not to wait and since we had a map, we took the tour on our own. To be honest all I wanted to find was the entrance toTorchwood. As it turned out it was right in that same area and impossible to miss. While DC and Doug rode the carousel, I walked over and took a few photos of the Torchwood fountain (the secret entrance to the Torchwood Institute).

We had a nice lunch at Bill’s and opted to walk back to the train station. I would definitely recommend Bill’s for lunch, maybe not the walk back to the station.

We had little time before our train was scheduled to leave so we took a quick walk up to Cardiff Castle where a few Dr. Who scenes were filmed and where the Tardis landed in celebration of 50th Anniversary of the Dr. Who Series. It was only a five-minute walk from the station, but we really did not have the time to go through the whole castle. I wish we had scheduled it into our day ahead of time. Normally DC loves a castle, any castle but he was exhausted at this point so viewing it from the outside was just fine with him.

I am not going to give away what goes on inside “The Experience” itself because, you know, “Spoilers Sweetie” but I will say that DC found the final “piece of the puzzle” and inserted it into the proper place and helped to save the universe……

It was a great day all around for us, but more importantly –  for the universe.