Maxie and I are a few hours early for an event just a short ferry ride away and I’m anxiously refreshing an app.
It is pouring rain in Brisbane, but I’m not checking the weather radar. I’m tracking the path of one particular CityCat among the fleet of 26 cruising the swollen river.
We are on our way to Bluey’s World – a new “immersive experience” of the global kid’s TV phenomenon – and the fate of this outing, it seems, rests upon the arrival of that specific catamaran.
Such is the grip of Bluey mania upon the city where the cartoon was created and set that two ferries are decked out as “CityDogs” – one as Bluey, the other her sister Bingo – to carry passengers to the last stop before the river mouth, Northshore, where they can now enter the Heeler family home for real life.
What rational reason is there to catch a CityDog rather than one of the other 24 boats offering an entirely indistinguishable journey? There is none, of course, but try explaining that to Maxie, my three-year-old daughter.
Suddenly, the Bluey boat pings on my screen. It is travelling towards us – in the wrong direction. Biscuits. I need a Bluey episode to guide me through the conversation to come. What would Bandit do?
Maxie ends up taking this early setback in the stride of her golden gumboots – she’s been wildly excited about our outing for days. And why wouldn’t she be? She’s grown up on this cartoon, mainly because it is the only kids’ show her parents also want to watch.
But could Bluey’s World tap into this cross-generational appeal that is the cartoon’s magic formula? And, more importantly, could it justify entry tickets of up to $65?
I doubt I’m the only parent wondering that as we file into the temporary warehouse encasing Bluey’s World. It is a school day but the place is packed with wild-eyed kids. We’re formed into groups and ushered inside the Heelers’ iconic old Queenslander by an actor in a fairy suit.
There is no photography allowed inside, a rule I was sceptical of in advance, but am instantly grateful for. As we file through the narrow hallway, led by our fairy tour guide, I’m vaguely reminded of not being able to catch a glimpse of famous artworks because of the sea of selfie takers – this was back in that distant, pre-parenthood past, when travel abroad was still an occasional thing.
We spill into the living room – complete with cartoon dogs playing cricket on the TV – and a story begins to unfold. It has something to do with gnomes coming to life and a magic xylophone, but is mostly washing over Maxie. The big kids are dominating the search for clues, the room reverberating with the shouts and tramping footsteps, not only of the overexcited children in our group, but those in other rooms as well. Maxie clutches my hand.
By the second room, she has abandoned the narrative entirely and is asking me to play in Bluey and Bingo’s cushion cubby with her. Then we’re in the Heeler pups’ bedroom and she has ditched me too, pulling off her Bluey socks and clambering under their doonas, giggling.
We enter the closet and she’s lost her inhibitions entirely – projected on every wall is Bluey’s crazed, multicoloured dancing toy Chattermax, and my little Max literally dances the ribbons from her hair.
Now she’s the last to be ushered from every area, trying to pull the duck cake from the oven, patting the water dragons down by the creek. In the back yard, under a near lifesize poinciana, Maxie plonks herself on to a stump with another family and starts painting the fingernails of a random dad. He must have seen the episode Stumpfest, and goes along with her game good-humouredly.
Finally we are corralled into a room where we have our picture taken with Bluey and Bingo – you can buy that later – and exit via the giftshop. By the time that and the ice-creams and fortune cookies have been navigated, I doubt many a family is getting out of Bluey’s World having forked out for entry alone.
Was it really an hour? The experience was a whirlwind and Maxie didn’t want it to end. Thankfully, there is a themed playground for her to run out those toddler-sized emotions.
Fruit bats are soaring through the gloom by the time I finally coax her on to a CityCat home. The enthusiasm of one of us, however, remains undimmed.
“Dad, can we go to the Bluey show when we wake up?” Maxie asks.
I choose my next words carefully. Bluey’s World was a joy, vicariously speaking that is. But unlike the episode Cricket, say, I’m not sure this is a Bluey experience I need to repeat.
“Ask your grandparents sweetie,” I say.
