We heard about a place called Teddy Bear World in Honolulu that took over the spot where Planet Hollywood used to be before it went out of business. Figuring anything would be better than Planet Hollywood, and intrigued by the website that promoted the Korean owned $7million investment into Teddy Bear World, we figured we’d give it a try. Marion was certainly thrilled with the idea, especially the Teddy Bear man she posed with outside the building.
Here we have Teddy Bear Obama giving his inaugural address in front of the Teddy Memorial.
Here’s Elora showing Dirty Teddy the Cave Man Teddys and the T-Rex. Seriously, this place is so strange it’s awesome. Perhaps the only thing better than Teddy Bear World would be Ewok world…
Elora was excited to stick Dirty Teddy’s head into the T-Rex. The night before we went to the museum she had a hard time sleeping because she was worried Dirty Teddy might get lost if she took him to the museum. But she really wanted to take him at the same time… such sweet anxiety in a little girl!
Oliver loved the T-Rex too.
Even James was excited to see all the Teddy Bears.
That expression right there on Oliver’s face is pure gold. He’s just so sweetly pleased. The entire trip was worth it just for that.
And of course, Elora was thrilled too.
Marion really liked the panda bears. Here’s Karen filling out the questions for the scavenger hunt. Apparently the museum people figured out that you’d walk through the place in about 10 minutes and say, “that’s it?” so they smartly came up with a scavenger hunt to get you to look at each exhibit.
Here is Teddy Roosevelt, the man who the Teddy Bear was named after.
Somehow the Octopus has become Marion’s favorite animal. She has this ugly little McDonald’s toy octopus that we found somewhere and loves it. So now she loves every Octopus she sees.
The highlight of Teddy Bear World is of course the Elvis exhibit, which they use to naturally try to sell you an Elvis Teddy Bear. It was tempting. There is a theater, little movie about Elvis in Hawaii, and then the curtain rises and you get to enjoy a dancing, singing Elvis Teddy Bear. The kids enjoyed the show so much they wanted to watch it twice.
Oliver was a fan of the Sumo Teddy.
So was Karen. But she wouldn’t let me put up the picture of her doing the E.Honda “Hundred Hand Slap”. Too bad…
Elora wanted to pose with just about every exhibit. There were a lot more exhibits than what we showed here.
And here are the kids dressing up teddys in the clothing station.
Finally, on the way out, Elora had warmed up enough to the large Teddy Bear man to pose with him. She was a little nervous at first, but once she realized how cool Teddy Bear World was she was happy to hug him.
Would we recommend Teddy Bear World? If you’ve got kids under 8, or if you’re Korean (we were the only Americans there) then it’s definitely worth it. And your ticket is good for two back to back days, so you can always spend double time in this strange land known as Teddy Bear World.
