Game 91: Walt Disney's Mary Poppins Carousel Game

 This game, Walt Disney's Mary Poppins Carousel Game, has been on my shelf since I was 5 years old.  Today is my birthday, and during the dinner celebration I was asked about my memories of birthdays past.  As kids we didn't often have "friend birthdays;" normally it was immediate family or extended to aunts, uncles and cousins.  I do remember, though, that for my 5th birthday my mom hosted this big party including all the neighborhood kids.  A boy named Doug who lived across the street a few doors down gave me this game.  (This might be proof-positive that I NEVER get rid of games!)  I'm sure I haven't played this since my age was in the single digits!  But when I mentioned it over dinner, one of my boys said, "We should play that when we get home!"  And so, we did.  It just seemed especially appropriate tonight.
 We each chose a character and got started.  It's basically a matter of rolling dice and moving ahead, but there are some spaces you can land on that move you further ahead or that send you back.  If you land on the same space as another character, you have to stop in the spot behind that character.  A slight twist is that in two places on the board you have your own track (horse-racing and kite-flying).  In these areas you don't have to worry about landing on another player's spot.
 It's pretty straight-forward, kinda like Chutes and Ladders, so we weren't expecting much, but it turned out to be a lot more fun than we had thought.  There was a lot of getting "sent back" by landing on another player - and even landing on another player and then ending up on a "go back 5 spaces spot."  At first it seemed the game would take us only 10 minutes or so, but with these set-backs it got a little "challenging."  We found ourselves laughing a lot as certain players kept "blocking" others.  Here we are at the horse race:
 I played Mary Poppins, and I'm in the lead here, so I took a picture!  Notice, the space right behind me is a "back" space, so if someone landed on my character at this point they didn't just go back one!
 Once you get to the end of the track there is a carousel.  In order to win you have to get the spinner to land so that your character matches his or her space on the carousel.  This gives other players a chance to catch up.  Watching the outcome of the spinning was more intense than you might think.  (Perhaps we were just easily amused in our over-tiredness after a long-busy day!)
It was fun to pull out a game I hadn't played in well over four decades and to just laugh it up with family.  It was a good final event for my birthday celebration.  It may even have made me feel a bit younger again.

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