So this is a kind of “Behind The Scenes” posts I’m going to try and put up for each week’s videos. Each week there usually are a few extra photos and bits of videos that didn’t quite make it into the final edit. Here is where I’ll try and post some of those bits, along with any personal notes I didn’t share in the video.

See this week’s video if you haven’t seen it here: Week 2 – Monster Jam

Location:
Monster Jam at Anaheim Angels Stadium
2000 E Gene Autry Way, Anaheim, CA 92806

Hours:
Showtimes vary

Costs:
Tickets are ~$20, vary by location and seating.
Parking varies by event location.

For my second week I got to fulfill a childhood dream and go see a Monster Truck show.  As a kid I used to love watching the Monster Jam shows on TV, back when the main two were Bigfoot & Grave Digger (who’s still around and appeared in this show).  Every year I’d also see the commercials on TV announcing the shows on “SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!”.  The tickets for the show were very reasonable, I bought my tickets maybe 3 days before the event, and it was only about $35 each, but that was on the “high end” of the price range, some tickets were much cheaper.  Definitely a good value for your money.

The show I went to was at Anaheim Angels Stadium, which is a nice stadium, with a lot of fan friendly areas and just a clean nice feel that makes the experience enjoyable.  In the video you can see the main entrance with the baseball field design and two giant helmets.  Here’s a more wider overview video showing a bit more of the outside of the stadium to get scale.

Once inside, it was really fun watching the monster trucks race around, but in the video I cut through a lot of the races and didn’t get to show the full races.  If you want to see them, catch Monster Jam on TV (it airs on Fox Sports cable channels) or go actually see them live when they come through your city.  I definitely recommend seeing them live, because seeing them flying around in person and hearing the roar of the engines is a unique experience, although if you have sensitive hearing, I do recommend bring ear plugs.  But here is one of the races in full just to give you a bit of a taste.

Getting the monster trucks lined up and parked in between races and events sometimes required a little help from the ground crew.  I got this guy trying to guide a truck into spot nearly eat it walking backwards:

Another one of the set of clips I had to cut for time editing was the freestyle competition.  This was really the main event for the night.  This is where all the trucks got to pull off all the jumps and stunts to try and rack up points in the 1 minute 30 seconds time, and an extra 30 seconds of bonus time if they were going well in the regulation time.  It was really awesome seeing these 2 story tall trucks soaring through the air and bouncing off of all the obstacles and cars on the track.  Since I couldn’t include it on the video, here is one of the funner freestyle runs by the truck “Time Flys” who put on a great run.

During the freestyle runs, I managed to catch a slow motion shot of Maxx-D catching some air that I though came out pretty cool but just couldn’t fit into the weekly video.

Lastly, I was glad to be able to go with my dad to this event who enjoyed it just as much as I did.  He’s the one who first introduced me to monster trucks and used to watch them with me when I was a kid.  So it just wouldn’t have been nearly as fun or as special for me without having him there.