House on the Rock(s)! Second shot!
Since a large portion of my House on the Rock report got chopped off (goddammit LJ/Semagic/computer), here's the rest of my photos.
The next room, I call the 2001: A Space Odyssey Room since it was a huge room with a lot of balloons and aircraft and kites hanging from the ceiling and Strauss's Blue Danube was playing. :o Rube-Goldberg machines set up all along the railings at the bottom, so that was neat. What wasn't so neat was the window full of puppets. It was a teeny collection compared to everything else Jordan has, but one of the wooden puppets looked like a troll bum zombie with his yellow teeth sticking out and it was horrible. D: You had your first dining restaurant at the bottom so you could get refreshments if you wanted. :o
Those are the little ads you saw as you went down the ramp. Nomnomnom~
The dining area was full of HUGE posters covering the entire wall advertising a magician named Carter the Great. Snapped because holy snap, the description makes me think of a part in my book I hadn't gotten to yet. Plus, remind me to research Carter for Marius' sake later. :o This is the full poster.
Oh. My. God. The entire giant room is this 200 foot tall squid versus a whale the size of Moby Friggin' Dick. How can you NOT say this is fucking epic? Trivia: the last living photo of Alex Jordan featured him tucking his frail body in the jaws of a giant model shark he was trying to get built. Now that's how I want to go.
At the top were these two thrones that you could put coins in and they'd determine what "type" you are. Second shot is a closer look at the labels, and you can see part of the chair.
Oh yes, because the next thing I want to happen next is to be judged by a clown.
Carriage! Flash kind of got in the way of the first one, but nothing too bad. Just like the one Cinderella rode on her wedding!
Remember when I said I wasn't very fond of porcelain dolls? Alex Jordan also collects some Asian dolls, which I actually happen to like. It gives me fond memories of my grandmother from my Dad's side of the family, who used to collect a lot of them and they'd watch me from the shelves to provide a cozy setting whenever we stayed in their home in Chicago to visit. They're pretty, and I love their hair and the kimonos they wear. :o
This one I took way later. The flash is annoying, but my main focus was on the lady in the middle. I don't think I've seen anything like her before, so I thought she was cool.
Approaching the Organ Room! If I have to describe one thing about the House on the Rock, it'd be this: MUSIC MACHINES. MUSIC MACHINES EVERYWHERE. You have entire rooms dedicated to one-man-bands, giant music boxes, phonographs, and all sorts of instruments playing symphonies all day and when you put tokens in them.
You know those cartoons where violins with eyes and smiles come to life and they start playing themselves. It's just like that in House on the Rock, without the eyes/smiles/talking/cartooniness. Like the Red Room. You've got rows of chairs with violins in them, a gigantic golden harp, xylophones and chimes, beating drums, it's like something that comes out of the set of The Nutcracker. And yes, it did start playing the Nutcracker Suite when I fed it my tokens. What was funny was the room was silent and completely empty when I entered. Then as soon as I brought the machine to life, tourists started stopping and sitting down in the red velvet seats to watch the instruments perform. :o It was kind of magical, in a way.
And of course, Big Ass Chandelier. Probably one of the largest in the world, but I don't remember. But it's damn big.
This is Cranky Face! :D He operates the oriental music of the Mikado, which I tried to capture the whole room on camera and utterly failed. No wonder he's cranky. All those pesky tourists snapping pictures of him all day. But the entire room itself, holy crap. It's easily one of the best rooms in the Organ Room, and that's saying a lot. :o
See? It got too dark. D: But you can see another Cranky Guy accompanying the first~
The Blue Room. Much smaller than the Red Room, but I'm proud of how much better the shots turned out here. ♥
I hadn't even gotten to the Carousel yet and my jaw was already dropping. I can't do justice showing photos, so I took a video... which LJ refuses to let me show and keeps cutting off my post, which pisses me off. Ah well, it's kind of jerky anyway, and that I didn't know the doorway to the next room was decorated with a giant panther head with giant teeth until I was almost leaving House on the Rock. (I tried to get a photo of it, but it was too dark. D:) There's at least 269 creatures on the Carousel, from lamias, satyrs, centaurs, mermaids, jaguars, sea horses, dragons (including three-headed ones~), even a pit bull! Horses? Naaaaaah. We're too cool for that!
I wonder if someone's uploaded a video of the Carousel on YouTube. I should think so. :o
Actually, there were horses built for the Carousel, but Alex Jordan had so many awesome creatures that he didn't have room for the horses and left them out. He put them on the walls instead~
Annnnnnnnnnd there's the Doll Carousel, which speaks for itself. Moving on!
I thought she was pretty. *shrug* From the corridor full of the Doll Houses, nom. The display reminded me a lot of a 50s neighborhood, with the green carpet and white picket fences, and how you can just look into each of the rooms of the houses and see how neat and tidy everything is. :o
I'm glad we don't hunt elephants for ivory anymore. D: I imagine I'd get a toothache if I saw someone had carved sculptures out of my teeth.
SUITS OF ARMOR! FUCK YEAH~! After the Doll Houses, I passed a lot of ancient statues before I came across jeweled crowned and more ancient weaponry. But the armor? Sold. There were also wall-sized dioramas featuring famous battles like the Battle of Cannae, complete with elephants. :o
Looks a lot like the Disney castle in their logo, huh? I didn't take pictures of the Circus Room (where the castle was at the end of it), which was a lot like the Doll House corridor, but with circus tents and miniature elephants and acrobats and such. And there was a gigantic clown head at the end that laughed when you fed him tokens. D: No pictures of him, haha. XD
I got to see the Carousel again before I ended the tour, which really made me happy. ;; Here I got to see the ceiling stuff in close detail, and that's how I discovered the door below was being eaten by a panther. XD It's also where the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would be, as a reminder for any future visits~!
The carriage from before? A total poser compared to this one. And it's being pulled by jaguars. Jaguars. Which I snapped a photo of, but they were too dark and got grainy when I tried making it brighter. ;;
Another Japanese garden! A fitting end to a lovely trip through a lovely house~ ♥
I hope you all enjoyed my pictures~ I know you'll love being at House on the Rock even more~ ♥♥♥
The next room, I call the 2001: A Space Odyssey Room since it was a huge room with a lot of balloons and aircraft and kites hanging from the ceiling and Strauss's Blue Danube was playing. :o Rube-Goldberg machines set up all along the railings at the bottom, so that was neat. What wasn't so neat was the window full of puppets. It was a teeny collection compared to everything else Jordan has, but one of the wooden puppets looked like a troll bum zombie with his yellow teeth sticking out and it was horrible. D: You had your first dining restaurant at the bottom so you could get refreshments if you wanted. :o
Those are the little ads you saw as you went down the ramp. Nomnomnom~
The dining area was full of HUGE posters covering the entire wall advertising a magician named Carter the Great. Snapped because holy snap, the description makes me think of a part in my book I hadn't gotten to yet. Plus, remind me to research Carter for Marius' sake later. :o This is the full poster.
Oh. My. God. The entire giant room is this 200 foot tall squid versus a whale the size of Moby Friggin' Dick. How can you NOT say this is fucking epic? Trivia: the last living photo of Alex Jordan featured him tucking his frail body in the jaws of a giant model shark he was trying to get built. Now that's how I want to go.
At the top were these two thrones that you could put coins in and they'd determine what "type" you are. Second shot is a closer look at the labels, and you can see part of the chair.
Oh yes, because the next thing I want to happen next is to be judged by a clown.
Carriage! Flash kind of got in the way of the first one, but nothing too bad. Just like the one Cinderella rode on her wedding!
Remember when I said I wasn't very fond of porcelain dolls? Alex Jordan also collects some Asian dolls, which I actually happen to like. It gives me fond memories of my grandmother from my Dad's side of the family, who used to collect a lot of them and they'd watch me from the shelves to provide a cozy setting whenever we stayed in their home in Chicago to visit. They're pretty, and I love their hair and the kimonos they wear. :o
This one I took way later. The flash is annoying, but my main focus was on the lady in the middle. I don't think I've seen anything like her before, so I thought she was cool.
Approaching the Organ Room! If I have to describe one thing about the House on the Rock, it'd be this: MUSIC MACHINES. MUSIC MACHINES EVERYWHERE. You have entire rooms dedicated to one-man-bands, giant music boxes, phonographs, and all sorts of instruments playing symphonies all day and when you put tokens in them.
You know those cartoons where violins with eyes and smiles come to life and they start playing themselves. It's just like that in House on the Rock, without the eyes/smiles/talking/cartooniness. Like the Red Room. You've got rows of chairs with violins in them, a gigantic golden harp, xylophones and chimes, beating drums, it's like something that comes out of the set of The Nutcracker. And yes, it did start playing the Nutcracker Suite when I fed it my tokens. What was funny was the room was silent and completely empty when I entered. Then as soon as I brought the machine to life, tourists started stopping and sitting down in the red velvet seats to watch the instruments perform. :o It was kind of magical, in a way.
And of course, Big Ass Chandelier. Probably one of the largest in the world, but I don't remember. But it's damn big.
This is Cranky Face! :D He operates the oriental music of the Mikado, which I tried to capture the whole room on camera and utterly failed. No wonder he's cranky. All those pesky tourists snapping pictures of him all day. But the entire room itself, holy crap. It's easily one of the best rooms in the Organ Room, and that's saying a lot. :o
See? It got too dark. D: But you can see another Cranky Guy accompanying the first~
The Blue Room. Much smaller than the Red Room, but I'm proud of how much better the shots turned out here. ♥
I hadn't even gotten to the Carousel yet and my jaw was already dropping. I can't do justice showing photos, so I took a video... which LJ refuses to let me show and keeps cutting off my post, which pisses me off. Ah well, it's kind of jerky anyway, and that I didn't know the doorway to the next room was decorated with a giant panther head with giant teeth until I was almost leaving House on the Rock. (I tried to get a photo of it, but it was too dark. D:) There's at least 269 creatures on the Carousel, from lamias, satyrs, centaurs, mermaids, jaguars, sea horses, dragons (including three-headed ones~), even a pit bull! Horses? Naaaaaah. We're too cool for that!
I wonder if someone's uploaded a video of the Carousel on YouTube. I should think so. :o
Actually, there were horses built for the Carousel, but Alex Jordan had so many awesome creatures that he didn't have room for the horses and left them out. He put them on the walls instead~
Annnnnnnnnnd there's the Doll Carousel, which speaks for itself. Moving on!
I thought she was pretty. *shrug* From the corridor full of the Doll Houses, nom. The display reminded me a lot of a 50s neighborhood, with the green carpet and white picket fences, and how you can just look into each of the rooms of the houses and see how neat and tidy everything is. :o
I'm glad we don't hunt elephants for ivory anymore. D: I imagine I'd get a toothache if I saw someone had carved sculptures out of my teeth.
SUITS OF ARMOR! FUCK YEAH~! After the Doll Houses, I passed a lot of ancient statues before I came across jeweled crowned and more ancient weaponry. But the armor? Sold. There were also wall-sized dioramas featuring famous battles like the Battle of Cannae, complete with elephants. :o
Looks a lot like the Disney castle in their logo, huh? I didn't take pictures of the Circus Room (where the castle was at the end of it), which was a lot like the Doll House corridor, but with circus tents and miniature elephants and acrobats and such. And there was a gigantic clown head at the end that laughed when you fed him tokens. D: No pictures of him, haha. XD
I got to see the Carousel again before I ended the tour, which really made me happy. ;; Here I got to see the ceiling stuff in close detail, and that's how I discovered the door below was being eaten by a panther. XD It's also where the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would be, as a reminder for any future visits~!
The carriage from before? A total poser compared to this one. And it's being pulled by jaguars. Jaguars. Which I snapped a photo of, but they were too dark and got grainy when I tried making it brighter. ;;
Another Japanese garden! A fitting end to a lovely trip through a lovely house~ ♥
I hope you all enjoyed my pictures~ I know you'll love being at House on the Rock even more~ ♥♥♥