Trip to Sydney to see the Lord of the Rings exhibition and the Lion King

Sat-Sun March 12-13 2005

A group of me and my friends went up to Sydney to see the Lord of the Rings exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum and the Lion King musical at the Capitol Theatre.

Firstly, the LotR exhibition: this was pretty cool, with lots of costumes, armour, jewellery, drawings, photos, and models that were used in the film trilogy. An astounding amount of work went into this stuff, amazing. Peter Jackson was there while we were there, which was pretty weird (I didn't see him, but a couple of my friends did; apparently he's lost a lot of weight).

While the exhibition was great, unfortunately, the merchandise was utterly crap. Really, really crap. Full of badly made models, cheap jigsaws and children's games. Not even a good t-shirt among it.

The Lion King show (based on the Disney film, and pretty much exactly the same plot line) was fantastic. In particular the costuming (including an excellent puppet cheetah) was great. A lot of fun, and highly recommended.

Unlike the LotR exhibition, the merchandise was pretty good too (unfortunately that's a Flash-only site, so I don't know what it has on it).