Family Fun Day at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas

It's really been so long since I've been to this concert hall. Easily 10 years. I used to be there every weekend.... on duty. I was one of the friendly ushers at the door.

So last weekend I finally went back, this time with my boy. Since he started violin classes, I thought it would be nice to introduce him to he orchestra.

Family Fun Days are really good very young children. They are typically one hour long and usually has a theme to it. For example one of the years that I was ushering over a Halloween weekend, the concert hall was decked with Halloween deco and the musicians  were in scary costumes too. They would have a Halloween themed programme with popular scary movies sound tracks for example.

Last weekend they had a show called Presto Mambo. By a theatre company called Platypus Theatre, it was an introduction to the orchestra for children as well as to music of the Americas. Before they show, we were told to come an hour earlier for a mask decorating activity at the hall's foyer.

Attire during Family Fun Days are usually smart casual. By this they mean children under 12 is allowed to wear anything including denims and shorts. For adults, it's no shorts, slippers, sandals, round neck t-shirts and jeans. But I was made to understand that nowadays jeans are allowed but it has to be "dressy". If you are reading this with intend to pay the concert hall a visit, do check with the box office on attire as they are very strict and WILL refuse entry. Myself having turned away many who did not comply.

You can also pick up an extra cushion to give your little ones a bit more height from, I believe, the cloakroom. They did not have this when I was working there. Not sure when this came about but saw parents bringing them into the hall last weekend. Again do check with the box office.

Ayden was definitely excited to see the concert and and she'd every 5 minutes when we were going to be there.

We arrived, as told, an hour earlier for the mask decorating activity. All the materials were laid out. We just needed to pick our mask to decorate. Ayden and I had a good time decorating our masks with sequences and such.

We had a little snack before we went in, the refreshment booth had a nice selection of little cakes and desserts and an array of hot and cold drinks. Ayden of course had his all time favourite chocolate cake.

15 minutes before the show we were to be seated. It was really nice to be in he hall again! It seems smaller than I remembered it to be. The concert started right on time.

Ayden seem to have enjoyed the concert and was inquisitive, asking all sorts of questions about all the different instruments he saw. Of course he did this before the concert started when some of the musicians came out early onto the stage to tune their instruments.