Family Fun with Tropicana

This is a compensated review by BlogHer and Tropicana.

Are you a family that 1) Loves orange juice? 2) Loves to do fun things together? 3) Loves to save money? I was recently invited to become a BlogHer Juicy Insider for Tropicana's Juicy Rewards program, which allows families to enjoy all three items on that list -- and boy, have we been having fun! I hope you'll join me and my family as we explore all that Juicy Rewards have to offer. The Basics Juicy Rewards is a great new program from Tropicana that helps you save on the stuff your family loves to do, just by buying stuff your family already loves -- orange juice. Each specially marked carton of Tropicana Pure Premium or Trop50 has a special code that you enter online to get Juicy Reward Points. You can redeem Juicy Reward Points for discounts on fun activities and gear (for more information, check out the Juicy Rewards official site). As a BlogHer Juicy Insider, I get to try out some of the activities that you can redeem discounts for, and tell you all about it. The Bongga Tropicana and BlogHer generously deposited 12 Juicy Rewards Points in my Juicy Rewards account to get me started, but racking up those points is as easy as drinking a glass of juice -- in just over a month, I was able to enter 38 points just by buying Tropicana juice and typing in the codes printed on the cartons! So what have we been doing with all those points? Check it out all the Juicy Fun we've been having: Singing, I mean Golfing in the Rain One afternoon, when The Pea was off gallivanting with friends, the boys were feeling sad since they don't get invited to a bazillion parties like The Pea does. So I decided to take them out for an afternoon of fun at the Malibu Grand Prix mini-golf course. I used 3 Juicy Rewards Points to redeem a coupon for a buy-one-get-one free golf session, so the whole afternoon cost less than a trip to our local coffee place for muffins and hot chocolate!
3Po and Jammy had an absolute blast.
The fact that it was drizzling the whole time did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm. In fact, the rain scared away all the crowds so we had the whole course to ourselves, and they could take as many shots as they wanted. They kept on whacking those golf balls like they were playing in Alice in Wonderland's wacky hedgehog-and-flamingo croquet game:
Okay, maybe they'll never be Tiger Woods.... but with the kind of news Tiger's making these days, that probably isn't such a bad thing. Playing Crocodile Hunter A couple of weeks ago, we spent the day at San Francisco's Aquarium of the Bay on Pier 39. We used 6 points to get a buy-one-get-one-free deal on admission tickets, which meant that we could afford to splurge on a nice restaurant for lunch instead of searching for the cheapest burger joint on Pier 39. The Aquarium of the Bay is an amazing place! The coolest part of the exhibit was walking through two glass tunnels submerged under a huge tank that had all kinds of marine animals swimming beside, below and above you. Talk about an immersive experience! I've never seen anything like it, and the kids are still talking about how cool it was to feel like they were underwater.
In another exhibit, we learned all about octopuses (octopi? I can never get it right) and how they can do amazing things like use their tentacles to open a screw-top can to eat the crab that's inside. They must really love crab -- we saw a video of an octopus squeezing itself into a hamster run to get to the crab on the other end. Then again, if it were a slice of chocolate caramel cheesecake at the end of the hamster run, even I might try it. In another exhibit, the kids got to touch sea stars of all colors and sizes:
Yeah, yeah, you say, ho hum, you can touch starfish at any old aquarium; science teachers even bring them into classrooms these days. Okay, but does your science teacher bring bat rays and leopard sharks are swimming and allow you to touch them?? And I've never been to an aquarium that allows you to get close enough to a bat ray that he can stick up his nose or whatever up in the air towards you, like it's some kind of dolphin.
All the time I kept thinking, isn't that the creature that stabbed Steve Irwin in the heart? If The Crocodile Hunter. Preparing for Camping Season For the past 2 years 3Po and Jammy have been shivering in their thin nylon CareBear toddler sleeping bags that I bought for them when they were 18 months old, so I figured it was time to get them some new sleeping bags. I bought my Coleman sleeping bag over a decade ago, so I didn't have to think twice about which brand to buy -- especially since I was able to redeem 9 Juicy Rewards points to get a 30% discount off a $60 purchase at Coleman.com.
When the sleeping bags arrived, the kids insisted on having a "camp-out" night in the downstairs playroom. Thanks to Juicy Rewards, we're already having some family fun even though camping season hasn't even started yet. Bribing Lady Luck The Juicy Rewards program has some great prizes up for grabs every month; the prize for April is an Adidas miCoach package, and you can enter once per day. They're also offering a trip to LA and a round of golf with Bruce Jenner; that contest costs 1 Juicy Rewards point to enter, and you can enter up to 3 times per day until April 16, 2010. So when I'm logged on to my Juicy Rewards account, it only costs me a second (and 3 Juicy Rewards points) to throw my name into the hat and dream about winning. Who knows, I might get lucky! Saving the Rainforest One of the things I like best about the Juicy Rewards program is that your points don't ever have to go to waste. Even if you can't find a single discount you want to use (and with over 20,000 of them I find that hard to imagine), you can donate the points you accumulate to Tropicana's Rescue the Rainforest program. Every Juicy Rewards point you donate will save 33 1/3 square feet of rainforest! I've donated 10 points so far, and I expect to donate many more between now and November 15th (when the Juicy Rewards Program ends). Getting Great Deals Did you know that the Juicy Rewards program has a Deal of the Day? They're special deals that are good only for a limited time, so you need to check your Tropicana Juicy Rewards home page often and see what's cooking. Last week it was a Buy-One-Get-One-Free coupon for Trop50 juice! I didn't hesitate to redeem that baby, and it saved me some money on our orange juice -- and also gave us 12 more Juicy Rewards points instead of just 6 :) Yay, more points for me! The latest Deal of the Day will be launching tomorrow, April 16. Watch out for that one because it's going to be a blockbuster of a deal!! I can't say exactly what the deal is, but you'll surely want to roll out the red carpet for it (hint! hint!). The Blah When you redeem Juicy Rewards Points for a discount to a museum or amusement place or some other attraction, you need to print the coupon out -- you can't have the coupon emailed to you, and you can't view your Juicy Rewards discount coupon before you print it out. Come to think of it, it would be great if we could just load up a virtual coupon on our mobile phones and show it at the booth and not even print it out! The Bottom Line I'm liking this rewards program a lot! Tropicana is one of about two or three orange juice brands that I like, but ever since I found out about the program, it's the only brand I've been buying. The Juicy Rewards Program easily inspires loyalty because it's so easy to rack up the points, the discounts are significant, and you can use them at some really great family entertainment places -- they're places I'd take my family if I had to pay full price, so getting a discount is just a big, juicy bonus! Register with and Tropicana Juicy Rewards and get one additional Juicy Rewards Point for free! To get you started, BlogHer and Tropicana have teamed up to offer new Juicy Rewards members a bonus Juicy Rewards point! How great is that: you get one step closer to redeeming a Juicy Reward, at no cost to you. To get your bonus point: 1. Go to http://www.tropicana.com/ 2. Set-up your Tropicana Juicy Rewards account (just take a minute!) 3. Visit the "Enter Codes" page within the site and get started with BLOGG-HER11 * *Note* This one-time use code is valid for new accounts ONLY. Must be entered within 6 hours of creating your account. Win a $50 Gift Card! One lucky Bonggamom Finds reader will win a $50 Visa gift card courtesy of BlogHer. To enter, visit the Tropicana Juicy Rewards page, then come back here and tell me about your family's favorite local attraction. Extra Entries For extra entries, you can do any or all of the following, (you can only do each extra entry once; please leave a separate comment for each extra entry): 1) Follow Bonggamom Finds on Networked Blogs (leave a comment on this post with your FB id). 2) Tweet this (leave a comment on this post with a link to your tweet): See what @bonggafinds is doing with her Juicy Rewards points & win a $50 Visa gift card from @blogherdeals http://tinyurl.com/y5gaotq #giveaway The Rules Maximum of 3 entries per person. This giveaway ends at midnight PST on May 2, 2010; I will draw a winner at random on May 3 and post the winner's name in the comments section after the winner confirms acceptance. Click here for official giveaway rules. For more information, check out the Juicy Rewards official site. And don't forget to visit the rest of the BlogHer Juicy Insiders' posts (links are on the BlogHer.com special offers page )-- you'll have 7 more chances to win! * UPDATE MAY 3, 2010 -- This giveaway is now closed -- watch out for the announcement of the winner's name soon! If you still want a chance to win a $50 Visa gift card, my latest Tropicana Juicy Insider post also has a giveaway for a $50 Visa gift card. Click here to read my latest post and enter to win a $50 Visa gift card! Disclosure: I am being compensated for my participation in the BlogHer Juicy Insiders program. The views and opinions expressed here are my own.