Buddy Davis' Amazing Adventures
Buddy Davis is a musician, dinosaur sculptor, and children's entertainer. In his "Buddy Davis' Amazing Adventures" series, he's teamed up with the folks at Answers in Genesis to craft something that kids will really like. Below I review all 6, rating them, and providing the trailers for each.
To market the series, Answers in Genesis has posted the first episode online where it can be watched for free. I provide the link down below.
I Dig Dinosaurs!
26 min. / 2011
RATING: 7/10
In this children's video Buddy invites viewers along on a dinosaur bone dig to see how paleontologists find bones and take them out of the ground, and then put them on display.
Davis really knows his stuff. Dinosaurs have long been promotional tools for evolutionists, but Davis will have none of that. He approaches the topic of dinosaurs and their fossils from a thoroughly Christian, creationist perspective. In a number of instances, he contrasts the biblical position with the evolutionary one.
So, for example, he explains that fossilization doesn't need to take millions of years – as he explains, they've even found fossilized teddy bears! And kids are also told about how elastic blood vessels have recently been found in dinosaur bones that shows they couldn't possibly be millions of years old. These animals aren't as old as they have been made out to be!
Our host is enthusiastic and energetic and keeps things hopping without it getting frantic. While I enjoyed this, I'd recommend it more as a kids' video than family viewing. I mean, parents won't be bored, but they likely won't want to watch this as many times as their children!
To generate interest for the series, Answers in Genesis has made this first episode, I Dig Dinosaurs!, free to watch online right here. And you can watch the trailer below.
Swamp Man!
45 min. / 2012
RATING: 7/10
Our family really enjoyed the first in the "Buddy Davis' Amazing Adventures" series so when another popped up at our local library we had to check it out.
Once again Buddy is our guide as we go out and explore God's great outdoors from an explicitly Christian perspective. In Swamp Man! Buddy takes us to the Florida Everglades where he gets up close and personal with alligators, lizards, dolphins, turtles, manatees, and snakes – lots of snakes!
This is fast-paced, cutting from one animal to the next every minute or two, and in between Buddy has us zooming around on an airboat, a mudboat, a motorboat and an ATV. So there's lots of action to keep kids' attention, and mom and dad are sure to learn something too. I think I enjoyed this one almost as much as my daughters did – very good family viewing!
Anyone with a snake phobia will want to give this one a miss – of all the animals we meet, these are by far the feature creature. That's why this isn't a video I'd show my pre-school kids right before they go to sleep. It's not all that scary, particularly mid-day...but alligators, bears, and snakes at bedtime don't seem a good combo.
That aside, this is a great family treat - one that mom and dad and kids anywhere from 2 and up will enjoy.
Extreme Caving
58 min. / 2013
RATING: 7/10
While Buddy Davis and the Tennessee Caveman Robbie Black are the hosts of this episode, the real stars of the show are the Cumberland Caverns themselves. This is one of the longest cave systems in the world, running at least 30 miles. If you've ever wondered what it's like to hike and climb and descend through caves that are hundreds of feet below the ground, you're going to love this!
Davis, and his professional camera crew, take us through passages and caverns that vary in height from dozens of meters to tight squeezes that are just a matter of inches. We get to see flowers made of gypsum, popcorn made of calcite, and translucent "cave bacon." We go stoop-walking and belly-crawling, pit-crossing, butt-sliding and even scuba diving into parts of the caverns that people don't normally go. We go so deep down that for a while even our guide loses his bearings!
While Davis is normally an energetic, even hyper, host – all in an effort to keep kids' attention – the physical demands of this episode mellowed him out some. That might be why I liked this one a little bit more. It's still a show for children, but the more restrained Davis is a little easier for adults to enjoy in an adult way. There is still lots of fun for the kids though, with animated scene transitions, a fun song about a skunk, lots of peppy bouncy music, and a close look at a cute furry fruit bat.
The whole "Buddy Davis' Amazing Adventures" series is produced with an explicitly creationist worldview, and one example of where that's evident in this episode is when Davis explains how many caves may have been formed by the Flood.
The only caution I can come up with is that at least a couple of the Scriptural references Davis shares are on the random side, not particularly relevant to what he is trying to relate them to. But this is only a minor quibble in this remarkable video.
At about an hour long, this might be a bit too long for many a kid – it could be good to watch it in two parts. What I most appreciated is that it is something the whole family can enjoy, with lots of fun for the kids, and lots of amazing sights to see for the adults. Shucks, this has me think of checking out the Cumberland Caverns for myself!
You can see a 2-minute clip of the episode below.
Alaska!
25 min. / 2015
RATING: 6/10
We're heading way up north, to Alaska! Bears are the big focus, as Buddy teaches us about the different species, and even shows us the damage a bear can do to a cabin (fortunately it happened while they were away!).
There is a bit of an evangelism focus in these videos, which comes out in this one when Buddy talks about his love of fishing and segues to what the Bible says about becoming "fishers of men."
Alaska! is a short adventure, at just 25 minutes, and while my kids loved it, and my wife appreciated it too, I found this one a little lacking in content and slower-paced. If your family has liked the other Buddy Davis adventures this will be worth checking out too – Buddy is a charming man – but this might not be the best one to start with.
You can watch a 3-minute review/trailer of Alaska! below.
Ice Age
25 min. / 2017
RATING: 7/10
This time Buddy Davis takes us to the snow and ice of some giant glaciers left over from the Ice Age. He takes us paddling amongst the icebergs that result when huge chunks of ice "calve" right off the glacier and fall into the lake below. Davis also introduces us to some of the creatures from the Ice Age, including bear-sized beavers, saber-toothed tigers, and mastodons, which I always thought was another word for "woolly mammoth" but it turns out the two are quite different from one another.
As always, Davis has got songs and jokes interspersed throughout, which the kids really seem to enjoy. What I liked best was Davis' overview of creationist thought about the Ice Age. Evolutionists talk about ice ages – plural – but Davis explains that creationists believe there was just the one, happening not so long after the worldwide Flood.
I popped this DVD into the player when a couple of my kids were sick and home from school, fully intending to leave them to it while I went off to get some work done. But there was more than enough here to grab my attention too, so I had to stick around. This ended up being my own favorite of Davis' amazing adventures, and the girls liked it too.
Safari
30 min. / 2021
RATING: 7/10
Buddy is on the hunt down in South Africa. We watched this in December, and what with Buddy Davis' beard now being completely white, when he made a list of animals he was hoping to see, I just knew he'd be checking it twice.
The episode is built around a search for elephants – we're hunting for clues, including poop, trees getting uprooted, and bark eaten, to track down the "perps" – and along the way we get to see rhinos, giraffes, lions, monkeys, and more. Other nature documentaries have better footage of the animals themselves (Buddy is generally a telephoto lens away...though, at one point he does hold a lion's tail!) but you won't find a more charming guide. Some brief animations, a couple of songs, and a godly perspective throughout make this another fun choice for family viewing.
More Buddy Davis adventures
All of "Buddy Davis' Amazing Adventures" can be purchased as DVDs or as downloads at the Answers in Genesis store here.
Davis also has another series, "The Creation Adventure Team," that features Davis and a robotic dinosaur assistant named Proto who tackle A Jurassic Ark Mystery and its sequel, Six Short Days, One Big Adventure. Both of these can be watched for free here and here though the episodes are broken up into ten-minute chunks....
