Zumba for Wii Initial Thoughts: Not bad.

Today I received the Zumba Fitness for the Wii and couldn't wait to give it a go.  I wanted something that I could do at home that would challenge me, be fun and actually burn some calories.  I think that I have found that in the Zumba Wii based on my first impressions.

Mind you, I only spent about 30 minutes total (including the 20 minute workout) messing with it, as I had a hungry infant downstairs and a 3 year old nearing his bedtime, so I'll have to look at it more closely next time.  But...it comes with a belt that you slip the remote into.  You create your profile and then if you decide to play right away you pick "Easy", "Medium" or "Hard/Difficult"(I can't remember which one).  Then you pick a routine to do and there are different levels of that as well, Beginner, Intermediate, etc.  I picked the lowest level on both counts.  I also started to do the Tutorial to "learn" the dance steps and then heard baby girl and decided to screw it and just jump in and try to figure out what the heck I was doing.  For the most part, I got it.  I'm sure it wasn't pretty to watch, but I was huffing and puffing.

Here are the things I really liked: 1) The "instructor" looks similar to the dancers in Just Dance, it's mainly a silhouette that changes colors.  2) Unlike other workout videos there isn't a lot of needless chatter that usually just pisses me off.  The chick says "Now you've got it" and other random encouragements, but not that often, just enough for you to actually be encouraged not annoyed 3) At the end it scored me 4) There's a workout calendar that shows you when you worked out, what routine you did, etc.

I wore my Polar HR monitor that I use when I'm trying to run  running and according to it I burned 300 calories in a 20 minutes workout.  Not bad.