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Prepare your snide slingshots, unbelievers, but I went along this afternoon and had a fab time.
Negatives:
Costs a tenner midweek if you pre-book but £15 if you buy your ticket on the day. At weekends they charge £17.50!
Your illusions will be shattered: Deanna Troi's wedding dress is even more nauseating when it's right there in front of you, in all its pink, flowery girliness. Yes, I knew Quark and Nog were tiny but Picard's, Sisko's and Khan's costumes wouldn't fit the strapping cosmonauts I had envisaged all these years.
Several items (Sword of Kahless, Picard's chair, Imperial Klingon Throne) haven't survived transportation well, with shoddy paint jobs and chunks chipped off.
You'll have to queue to experience the "rides": to sit in the shuttle craft being flung around in space by turbulence or maybe enemy fire, to have your photo taken on the transporter deck, and for the finale - the Star Trek Adventure (experience Engineering as a Borg cube begins to attack, take the turbolift and run through the corridors to the Command Deck in time to watch victory on the viewscreen).
The canteen serves standard burgers and fries, not the raktajino, gagh and bloodwine one might have hoped for.
Positives:
I hadn't really meant to go and had lots of other things I needed to get on with doing but, having gone on impulse, I was there all afternoon. Clearly, though it was all rather naff, I found enough of interest to keep me there.
Though I hadn't enjoyed Nemesis that much, there was lots of widescreen Tom Hardy being cute and cuddly as demonic teen Shinzon. And his gothy gear was smashing in closeup, in its display case. If anyone burgles the exhibit while it's on and that's all they take, you'll know I did it.
You can get a "talking tourguide" thing so that you can hear a commentary on most individual exhibits, filling you in on their background, some of which may be new to you, unless you're hana_bi and have every detail already committed to memory.
Naff as it was, I did enjoy the finale, standing at Ops while the Borg cube hovered menacingly. There were (strangely) comparatively few kids there but they were enjoying it hugely, if you have any, as the turbo lift lost power and stalled etc.
Some the boys in those attractive boilersuits staffing the place were delicious.
I eschewed this pleasure but you can be video'ed reading some dialogue from an autocue and they'll splice it for you and give you the tape to take home so that you appear in an episode of TOS. Thought my nieces would be impressed but it cost £20, so moved swiftly on. Damn tempting though.
Biggest plus of all, I've been and hana_bi hasn't! *bwahaha*
Live long and prosper! |
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