Futuroscope!

Friday was a crazy day.  First I headed to the OFII office to finish up my last minute paper work in order to get my yellow stamp.  I am not legally allowed to leave France without it so it was very important.  But my silly fanny got on the wrong bus.  Well not exactly the wrong bus.  It was the right number on the right route but going the wrong way.  I was about an hour late.

The lady at the OFII office was very sweet.  I think the manager she called (because I was late) told her to make me come back on Monday.  She agreed but then put my stamp on my visa and told me to have a good weekend!  So sweet.

So I had my OFII stamp, it was Friday and I was itching to have fun!  I grabbed bus number 1 and headed to Futuroscope!  Futuroscope is the biggest theme park in France and the one of a kind in the world.  Instead of massive roller coaster rides it focuses on animation, technology, cinematography and every other visual art you can think of! 

Futuroscope is broken down by buildings. 

The first one I came to was called The Magic Carpet.  This building houses the attraction called “Travellers by air and by sea”.  This ride/show uses two different IMAX screens.  One of them is on the floor and the other in front of you.  It’s also in 3D so the images of the birds and ocean animals seem to fly right by you or leap up from underneath you!  I didn’t get to go to this show because I ran outta time, but it’s on my short list of places to revisit.  At night The Magic Carpet lit up!  It was so pretty I had to take another picture.

My next stop was to visit the attraction “The Future is Wild” in the building that shares the same name.  The Futuroscope website describes it as an upside down ball cap.  I call it the space ship! 

This is the one attraction I really wanted to see.  But first I had to get there.  On my short walk over I saw a little rest area that had koi fish.  So I took a detour.  I rested with the koi for a bit then walk through the glass maze on top of the water and marveled at the various mini mazes that were created out of baby plants!  The picture makes the area look big but it would have been a baby's maze.  My shoes wouldn’t have fit on the mini-path.

Then I got to The Future is Wild building.  This is the attraction people around Poitiers talk about (the older ones that is.  The younger talk about Arthur, I’ll get to him later.) .  What you do is sit in a car that has four seats.  Then you are told you are on a safari in the future.  You have special goggles to look though and a special hand bracelet.  The goggles let you see the animals of the future while the hand bracelet lets you interact with them!  It was so neat. 

They showed animals on land and in the sea and even showed what weird creature man would evolve into!  It’s a weird look brain with octopus arms.  Hahaha.  After the safari you go into a little room where the future ‘artifacts’ are kept.  They had all these animals they created some came complete with the future fossils!  It was wonderful.  I can’t wait for the US to get some of this stuff!

The next place I ran off to was called Dynamic Vienna.  The building was one huge water fall.  Inside house a two part show.  This first show was a slide show off all the things that you could do in the area but it also displayed a sand /laser show.  The sand would fall down from the ceiling and created images and the lasers would create the details.  This was something I’ve never seen before so I thought it was the best thing since sliced cheese.


The second show was a movie with moving seats.  The movie was about a man that was late for his wedding in Poitiers, because he overslept on the train.  So he jumps of the train and has to rely on a mischievous tree elf to get to his wedding on time.  It was funny and fun watching and riding though the movie.

There were these odd looking set of statues at Futuroscope. 

Fly me to the Moon was the next building I came across. 

I wasn’t able to go to this show… this time!  The show was another 3D movie about three flys that go into outer space on the Apollo 11 flight.   I think the building looked cooler than the show would have.  I might be wrong but there were a few things I just had to see before the place closed at 9pm (I arrived at 5pm because it was only 13 euros to get in after 5).

I took the bridge over to the other side of the park and took a picture of the kids play land.  This attraction is called The Tower.  I think they made it to look like the Eiffel but without helmets it looks pretty dangerous for the kids to climb up!

My next stop was to take pictures of the famous building The Kinémax!  It’s no wonder why I like this building so much.  I collect and study semi-precious stones.  This giant crystal like building left me speechless!  I was a little disappointed that the show “Hurricane on the Bayou” wasn’t open but it just gave me time to take more photos of the wonderful, great, grand building. 

Next stop was the Futuroscope Digital City.  This building is odd shaped and I love it!  The attractions inside are all hands on.  When you first walk into the lobby you see a weird wall made out of grass, cubed bean bag chairs, and circular lights. 

To the left is the PlayStation area.  This main attraction wasn’t something I was very interested in.  I am lucky enough to have access to the PlayStation all I want to at home so playing it here wasn’t that big of a deal.  Besides that the majority of the games where racing, sports or shotum-up-bang-bang.

They also had a holographic cube game.  A mirror reflected a hologram that you controlled by moving your hands around a cube.  It was fun to see the little kids trying to manipulate the image in the mirror.  I figured it would be easy so I stood in line (behind a sea of children) and when my turn came up the kids laughed.  I had the next kid in line help me.  Kids pick up things so fast!  I was amazed how the kid could move the image around so quickly while I was getting more than a little aggravated that my little image wouldn’t get out of the cube!  I still think I could have mastered it if I had one at home.  I hope Santa wins the lotto and is reading my blog! 

Another little interactive thing they had was this room.  When you walk past the screen the plants moved.  I think I spent a good bit of time laughing as I jumped ran though the room watching the screen react to me. 

I left the Digital City only to find where the Borg cube had landed! 

 

Resistance is Futile… in Futuroscope!  This building houses an IMAX show called Bruch with Genius that is projected on a circular screen much like you would experience at a star gazing show.  It was closed so I headed over to next “MUST DO” on my Futuroscope list.

I danced with Robots!  Nothing was special about this building.  The ride, however, made up for it.  What you do is sit in the chair on the platform.  You then get strapped in really tightly because the minute the music comes on the robot hand is going to spin you up, down, sideways, left, right, upside-down and every combination of the six!  Every song has a different ‘dance’!  It was so much fun.  The song that I got was “I love Rock and Roll”.  Perfect!

When I left Robot land it was almost time to go.  But first I had to go see the Arthur show.

 Arthur and the Mininoys or in English, Arthur and the invisibles, is the biggest hit for kids 4 to 12 in France at the moment.
Arthur is so popular that he is on his third movie.  I plan to buy the first one to play on the computer as a way to learn the language a bit better.  I’m sure it’ll have English subtitles in case I get lost on the plot.

 So far Wikipedia let me know that the plot is that Arthur visits his grandma, finds out that his grandma is getting evicted from her home if she can’t pay which makes him go look for the treasure his grandpa hid in the backyard.  In the process he gets shrunken (like “Honey I shrunk the kids”) and turned into a Mininoy.  He meets up with a princess and her brother and head off to find the treasure.  There is a sword in the stone deal in the movie and even a guy that looks and acts a good bit about Voldermort.  It looks cute.  Since it is one of the main attractions I had to go see it. 

Let me tell you, Do NOT EVER see a 4D movie if a 3D movies has ever given you a headache or you have even the slightest motion sickness.  After a minute of the wind blowing from fans, the car jerking up and down, and the 3D image on the screen zipped through a very poorly animated tunnel I thought I was going to up chuck!  I will never go to another 4D movie again. 

I did like the walk through the line though.  It was a lot like the Tree of Life at Disney where half the fun is walking through the line looking at everything along the way.

After Arthur I had to leave.  I hopped on the next bus home, collapsing the minute I got there.  I can do that since my bed is three feet from the front door.  Haha.  It was a wonderful day and another place to put on my return list.  My list is getting so long that I might not leave France for quite a while!
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