Welcome to My World

I had a chance today to experience the “Wonderworks” attraction in Orlando. It was described to me by a friend as one of the best memories from her childhood (with the exception of an unfortunate interaction between her chin, a rock-climbing wall, and gravity), and as we approached the building, constructed to appear completely upside-down, I could see why she liked it.

We had a great time. Overall it was more good than bad; a few nitpicks (mostly the cost of admission; for adults it’s likely not worth it, for a family with kids, it’s worth it, but barely) marred it but it was still a good adventure.

Pros

The building is upside down. They did a great job decorating the outside of the building and the lobby; everything’s upside down and it’s a really cool trick. You walk in and you’re on the ceiling; looking up shows you the floor you’re “supposed” to be walking on.

The “Inversion Tunnel”. Oh wow, I’ve never had an optical illusion so effectively confuse my brain. This is the first thing you encounter after walking through the turnstyle, and it really screws with your equilibrium. The themed idea is to convince you that you’ve been “flipped upside down” to match with the building’s exterior and interior decorations (the whole building’s upside down, remember).

The bed of nails was fun. Hand me a normal bed of nails and tell me to sleep on it. I’ll come back an hour later full of holes, covered in blood, and searching for a tetanus shot. I’ll probably punch you, too, because I’ll be annoyed at all the holes, blood, and pain. I’m not a real fan of shots, either. This thing, though, is the “Americanized”, sanitized version of it (i.e. I can’t hurt myself on it easily even if I don’t know what I’m doing).

You don’t think it’s possible to lay on a bed of nails without lots of pain and leaking bodily fluids, but this thing shows how it works. It’s neat.

Bubbles! Okay, I’m still a kid inside. The bubble exhibits were cool — a couple weren’t filled enough to be workable, but the rest were, and the bubbles were fun

Natural disasters suck. Because this place is generally meant for kids more than adults, the two natural disaster simulations they had — an earthquake simulator and a hurricane simulator — were a bit tame, but they were still pretty accurate. It’s neat to be handed goggles by an attendant before you’re escorted into a wind chamber to have category 4 hurricane winds blown at you. My companion’s poor hair got tossed around a lot by that big fan

Cons

We definitely enjoyed ourselves, and I don’t feel horribly jilted even by the cost of admission, but there were some flaws:

The cost of admission is insane for what the place actually offers. $20 per adult (or children over 13) is simply highway robbery when you really get down to it — what they had was neat, but there wasn’t enough of it to justify the money. We got through it in about an hour, and we interacted with everything they had that was interactive. We had plenty of fun at the (free admission) arcade located above the interactive section.

Several displays weren’t working. One of the bubble making machines (the biggest) wasn’t working, several displays had buttons that weren’t working anymore, one imaging exhibit crashed as we used it, a Windows-based interactive kiosk barfed while someone else used it (amusingly, I was able to fix it by restarting the application, all without any special access or anything more than the trackball and one button (turned out to be the left mouse button)), and the kiosk with the most potential interest for us both (it showed a computer-generated idea of how we’d look after aging thirty years) didn’t actually do anything no matter what inputs we fed it. A quiz machine made us fill out fifteen true-or-false questions only to refuse to light up the results lights.

Bored employees. Okay, yes, I get it — it’s technically a “theme park” and those are expected to be equipped with employees more surly than a tollbooth worker, but c’mon, guys, the kids this place is aimed at haven’t been completely crushed yet. And you work at a place where you can lay on a bed of nails (without hurting yourself) and make yourself sick by walking through a spinning hallway. It could be worse

Pay for parking? Bleh. Las Vegas has spoiled me with its free parking (except in “downtown Vegas,” which would get way more business if it didn’t charge for parking ). I’ve noticed lots of things in Orlando are paid-parking. It should be enough that I’ve driven to your attraction and forked over half a c-note to get into the damned thing. Don’t soak me for an extra five bucks for giving my truck a place to chill out for three hours while we explore your money-making business.

Where’d the rock climbing wall go? I know, I know, the onslaught of absolutely stupid lawsuits made such things vanish into history, but this was the specific attraction my friend was looking forward to reliving most. I’ll admit I was even interested in trying it out. But it wasn’t there anymore. She was quite sad when we reached the end of the “experience” without encountering her former nemesis.

Bottom Line

Yeah, it’s a ripoff of sorts, but it’s a hell of a lot more educational and entertaining for kids (and even for adults) than the theme parks that inhabit the rest of Orlando. It probably doesn’t beat a trip to a local zoo or museum for “raw learning,” but it’s definitely got lots of cool interactive stuff, despite its age.

And the building’s decorations and style (inside and out) is absolutely awesome. That “inversion hallway” — the first thing you’re exposed to when you enter — seriously screws up your head and definitely makes you feel like you’ve been flipped upside down. It’s good stuff.

Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
— Arthur Miller

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