Star Wars in Portland
Here are the promised pics, and my review of the exhibit.... a few more pics at my regular blog.
As mentioned yesterday, we paid to do the Millenium Falcon simulation. At $5 entry fee + $2 handling per ticket, I thought it was a bit steep, but based on previous experiences with simulators, I figured the kids would enjoy it and get a bit from it. After more tha 40 minutes waiting in line (nothing to sit on until you got right up to the entrance), on concrete, we finally got to go in. For a five-minute show where the concept was good but the four seats (two of which had only partial views) merely shook occasionally to make it seem as if something were happening. Ideally, a person would take away from this the idea that the universe is SO BIG and SO AMAZING that real-life scientists are actually working on the theory and practical matters that will someday make journeys to other star systems and galaxies possible.
But the discomfort in my back and legs, and the irritability of the long wait, made the partial view and the low-tech simulation very much not worth the money. Our younger child think he would have paid at most $2 to see this, and I agree. Definitely NOT worth even the $5 if we had picked up tickets earlier in the day (and all those tickets had sold out by the time we arrived). I might be more charitable toward this part of the exhibit if they had done the timed entry differently and if they had provided more seating in the waiting line. Rather than have all the tickets for the hour start at the same time, simply making them for quarter-hour intervals would have allowed people to explore other parts of the museum while waiting. Granted, we did try to let the kids explore around the area, but because we didn't know how many people were being let in at a time nor how long it lasted, it was hard to judge how long and far away to let them go.
That was a major disappointment.
So. The main exhibit, with actual maquettes and models and costumes from the movies, was excellent. There was enough space for every person to spread out and look at things without getting in the way. In addition, there were kid-friendly activities and explanations scattered around the entire two-story space. The entrance, upstairs, focused on motion and prosthetics, including a really well-thought out mag-lev experiment using legos and magnets over tracks that ran through electromagnetic loops. There was an awesome-cool game with three stations, where moving cards on a table generated hologram-type images on a computer screen. The object of the games was to simulate life on Tattooine.
Downstairs, the emphasis was on robotics and life on other planets. In addition to the models and costumes, there were demonstrations of real-life robots, including a very nice 15-minute presentation (complete with some real robots and a few robotic characters) in a small theater set up at one end of the room. There was a trivia game about star wars in one area, the actual real-life landspeeder from Episode 4, and a very interesting hands-on demonstration on how difficult it is to program a robot for walking motion.
If we lived closer, I would go see the star wars exhibit again, in the middle of a week day. It was definitely interesting, and worth the price. In the interest of full disclosure, I calculated that if we bought a family membership to OMSI, then $3 entry fee was reasonable. Our other alternative was to pay $17 x 3 + $15 (for the younger child) entry fee. I don't know that it would be worth going twice if I had to pay that amount more than once.
Summary: If the Star Wars exhibit (currently at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) comes close enough to your location for you to see it, especially if you are a fan, go! Lots of cool things to see and do. Don't waste your money or time on the Millenium Falcon simulator.
As mentioned yesterday, we paid to do the Millenium Falcon simulation. At $5 entry fee + $2 handling per ticket, I thought it was a bit steep, but based on previous experiences with simulators, I figured the kids would enjoy it and get a bit from it. After more tha 40 minutes waiting in line (nothing to sit on until you got right up to the entrance), on concrete, we finally got to go in. For a five-minute show where the concept was good but the four seats (two of which had only partial views) merely shook occasionally to make it seem as if something were happening. Ideally, a person would take away from this the idea that the universe is SO BIG and SO AMAZING that real-life scientists are actually working on the theory and practical matters that will someday make journeys to other star systems and galaxies possible.
But the discomfort in my back and legs, and the irritability of the long wait, made the partial view and the low-tech simulation very much not worth the money. Our younger child think he would have paid at most $2 to see this, and I agree. Definitely NOT worth even the $5 if we had picked up tickets earlier in the day (and all those tickets had sold out by the time we arrived). I might be more charitable toward this part of the exhibit if they had done the timed entry differently and if they had provided more seating in the waiting line. Rather than have all the tickets for the hour start at the same time, simply making them for quarter-hour intervals would have allowed people to explore other parts of the museum while waiting. Granted, we did try to let the kids explore around the area, but because we didn't know how many people were being let in at a time nor how long it lasted, it was hard to judge how long and far away to let them go.
That was a major disappointment.
So. The main exhibit, with actual maquettes and models and costumes from the movies, was excellent. There was enough space for every person to spread out and look at things without getting in the way. In addition, there were kid-friendly activities and explanations scattered around the entire two-story space. The entrance, upstairs, focused on motion and prosthetics, including a really well-thought out mag-lev experiment using legos and magnets over tracks that ran through electromagnetic loops. There was an awesome-cool game with three stations, where moving cards on a table generated hologram-type images on a computer screen. The object of the games was to simulate life on Tattooine.
Downstairs, the emphasis was on robotics and life on other planets. In addition to the models and costumes, there were demonstrations of real-life robots, including a very nice 15-minute presentation (complete with some real robots and a few robotic characters) in a small theater set up at one end of the room. There was a trivia game about star wars in one area, the actual real-life landspeeder from Episode 4, and a very interesting hands-on demonstration on how difficult it is to program a robot for walking motion.
If we lived closer, I would go see the star wars exhibit again, in the middle of a week day. It was definitely interesting, and worth the price. In the interest of full disclosure, I calculated that if we bought a family membership to OMSI, then $3 entry fee was reasonable. Our other alternative was to pay $17 x 3 + $15 (for the younger child) entry fee. I don't know that it would be worth going twice if I had to pay that amount more than once.
Summary: If the Star Wars exhibit (currently at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) comes close enough to your location for you to see it, especially if you are a fan, go! Lots of cool things to see and do. Don't waste your money or time on the Millenium Falcon simulator.
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