Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo

Do you ever curse the day the internet was invented?

The other day I found myself doing just that: damning the US paranoia of Soviet supremacy that led to the birth of DARPA… which spawned ARPANet, which in turn led to a global computer network that evolved into the internet we know and love (mostly) today.

The reason for my discontent? I was standing in a queue outside Futuroscope, waiting patiently to pay for the privilege of experiencing my idea of hell on earth. Why? Because the children had seen the website before we left home and thought it looked “cool”. When, by sheer coincidence, we ended up staying in accommodation nearby, that was it, my fate was sealed.

For those of you unfamiliar with Futuroscope, it is a theme park in central France, not far from Poitier, which boasts myriad attractions based largely around 3D immersive cinematography. That is to say that, unlike most other theme parks I’ve been to, most of the rides here are not actually rides at all. It tends to go something like this. you sit down in a seat and watch a film playing on a very big screen. Sometimes the seats throw you around in time with the on-screen action, sometimes you have to wear silly goggles, but basically it’s cinema… and generally bad cinema at that.

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