my latest tweets! 
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.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to a good immersive cinema experience. The 3D stuff works, but is always fuzzy, and makes your eyes hurt. Then there are those huge IMAX type screens, which are just bigger than normal screens… I guess that would be good, if you’re watching something worthwhile.
We started with the headline attraction for 2008. Called “The Future is Wild” it allegedly took you on an amazing virtual-reality safari of the future, giving you a glimpse of life on earth millions of years from now. To be fair to them, they had the virtual bit nailed – when I looked through the special binoculars I could see things that weren’t really there – it was the reality bit they struggled with. The animals of the future were, in a word, rubbish!
And so the day continued.
Next I found myself suspended upside-down by a robotic arm in “Dance with the Robots”, which again left me underwhelmed, and wreaked havoc with my sunburn. But we hadn’t come to Futuroscope for me, so how were the kids getting on?
The girls’ cousins, who live in Tours (about an hour away), were with us for the day, so we had a sixteen-year-old, an eight-year-old, two seven-year-olds and a four-year-old. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, by and large, although the little one wasn’t allowed on any of the simulators (cinemas with moving seats) and some other attractions because of height restrictions, and was none too enamoured by the news. One of the twins also took an instant dislike to anything “scary” – including being thrown around on a simulator which narrowed our options further.
I haven’t said anything very good about Futuroscope yet… but the truth is that it grows on you. Even though the attractions themselves are mediocre at best, and downright terrible at worst, the children were having a good time, and that, after all, was why we were there.
Just spending time together as a family, doing things the children wanted to do and letting them decide was a welcome change from the usual hustle and bustle where parents often dictate the pace. This was their day… and at the end of it, I have to conclude it was one that we all enjoyed.
