Review of The Marvel Experience
Overall I am glad I went and my kids were glad they were taken. However I highly doubt I will return next year if it comes back to town. The cost is too high for what you receive and the lines are to long for what you are waiting for.
With the ticket cost starting at
$27.50, there is not nearly enough to do. Add that to the $10 dollars
they charge for parking, which was an unnecessary gouge. The value of
this event is really more of a $15-20 dollar entry fee with free
parking.
I do not know exactly how many people
are let in every half hour, from what I saw, I guess it is about 50
that entered with my group. I suggest buying tickets on line to
reserve your preferred entry time. As we arrived to the gate at 1100
hours and even though they let another group in every 30 minutes
could not get tickets until 1630 hours.
They also were out of the RFD tracking
bracelets; however whether you have one or not, did not seem to make
any difference except your scores can be pulled up online after the
event. The way the website made me think was the tracking would make
you a part of the show, it does not.
First you are let into a tent where
they have screens briefing you on each hero’s origin story: there
is a green screen photo op as well. You then receive a brief from
Nick Fury on why you are being recruited and what your mission is.
They let you into this room approx 10-15 minutes before your ticket
time.
At the time of your “showing” for
your tickets you are then let into another room where you assist in
assembling an Adaptoid and have the opportunity to review museum
style displays of the hero’s and villain’s weapons. This is
basically another holding area. After you have spent a few minutes
here you enter the area where the interactive “training” begins.
The Hulk Smash and Iron Man Flight
Simulator are basically Xbox Kinect games. For these two you can
expect about a 30 minute line for what seemed like a 1 minute
experience.
There was no line for the “calling a
superhero to duty” activity. This is also basically a Kinect games
where you pose like the hero you want to pull up on the screen to
stand next to you for a quick photo op.
The Photon Blaster training allows 24
participants in at a time, which is the main issue I found with this
training exercise. This is basically a laser shooting gallery. The
issue I found was that with 24 people in there who all had little
tiny circles with their number on the screen you could not see where
your number was to tell how far off the target you were. So you
basically just pint and pull the trigger with no real idea what you
are hitting if anything and not really able to compensate because you
cannot see your dot amongst the 23 others. The line for this was
approx 45 minutes for what seemed like a 2 minute experience.
The Spider-Man Climbing wall and the
Black Widow Agility Laser Maze are both over an hour wait. The
Spider-Man Climbing wall has a 50lbs weight minimum and so smaller
kids are not heavy enough to move the vertical treadmill. The wall is
also only about 10 feet tall so if you are a full grown adult,
especially above average height this rock wall limits you on foot and
hand placement because you pretty much cover the spread of the wall.
Black Widow’s Agility Laser Maze was
in my opinion the best training activity there. You enter a room and
like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment maneuver your body through a
room of lasers. It is like playing Twister, as you circumvent the
alarm and try to reach the check point without breaking a laser and
“setting off an alarm”. You are scored on time and for every
Laser you break you receive a time penalty. With an hour wait though
you do not really want to have a second try.
In the training area there is also a
“café” basically hot dogs, chips, chili and mac n cheese. It is
$7 dollars for a decent tasting hot dog with a bag of potato chips.
For another $2 you can add mac n cheese or chili to the hotdog. I do
not usually purchase food at these events but as we had been inside
for 3 hours already and about 1/3 of the way through the training
activities, the kids needed food and drink. $3.50 for a bottle of
water is a needless gouge they can sell them for $2 and still more
than triple their cost. Also the bottles they gave us were frozen so
we could not even drink them.
After you are done with all the
training activities (or before if you are tired of waiting in lines)
you move through the Quinjet into a 3-D movie dome. The movie was not
bad; you are standing and have to turn in circles to follow the
action. It could have been longer felt like maybe 3 minutes. If you
get motion sickness you might have a little issue with the hyper
reality wreaking havoc on your senses.
Then you move into the 4-D ride, there
is a little bit of a neat surprise here. This also was not bad but
could be improved upon with making it a little longer and making the
movie aspect 3-D.
All in all what should have taken about
90 minutes to be a worthwhile experience took us 6 hours; 4 extra hours of
waiting in lines that needs resolved. They need to figure out how to
shorten the lines, either by setting up more stations or by letting
fewer people in at a time and only letting more in as more leave. The
second solution however just means you would wait at the gate in line
instead of inside in a line.
After the 4-D ride you exit through a
gift shop. You expect gift shops to be overpriced, so no real
complaint there. They offer a 3D printed statue of you with your
favorite hero, kind of neat souvenir. Overall the gift shop was sad;
for being a Marvel event you would expect more figures and maybe even
comic books available. It basically had posters, hats and shirts.
Like I said at the beginning, I am glad
I went. However, I will not return without significant changes in
cost and entertainment value as well as a solution for the
excessively long lines.
Suggestions to improve the Marvel HyperReality Experience:
- They should sell less tickets per show, to cut down on lines.
- Tickets should cost about half for what is offered.
- They should also have more training stations so more people can participate at once, cutting down on lines.
- They should have more entertainment or a movie on the dome in the training area to keep you occupied while in line.
- The 4-d ride should have a 3-D movie, not a 2-D movie.
- Should not charge for parking.
- More, More, More in the gift shop.
- Cheaper, unfrozen bottles of water or available drinking fountains.
The tour will stop at 14 + cities over 2015
Dallas , TX - January 15th - February 1st 2015
Del Mar, CA - February 7th - February 22nd 2015
San Francisco, CA - February 27th - March 22nd
Del Mar, CA - February 7th - February 22nd 2015
San Francisco, CA - February 27th - March 22nd
