Imagination!
presented by Kodak -- Guests on Journey Into Your Imagination expand their
own imaginations in a ride-through adventure of sights, sounds and senses. Rooms
turn upside down and normal turns inside out as guests are challenged to
increase their I.Q. -- Imagination Quotient. Imaginations run wild in the latest mind-boggling Epcot adventure, Imagination!
presented by Kodak. The newest Future World pavilion invites Walt Disney World
guests of all ages to expand their own imaginations in a surprise-filled
experience of sights, sounds and senses.
The pavilion features two new attractions -- the ride-through adventure
Journey Into Your Imagination and an interactive playground, ImageWorks -
The Kodak "What If?" Labs.
Expanding on the success of its 3-D sensation, "Honey, I Shrunk the
Audience," the new ride-through adventure Journey Into Your Imagination
is a "sense-sational" journey that explores the effects that sound, color,
illusions, changing dimensions and gravity have on guests’ "I.Q." (Imagination
Quotient).
Journey Into Your Imagination takes guests on a tour of the
Imagination Institute, where nothing is like it appears. Rooms turn upside down
and normal turns inside out as guests’ tour vehicles wind through different
laboratories. Touring the Imagination Institute’s Open House (hosted by Dr. Nigel Channing
of "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience" fame), guests see a variety of experiments in
creativity designed to stretch their imaginations.
Among the highlights:
- Shuttling into the Sound Lab, guests enter an anechoic chamber which seals
out all sound of the outside world. Using sound alone in the pitch-dark chamber,
the experiment places guests in a variety of atmospheres and settings, from a
driving rain to a thundering train.
- The Illusion Lab features a quick-changing series of wizardly special
effects -- a bird cage with a giant butterfly that appears and disappears and an
illusionary fish that playfully swims outside the borders of its tank.
- In Color Lab, guests create their
own effects by using sound to generate
changing colors on a huge wall of tints and hues -- pale blues and aqua tones
for quiet voices, oranges and red splashes for cheers of delight.
- In the darkened Dimension Lab, guests discover a fiber-optic sky twinkling
above, creating shifting patterns that seem to change at every movement.
- Finally, the world is turned upside down in the Gravity Lab, a series of
topsy-turvy scenes where guests are challenged to answer, "Which way is up?" A
pickup truck is parked comfortably overhead in a garage, water drops fall upward
in the kitchen and fireplace flames burn upside down in this heels-over-head
home.
Following their sensory adventure on Journey Into Your Imagination,
guests to the Imagination! pavilion are invited to enjoy "ImageWorks" -- an
interactive high-tech playground featuring hands-on activities that spark
imaginative fun and showcase the latest in imaging technology from Kodak.
Talk about audience reaction! They are screaming, laughing, applauding and
literally jumping out of their seats. They are Walt Disney World guests at
"Honey, I Shrunk The Audience," in Epcot's Imagination! pavilion, presented by
Kodak.
"Incredible!" is the nervous gasp heard repeatedly throughout the
theater.
"I've never seen any audience react with such spontaneous excitement to any
Disney show," says veteran Disney Imagineer/executive show producer Rick
Rothschild.
Nothing you hear about the attraction can prepare you for the visual
surprises, sensory shocks and physical effects that literally jump off the
screen and rock the theater during the 20-minute, 3-D misadventure with zany
scientist Professor Wayne Szalinski.
Guests dodge flying objects, brace against their seat backs and even jam
their knees up under their chins.
The 570-person audience is "reduced" to the size of a bread box, surprised by
a herd of scurrying white-mice clones, caught in a shower of breaking glass,
jarred by giant tennis shoes and shaken by the 90-decibel "WOOF" of a
gargantuan dog -- among many surprises.
The babble of voices leaving the theater attests the success of the
computer-enhanced 3-D effects, sophisticated in-theater technology and some
pretty weird "sneaky tricks."
"Unbelievable"... "Great"... "Fun"... "Cool"... "Did you see ----?"... "Oh,
My!" were what they said.
Based on two enormously popular Walt Disney Pictures -- "Honey, I Shrunk The
Kids" and "Honey, I Blew Up The Kid" -- the performance "on stage" at the
Imagination Institute Auditorium features the original Szalinski film family --
the invention-happy professor, his trusting wife, Diane, their sons, Nick and
Adam, and their frisky dog, Quark.
They are discovered "on stage" at the "Imagination Institute" where Professor
Szalinski is to receive an "Inventor of the Year" award and demonstrate his
Dimensional Duplicator and Incredible Shrinking Machine.
Guests don special 3-D "safety goggles" to protect them just in case the
demonstrations go awry -- which, of course, they are bound to do, given
Professor Szalinski's past record.
Film producer Tom Fitzgerald says the new show is much more than a 3-D movie.
"It's a theatrical experience which takes advantage of the audience's own
imagination and trusting eyes to make them believe and become an interactive
part of Szalinski's demonstration."
The outcome of the story is being kept quiet in the spirit of the film's
premise as a top-secret experiment. How the audience escapes from being shrunk
to Lilliputian proportions rests in the hands of Professor Szalinski and the
creative imagination of the startled participants.
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