Port of Discovery
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Anyway, Philip’s assessment of the games was that they’re passable but have rather basic animation and rudimentary mapping which makes them fine for hand held devices but somewhat disappointing for full screen applications. Although, I noticed those space rats in the ship tripped him up more than once, so some skill is involved.
The main focus of the Academy room as you enter is a giant bow of a space galleon, lit with the appearance of solar energy playing across the sails. Very effective. There’s a fun little “walk the plank�? and a climbing wall (scaled down considerably) and ships ladders to climb and a GREAT Bosun’s Chair set up where you hoist yourself up in the air up to a height of 20 feet, ring the bell and then let yourself down. Hands filled with coffee and donuts (and fear of embarrassment over the increasing effects of gravity due in large part to past donuts) prevented us from attempting this, but it looked like lots of fun!
In the room just east of the Space Academy is “Treasure Quest�?, a game played in teams in a darkened room that resembles a holodeck of sorts with circular shuffle board patterns on the floor. The crowds were pouring in the arena to cue up for play and there is a video monitor just outside the room so that you can watch the action in progress.
I yanked Philip away from the video games -- or was he talking to one of the Academy babes in Amelia gear? I can’t remember… anyway, we went back out into the main hall Town Square with all the interactive science and physics exhibits. And there, in true lab rat fashion I tugged on ropes lifting bowling balls to force air into great cones that fired tennis balls up over forty feet in the air (the tent is HUGE, I tell you! It’s wonderful to experience the scale of things at this attraction!) and spun silver ball bearings down black hole vortexes, sent smoke signals into the etherium, watched smoke form twisted helixes in tornado like vacuums and swirled galactic matter about on a spinning plate to create starry patterns of milky pink and purple. Hands on activities like these are perfect for smaller kids and bigger science geeks alike, and laid out with enough space between exhibits to prevent over-crowding and the kind of distracting chaos that can send adults screaming from the tent for their lives. Of course, that’s not to say that there isn’t a place where such activity rules.