Star Trek: The Un-Experience

[mattmn]

One of my biggest regrets of the past decade was not visiting The Star Trek Experience before it closed down at the Las Vegas Hilton. Matt and I watched a behind-the-scenes featurette on the experience last night that dug up a lot of those regrets for me. The mini-documentary/promo piece was 15 minutes long and was the sole feature on the Best

Comments

was pretty cool

[rvrjoe775]

I may have shared this with you already, but my first Vegas trip was for ComDex. By then the show had already outgrown its usefulness but companies still used the event to announce new products, and one ambitious group organized an evening press-only event featuring 30 or so Trek actors in attendance, some of whom had scripted bits to talk up the high-tech aspect of the new thingy.

After the announcement we were given about an hour to wander the Experience bridge set and take photos. I sat in the captain's chair, corrected course at the helm, and just generally breathed it all in. My favorite part of the night was luck of timing, as Kate Mulgrew and I were the last to leave the set and had a nice private conversation on the way to drinks and apps. The next day there was another Trek event at the Hilton with Nimoy and De Lancie reading from Spock vs. Q, so I skipped the show and attended that instead.

[tokenfanboy]

I regret missing that as well. I was pretty dumb of them to close it just before the JJ Abram's movie came out.

Last summer I found a vacation video from the Star Trek attraction they used to have at Universal Studios Hollywood. People got to act out scenes and they were spliced together with other footage to make a mini-film with Kirk. I think we only saw it the one trip in '89.

[hellziggy]

It was pretty cool. Hellbob & I went way back in '02 when there was just one "ride" (Walk through w/actors, fake transporter, and 3D movie) and we thought it was cool. Then I was back in Vegas in Aug '08 for the New Media Expo & we spent a fair amount of time hanging at the Hilton & in Quarks because the Convention Center is right next door. I probably wouldn't have dropped the $ to do the rides (The one I'd already seen/done plus one that was new since my first visit) but my friend scubagrrl had never done them and we knew it was just weeks from closing at that point.
It was a cool thing. It's too bad Vegas feels the need to demolish or remodel anything that's been there for more than a few years.
If scubagrrl & I hadn't already gone our first day there, we would have ended up doing the Star Trek Experience with Jonathan Coulton, because we were hanging in the bar with him right before he went. LOL. Talk about making a geek experience even geekier. :)