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Vegas Star Trek Experience Closing Down
Leebert writes "Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton is closing its doors today after the attraction owner and the hotel could not work out a renewed lease deal. In its 10-year tenure, more than 3 million people have visited the Trek themed exhibit. 'Trekkies are incensed. They've scrawled reminiscences about the exhibit on the walls inside, and they're calling Cedar Fair and the hotel to complain. But their online rumor that the space the exhibit occupies will become a theater for pop star Michael Jackson is unfounded, Sternberg said. He said nothing's decided.'"
It was on a par with Star Tours in Disneyland--better because of the costumed actors as part of the show. I enjoyed it, took both sets of adult kids to it over the years. My wife would never open her eyes in teh shuttle. "My, God. Open your eyes and experience the thrill!" The costumed Ferengi in the restaurant was great and the props and timeline were top notch. Guess there's no reason to go out of your way over to the Hilton any more. Oh, well.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I realize this might have been a joke, but I've been to both the SF museum in Seattle and the Star Trek Experience in Vegas.
Trust me, the SF museum in Seattle has nothing on the Star Trek Experience. No disrespect to Paul Allen; it's just the magnitude of the two isn't even close.
The Star Trek Experience was absolutely incredible--very well done, terrific actors, great museum, the rides were stellar, and Quark's bar had some kind of fish bowl alcoholic drink with dry ice--all in all, an unforgettable experience. And I say this as someone who was never very interested in Star Trek.
A buddy of mine is a regular there (dating one of the ST:E performers)--it has been in the works for about two years because the place just isn't making money. I gather that its marketing has hugely sucked.
It's too bad. I wanted to see it someday, and was going to go to Vegas next summer. Ah well.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
The drink was called the Warp Core Breach, I think. If I was in Vegas for more than a day or two, I used to try hit that place for lunch. I haven't been there for a while, but even then the whole place was starting to look pretty run down.
Wow, then you've missed out. I've been there a couple times and it was great fun. The experience/ride was cool, but my favorite aspect was just the overall ambiance of the place. It truly was a Disneyland for a trek nerd.
They had a reproduction of Quark's bar where you could order exotic looking (and fairly tasty) food and drink, Klingons and Feringi walking around making comments about typical ST stuff, and all kinds of ST crap to buy. Yeah, all of it was woefully overpriced, but it IS Vegas and much better than spending an hour at a blackjack table.
I still have a couple of tribbles I bought there. Though I'm actually surprised it stayed around so long, it's a shame to see it go... a real shame.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
For those who haven't seen it, it was pretty great. I went on it when it first opened on a company event (General Magic) while at a trade-show and went back on my own a couple more times over the next several years. It went something like this:
1) After you buy your ticket you get in line to get in. The line winds around a kind of museum that goes through the time-line of the Star Trek Universe. It's kinda like reading a big comic book summary of all the different shows and movies.
2) Then you get together for a shuttle simulation ride. But before you can get on the ride, while watching a safety video, you get accidentally beamed aboard the Enterprise (Next Generation vintage).
3) Then you are put on a "real" shuttle and go on a crazy ride involving battle with Klingons before you're brought back to your own time through a wormhole or whatnot.
4) After the ride you can go hang out and Quark's bar and stuff like that. At the bar there's usually at least one Klingon in character with a working knowledge of Klingon (at least the three or four things I'm geeky-enough to know). I hear more recently that there was a Borg-related ride added on as well.
Wikipedia has all the details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Experience
Anyway, it wasn't geek nirvana but it was kinda close. I can only hope that the Genesis Planet that is Vegas produces a new better one someday...
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
There was another, similar drink called the Borg Sphere as well.
I was going to try one of them a couple weeks ago, but they actually closed at 1 in the morning even though the place was still packed. (Sony's Fan Faire was held in the same hotel, which contributed quite a bit to the place being full that night.)
You can see the menu for Quark's here (as a PDF):
http://www.startrekexp.com/pdf/quarks_menu.pdf
I've been there twice as well. I very much enjoyed both rides, and hanging around in Quarks bar was fun. The production values of the entire place are top notch.
One of the best parts was the backstage tour. It lasted well over an hour, you got to meet the cast members, and there was lot's of interesting trivia. We got to explore a scale replica of the Enterprise bridge for as long as we wanted to.
Vonnegut was right: Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."
Been to Vegas, but didnt know this existed till recently... I've been too busy with my own Star Trek Experience helping make this... Star Trek New Voyages
But, as for longest running franchise, I guess you aren't including Paramount? Dunno... I wonder if some of the original Trek based franchises from the early days are still around? And possibly Pocket Books' Trek franchise predates it.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
I was there in January during CES. I found it a little overpriced, however it was pretty fun. I thought that the Borg experience where you actually take part in a pre-scripted adventure was the most entertaining of the two. The transporter effect on the Klingon adventure was pretty interesting.
I agree with others that Quark's bar was pretty good. The drinks were good, and the food was actually good (and not too expensive, given that it was Vegas). Fun atmosphere. Maybe they should just move Quark's somewhere else. It would probably still be popular.
That said, it did have some rough edges on it. You could start to get the feel of things being a bit run-down and in need of some updating (older, burned-in computer monitors set in the display screens, etc). The IMAX films were getting pretty scratched up and were in bad shape - they really needed some crisp new prints.
Could it still be successful as a Vegas attraction? I dunno - it's been quite some time since TNG, and until the Trek franchise is re-invigorated, existing fans probably wouldn't have been quite as interested.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle