Welcome To Africa's First 4D Theatre.... I Think.

Ever have one of those moments where you realise you desperately need to get away as a family? We've been feeling like that lately, so we went to Gold Reef City, a theme park in Johannesburg (by the way, five people can get into Gold Reef City for the price of ONE Disneyland ticket. How's that for a bargain?).

Of course, in typical South African fashion, the power went out. In the whole park. So while everyone was waiting for the electricity to come back on, the marimba bands, gum boot dancers and Zulu "warriors" entertained us all. We also got to watch firemen rescue people who were stuck at the top of the "Tower of Terror" ride (which, ironically, lived up to its name).

When the power came back on, we headed over to the 4D theatre, where you watch a movie with 3D glasses, but your seat moves, scents are sprayed, etc., so you feel like you're a part of the movie. Only....

Because the power had gone out, the ride wasn't quite functioning properly. They had one movie playing, but the movement track for the other movie was running the seats, so your seat would do really random things that didn't match what you were watching. We watched a video of the earth spinning, with relaxing classical music playing, but our seats were rumbling up and down (ka-CHUNK, ka-CHUNK, ka-CHUNK). So they stopped the movie, turned the lights on, opened the doors, and let a bunch more people into the theatre (because, if they have to fix it, they can at least let all those in the queue enter, right?)

So the lights dimmed, the movie came on, and the voice said, "Welcome to Africa's first 4D Theatre..." but it was still on the wrong programme, so just as the soothing voice welcomed us, the seats in front of us sprayed water into our faces! The movie was stopped once again, the lights came back on, the doors were opened, more people were let in... and one of the ride operators said, "Don't worry, I'll have it fixed in just a minute!" But right after he said that, everyone's seats suddenly flipped back 90 degrees so that we were all staring at the roof!

Dan and I started laughing so hard that by the by time they got the two programmes synced, it wasn't half as entertaining as when it was malfunctioning, and my stomach hurt so bad from laughing that I could hardly breathe. Score one for power outages!