I should make it clear that I'm not one of those people who dress up in “Spock ears” and goes to conventions. I do however have the titles of all 79 original episodes from the '60’s committed to memory, which probably puts me a little farther up the Star Trek geek ladder than I care to admit.
We arrived at the attraction to find ourselves on the "Promenade of Deep Space 9," which in reality was the shopping and restaurant area. Since Vicky has something of a weak constitution when it comes to roller coaster type rides, she intended to sit this one out. I settled her in Quark's Bar to sample the intergalactic food and drink while I went off to buy my ticket and ride the simulator. It turned out that "intergalactic" food and drink consisted of Quark Burgers and fries with Romulan Ale (which was probably light beer with blue food coloring).
I discovered to my shock that the price of admission was $15. This struck me (at the time) as an outrageous amount of money to pay for a five-minute simulator ride; but we'd come this far now. I bought my ticket, and entered through a well decorated pre-show area that featured all sorts of large models and props from the Star Trek television shows and movies. The next part of the attraction was a long, walk-through museum, full of artifacts and costumes.
I was carrying my video camera in case there was anything of interest that I wanted to tape. Warning signs were posted all around saying that videotaping was OK in the museum area, but would not be allowed after entering the simulator portion of the attraction. The museum was huge and arranged as if it were an actual historical repository of items from the Star Trek universe. This was already taking much longer than I had expected, and I was mindful of the fact that Vicky was still waiting in the bar. Consequently, I hurried through most of the museum that displayed items from the more recent years of Star Trek..
Eventually visitors came to a turnstile that admitted them to the simulator waiting area. Here, a security guard gave stern warnings regarding the prohibition on videotaping and photographing anything beyond that point. I turned off my camera, hung it over my shoulder, and followed directions regarding where to line up in preparation for the simulator ride.
The waiting area for the simulator was exactly like those I'd seen before in Disneyland: a small waiting room with yellow lines painted on the floor to indicate where people should form rows in front of each of the several doors that would admit riders to the simulator. Also, just like Disneyland, television screens were arranged above each door which we were told to watch for important safety information. Soon the usual safety video started to play, which stressed the importance of properly fastening your seat belts and warned those with heart, stroke, or back problems to reconsider.
Part way through the safety video, the image became faulty and the video stopped. The two staff members present said there was probably a technical difficulty, and they hoped the delay would not be too long. The employees were clearly uncomfortable, and did their best to kill time by asking where people were from, and by telling a few jokes. Shortly, a man wearing a headset and looking like a member of the technical staff poked his head out of a door adjacent to the waiting area to tell us they needed to reset the simulator. He said that they would unload the people currently on the ride and try to get our group aboard. There were groans from some of the less patient among us, and someone even ventured to say this was a rip-off.
By this time, Vicky had already been waiting quite a while. I resolved to take a deep breath and tough it out, but I was hoping that the simulator ride would be over soon. After a few minutes, the safety video began to play again, and we all dutifully watched the monitors once more. However, once again the video faltered, and one of the staff members said, "Not again" in a dejected tone, as if this was an all too common occurrence.
This time though -- something entirely different happened...
The lights went out, a powerful blast of wind blew through the waiting area, and then bright lights flashed all around us. There was a moment of complete darkness, and then to my amazement, the lights came on to reveal that we were no longer in the simulator waiting area. We were instead standing on the transporter platform of the Star Ship Enterprise. The doors of the simulator, the TV monitors, the very walls around us, and even the ceiling, had vanished. The transporter operator, an actor in a Star Trek uniform, suggested that we all remain calm and informed us that we had been brought to the 24th century through some type of time travel. Another crewman appeared and asked that we follow him to the bridge, so that we could be told of the strange circumstances surrounding our presence in the future.
Our group stepped off the transporter platform and followed the crewman out into the corridor. This was no cheap operation; but a highly sophisticated "set" of the sort used on movie sound stages. Even more sophisticated really, because all the walls and ceilings were complete, creating the illusion that we were actually on board the Enterprise. Lighting effects were everywhere, klaxons blared, and actors and actresses in Star Trek uniforms bustled through the hallways, clearly in the throes of a crisis. There were no more groans, or suggestions that this was not what it had been cracked-up to be.
Realizing now that this attraction was far greater in scope than I had originally believed, I was wishing wholeheartedly that Vicky had come along to see all of this. So, despite all the warnings, I cradled my video camera under my left arm in what I hoped was an inconspicuous fashion, and turned it on...
This turned out to be a grave mistake.
After a short walk down the corridor, we were herded into a "turbo-lift," or elevator, and taken to the bridge. As I stepped onto the bridge, one of the actors dressed as an Enterprise crewman spoke to me as I walked past him. He told me that if I didn't turn off my camera immediately, it would be confiscated. His demeanor was so stern that I decided to take him seriously and did as I was told.
Actor Jonathan Frakes, appearing on a screen in the role of Commander Riker, informed our group that one of us was an ancestor of Capt. Jean Luc Picard. He explained that we had been brought here to protect this person from an evil Klingon commander, who was bent on destroying Capt. Picard by killing his ancestor. We were further informed that our group must get to the shuttle-bay immediately, so that we could board a shuttlecraft and escape the Klingon attack, thereby saving the day.
We walked through more spectacular sets on the way to the shuttle-bay where we took our position preparing to board the real simulator. Once again, a staff member appeared and spoke to me, reminding me not to videotape anything else. By this time I was realizing that my infraction was being taken very seriously. Eventually we were allowed to board the simulator after what seemed like an extraordinarily long delay. I suspected that I might have been at the root of this delay, and as we sat waiting for the simulator ride to begin, I thought that I probably wouldn't be getting out of this easily.
Finally, the simulator started and took us on the sort of spectacular roller-coaster type ride that I had experienced elsewhere. The simulator dove and turned to escape the attacking Klingon vessel, and finally flew through a "worm-hole," to emerge above present day Las Vegas for a wild chase through a night sky filled with hotel towers and bright lights. Ultimately, the Enterprise arrived at the last minute to destroy the Klingon vessel and save the shuttlecraft and its passengers, including the unknown ancestor of Capt. Picard.
When the simulator came to a halt, and the doors opened, we saw not the interior of the Enterprise where we had boarded, but the basement storage area of the present-day Hilton hotel. Actors, posing as confused cleaning staff, asked us what we were doing there, and suggested that we move along quickly as we weren't allowed in this area. As I stepped from the simulator with the rest of the people, hoping that I might sneak out unnoticed, I saw two armed security guards waiting for me. Now I was certain this wasn't going to end well.
They approached and asked me to step aside so they could have a word with me about my photographic activities. Realizing they were not treating this lightly, I tried to be as jovial as possible while confessing that I had in fact attempted to videotape some of the attraction. I told the security guards I had only videotaped for a few seconds before being caught by the man on the bridge. They demanded to see the videotape, and that I erase it immediately. Under the circumstances, I was happy to oblige; but there was a small problem with that...
My video camera had an automatic lens-cover, sort of a flat sliding door with a complicated mechanism. It had been acting up through the whole trip, refusing to open when I needed to videotape something. Naturally it chose this particular moment to die completely. This left me fumbling ineffectively with the switch on the camera, getting more panic-stricken by the minute. The more I fiddled with the camera, the more it must have appeared to the guards that I was trying to avoid erasing the tape. In my nervousness, I made some smart remark about ending up in a shallow grave in the desert, which they didn't think was very funny at all. Finally, I was able to get the camera working so that I could tape over the offending segment.
By now the two guards had relaxed a bit, having no doubt decided that I was a harmless tourist, so I suggested that since I had to tape something, I might as well tape them. As I aimed the camera at the younger of the two guards and started recording, I joked that they probably did this a lot, to which the guard replied; "Yeah, but at least you speak English." I then suggested that Paramount (the producers of the attraction) really played hardball, and that this sort of thing didn't happen at Disneyland. The older guard replied, "We don't like to give our stuff away." As I swung the camera towards him, he clearly thought better of this whole, videotaping the guards idea, and turned his face away so as to be less recognizable.
After running the camera long enough to assure that I had taped over the section in question, I rewound the tape and played it for the guards so that they could see that no contraband images remained. Satisfied that I had escaped with no sensitive state secrets, they let me go.
Let's pause for a moment to remember Vicky sitting upstairs waiting for me. I'd been gone for about an hour and a half now, and for the last 30 minutes or so there had been a disturbing amount of activity involving security guards hustling to and fro. Her situation reminds me of an episode of “The Simpsons,” in which Bart is leading an uprising at Kamp Krusty. His father Homer is watching a television news report about the revolt and starts chanting to himself, "Please don't let it be the boy, please don't let it be the boy." Immediately, the television displays an image of Bart leading the revolutionaries, prompting a "Doh!" from Homer. I imagined my wife, her Quark Burger and Romulan Ale long forgotten, watching security guards rush about and thinking to herself, "Please don't let it be him, please don't let it be him."
We'll return now to the basement where the security guards have just let me go. I started towards the elevator, and to my horror, I saw that they had kept the entire group waiting in the elevator while I joked with the security guards and struggled to comply with their demands. This had been no short span of time. I would have given anything to say, "You folks just go on ahead, I'll catch the next elevator.” But this was not to be, and I had to get into that tightly packed space, full of very angry people, for what was the longest elevator ride of my life.
As I stepped off the elevator onto the Promenade, I saw Vicky approaching me with a questioning look on her face. I answered this by saying, "We have to leave...Now." Standing nearby was a security guard, who spoke into the microphone at his shoulder as we passed by, as if reporting our whereabouts. As we headed towards the exit, I answered Vicky's questions about what was going on with, "I'll tell you later." We passed yet another security guard in the hallway, and a third at the exit doors to the parking lot. Each spoke into their microphone as we passed, no doubt confirming that we were leaving the premises immediately. I was left with no doubt about their feelings toward me.
I was excited after what had happened, and spilled my story out to Vicky as we drove to a nearby restaurant. We found a table, ordered drinks and food, and she told me of her efforts to determine my whereabouts when it seemed the ride was taking too long. The guards Vicky had spoken to denied there were any irregularities. This response really had her concerned, and she wondered if I was indeed headed for a “shallow grave in the desert.” Soon our meals arrived, and we ate two delicious grilled steaks washed down with cold beer. I finally relaxed, as Vicky shook her head at my latest run-in with authority; my own version of the Star Trek Experience.
Fox & Vicky
Post Script: For those of you that are interested, here's a link to a grainy old-style video of the Star Trek Experience from YouTube that was shot by someone better at escaping detection than I was. The attraction is now shuttered, but this will give you some idea of what it looked like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SziLQXNWCbQ
