Donna and I recently capped off a whirlwind week of travel,
to New York City and Washington, D.C., by spending a few nights in Las Vegas to
celebrate our wedding anniversary and to check out the re-created The Wizard
of Oz, adapted from the original 1939 film for the amazing Sphere. We also
visited Hoover Dam, an engineering marvel that everyone should see.
The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere
We had wanted to see the Sphere version of The Wizard of
Oz since it debuted last August. Our son and his wife saw it a few months
ago and confirmed it was worth the trip and the hefty admission price. So we
decided to make a trip west to see for ourselves.
The new Wizard of Oz blew our minds like the original
version must have done in its day. We climbed up, up, up to our seats very high
inside the Sphere. Far in front of us appeared to be a traditional rectangular movie
screen curtain. A live orchestra to supplement the original movie’s soundtrack was
tuning up out of view.
Finally, the lights went down, the digital “curtain” opened
and the screen displayed the familiar old-time MGM logo (although with the
cowardly lion replacing the original roaring version), then the familiar
scripted “The Wizard of Oz” introduction. Then WHAM! the opening sepia-tinted farm
scene explodes onto the entire spherical interior, enveloping the audience, the
traditional screen illusion its casualty. The movie is all around you, and the often-changing
camera angles are a little disorienting at first.
Like a Disney World ride, the venue immerses you into the
experience with integrated physical aspects – paper leaves are shot out as the screen
shows the enormous tornado ripping up the landscape (truly terrifying), foam
apples are dropped from the ceiling when the apple tree starts throwing apple
at Dorothy and her companions. The seats rumble and air whooshes around your
ankles to enhance the effect on the screen.
But the computer-generated and artificial-intelligence
graphics are the real stars. In many cases, production people had to re-create
entirely new scenes frame by frame, and in other cases extrapolate what they
thought would be visible in a much larger point of view: In the original, a
scene might show a small portion of a room in the farmhouse or the Witch’s
castle; to fill acres of extra screen, they had to imagine what the rest of
that room would look like. Munchkin Land, re-imagined and expanded, is like
something Salvadore Dali might have painted while on LSD.
The show cuts a few scenes from the original and is only an
hour and fifteen minutes long. But if you have the opportunity to see it, by
all means do. It’s the most entertaining movie experience I’ve ever had.
Hoover Dam
On our last day in Vegas, we rented a pickup truck and drove
about 45 minutes through the Mojave Desert to the dam. After passing through a
security checkpoint, we drove across the top of the dam and parked, then walked
back across the dam to the visitor center.
Hoover Dam, like the original The Wizard of Oz, is a product
of the 1930s, a decade more remembered for the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl,
and the rise of Hitler and fascism.
We took a guided tour of the power plant inside the dam. After a 10-minute video that provided basic information about the dam’s construction, we took an elevator down 500 feet into the bowels of the structure and walked through one of the original massive tunnels that once carried the Colorado River water away from the building site.
We saw the tops of about half of the
gigantic turbine generators, which are so well maintained they look like they
had been installed yesterday, and other massive things. After the tour, a
self-guided exhibit gives you a taste of what life was like for the tens of
thousands of desperate Depression Era workers who were drawn to dangerous jobs
with steady pay.
It’s hard to describe the scale of the dam and the audaciousness of the project. Imagine concocting a plan to get agreement from the federal government and a half-dozen states to divert the mighty Colorado River away from its existing path, then build a 726-foot-tall dam that’s 660-feet thick at its base.
Oh, and inside the structure put 17 turbines that can produce enough power – about 4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually – to serve millions of customers, and then use the water from the resultant Lake Mead to provide irrigation and drinking water to millions. Now imagine that project being completed in a mere six years (two years ahead of schedule), without the benefit of computers and today’s giant excavation equipment.
Seeing Hoover Dam made us appreciate our country’s ability to think boldly and achieve great things when our leaders can share a vision that unites its people to support a common goal.
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