We went to Disneyland a few weeks ago and stood in line together for the 3-D movie, “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.” I promised my son there was nothing in there that could hurt him when we walked in to sit down, because he was afraid of the dark and unfamiliar theater.
When we sat down, I noticed some round, metal grids on both sides of every chair in front of us… and I figured they must just be little surround sound speakers. Even I was curious about what to expect before the movie began.
An announcer asked everyone to put on the 3-D glasses and the movie made everyone feel as if we had been shrunken along with the whole audience. The problem was that Thomas was starting to believe that what he saw through those glasses was real, instead of believing what I had told him: that it was just a movie, and that nothing would hurt him. But as soon as the movie began, he was immersed in the illusion and started to believe he was really in danger, even though I assured him there was nothing to worry about.
Then, in the middle of the movie, they let out hundreds of rats and mice into the audience… Just a visual effect, right? That’s what I thought until I actually felt them brushing past my legs! That’s what surprised me most… I could feel those mice from the movie. I could feel the wet spray when the giant dog sneezed at the audience. The unpredictable effects were pretty convincing, which I realized even more so when I looked over at my son, legs up, cringing in his seat…
Those little metal grids weren’t surround sound speakers at all. They were pressurized air nozzles that blew on your legs to make you feel the
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