Doctor Who Experience

[Godzilla]

About a month ago, I took a week long vacation with my wife and kids (7 and 5) to London. It was an incredible trip and really something of a dream. As part of the trip we all went to the Doctor Who Experience. It was just phenominal and I'd thought I'd share some pictures in the link below.

The experience is part show, part museum exhibiton. You and your group start off in a room on Starship Earth (from the space whale episode). Suddenly the Doctor (Matt Smith) breaks into the tour broadcast. He's trapped in the Pandorica II (because they hada a spare) and he's sent out a distress signal to Amy Pond. Unfortunately something has gone wrong, and instead of contacting her he's contacted us: a subspecies of humans called "shoppers". We'll have to do and we're off to save the Doctor. At that point you hear the noise of the Tardis landing, a wall shifts, and there's the blue box. The doors open and we're rushed into the Tardis.

Seriously, we walk through the doors into the control room of the Tardis. It wasn't as big as the set on the show, but it was the control room and it was the console. They have the kids all gather around the console and each stand on one side of it as Matt Smith guides them through how to fly it through another video recording. The floor of the Tardis was on hydrolic lifts, so as they pulled levers and pushed buttons, the floor shifts and moves. Very ,very cool.

We land and exit the Tardis to a room where the Daleks are after us. At first, 3 of the new Daleks come out and threaten us. But then some of the Ecelston/Tennant era Daleks from the Cult of Skaro show up and a civil war breaks out amongst the Dalek factions allowing us to escape to the next room.

Which is the Weeping Angels planet. Way creepy. We work through there to the final room which is a 3-D movie of all the bad guys (Daleks, Angels, Cybermen, etc) flying through the time vortex. The Doctor gets free and we've saved the day. We can then exit to the museum part of the exhibit.

The stuff in the museum was incredible. Tennants console room, the 80s' console room (Baker, Davidson, Mcoy, etc). Baker's Giant Robot, K-9, the Melkur. I'm obviously an old school fan, but the newer show stuff was cool too.

The whole thing was just perfect. My kids loved it and they still talk about flying the Tardis (and how my youngest crashed it).

There are a ton of pictures so enjoy!

https://picasaweb.google.com/1140272...NDYloH4qIreGg#

[Mikey]

That is soooooooooo cool Rob !!!!!!!!!

I never heard of the Doctor Who Experience before --- now I wanna go

Love the pics !!! --- gunna look at them better tonight

[Godzilla]

I read about it in Dor Who magazine and I'd never considered going. My wife made a joke in December about going to England and I mentioned going to the Experience and she said "make it so".

[rche]

Wow. That sounds like a grand time. I'm gonna have to hope for some longevity for the exhibit so my kids can be old enough to have a good time with it. That and I gotta start saving my pennies for an across the pond trip. Thanks for sharing.

[rche]

so are the Doctors outfits actual show costumes or are they recreations for the exhibit?

[johnmiic]

It's like I died and went to heaven!

[Godzilla]

They very clearly have the recreations labeled. I didn't get pictures of the display of the Cyberman helmets through time, but the first 3 were clearly marked as recreations. They still looked very cool though. All the costumes were worn at some point. I couldn't believe a Hartnell or Trouton costume still existed.

[rche]

That is truly fantastic if there are still bits of wardrobe from the '60s. Especially seeing that the BBC did not archive very much else from that period.

I would have loved to see the Cybermen through the years thing. That is great. An early Dalek would have been swell as well.

Do your kids watch the show with you at all? Some of those modern episodes seem a little much for my kiddos and we are at about the same age.

[alex]

Very cool, will have to check this out in september.

[Godzilla]

rche my kids do love the show. We tend to watch a mix of old and new, but some of the new ones are way to scary. They love the Weeping Angels, but have yet to actually watch an episode with them. But they love most of the monsters from the Daleks to the Adipose.

They make a magazine called Dr Who Adventures that's aimed right at their age group which is prefect. It's not easy to get ahold of here in the States, but it's fun to read with them and do the activities. I like to think Who is helping them learn to read. Plus it let's me geek out at the same time.