Space: The final tourist trap

You may not know to look at the suave Hollywood Playa you see now, but in my High School days I was somewhat obsessed with the Star Trek. My girlfriend, in her recent trip to my family home in CO, gasped when in my closet she found a Starfleet Uniform circa season 5 of TNG. Oh friends, its true. To my defense, we always treated the Trek thing as "Nerd Chic", insuring that when my friends and I attended conventions, we did not wear our uniforms, and we treated the other nerds with derision.

So, when I found out that THIS

was going down, i gathered up my nerdiest friends and headed down.

The results were, less than exceptional. At nearly $40 a pop and with a working crew of carnies who showed neither knowledge of or enthusiasm for the exhibit, the result was less than less than spectacular.

Admittedly there were cool uniforms:


And Photo Ops ($15):


But truthfully, we were unimpressed.


Maybe it was the super-weak "Simulators"
Maybe the bored Carnie- Staff, who kept messing up the $15 photos, or maybe it was the "grand finale" where Will Wheaton leads us through a mind numbing "Adventure" that includes a shaking platform and a starship on strings.


By the time we are dumped out by the "gift shop" where there is nothing worth buying , we were so anti this place that I almost...almost didn't buy the "Bridge Shots" pictured above. Luckily for me they had run out of paper frames, and subsequently had dropped the price from 17 to 15.

In Starfleet, The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal affairs of other civilizations. I think the same needs to apply to Star Trek. Yeah, fun to watch, but don't interact. Its too far gone to be fun anymore.