A Whole New World

Unbelievable sights
Indescribable feeling
Soaring, tumbling, freewheeling
Through an endless diamond sky.
A whole new world, a whole new world.

Few amusement parks have paralleled the Disney experience and with technological improvements, its impact is even more profound. In one theme park the latest dazzle was a virtual space flight called Mission to Mars. It was so realistic that we felt we were sitting inside a space shuttle and experiencing the G-forces that astronauts feel before they break free from gravity. We all got off the ride wobbly and a trifle shaken.

It is the ability to simulate experiences using not just rides but 3-D movies and even living creatures that makes Disney extraordinary. In another park, instead of a zoo-like atmosphere with cages, wildlife including lions, zebra, giraffes and rhinoceros lazed around in surroundings recreated to be like the African Savannahs complete with a bumpy jeep ride and a ranger. Having gone through the genuine experience in South Africa and boasting about it to my friends then, I knew I could never narrate to my son what it felt to actually see them in the wild.

Later at a Toys R Us shop there was a lifesize replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex that moved its eyes, opened its jaw and roared. My son confesses to have nightmares about being eaten by one of them even now. There was a larger message that was coming through that I believe parents need to ponder over. This is a generation that would have no need for a Jules Verne to expand their imagination. After all, we had just gone from Earth to Mars in 80 seconds. Try convincing my son otherwise. It is also a generation that lives in a virtual world that is so real that even the real world has become a virtual one. It is as the song says:
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we're only dreaming.
It is, after all, a whole new world.