CIRQUE DU SOLEIL

I was hoping my $100 ticket would bring more than the opportunity to watch guys in tights dance around a stage.

I picked up my ticket and found they require people to be seated 15 minutes before the show starts or they may not let you in. I didn't really want to sit around for that long, but I decided to go in 25 minutes before it started so I didn't have to wait in line to get in.

While waiting, I walked around the casino and found it to be much more impressive than I had remembered. There's a lot more going on at night during Spring Break :-)

I walked to the entrance of the theater and was surprised to find all the ushers dressed in elaborate costumes and using fake accents. They all looked like they should have been in Pirates of the Caribbean.

I went in and sat down... Wow. Quite the theater

It was really impressive. It looked like something out of the Myst computer game series. While you I sat waiting for the show to start, that smoke up front continued to roll backstage while they played weird noises over the speakers. Every once in a while, there was a big fireball. One of the ushers told me there's around 60 fireballs before the show starts.

Turns out that the show doesn't start till 15 minutes after they say it does... So if you get there when you're supposed to, the audience is sitting there for a minimum of 30 minutes :-)

Instead of dimming the lights to get people to sit down and be quiet, people dressed like natives come out on those platforms/walkways you can see in the picture. They jump from platform to platform like Batman. It's really cool to see. Meanwhile, other guys bungee-jump over the audience, some landing on hand rails. They walked along the rails yelling for people to sit down. Pretty effective :-)

Next, it was time to silence your cell phones. No "Please silence your cell phones." announcement. Instead, a "native" walked up behind an actor in the audience. We'll call him Bob. The native scared Bob and then escorted him to the front where the big evil guy in the show was waiting for him. Right then, Bob's cell phone rang and the big evil guy demanded Bob give him the cell phone. Though a rather comical skit, the evil guy threw the cell phone into the hole (where all the smoke is in the picture) and then tosses Bob in after it. Explosions marked when they landed :-)

The beginning of the show was a little dull in my opinion, but things got progressively more exciting. As it turns out, the "stage" is a huge platform that's basically an amusement park ride. It can tilt all the way to vertical, move up or down tens of feet, rotate, and even move back and forth. The top surface seemed to be some kind of big TV screen, so it could look like rock, ice, water, etc.

The lighting effects were really cool. With the right lighting and fog, they made the movable stage look like a boat in one place, a cliff wall in another place, and a mountain in another.

I'll just list some highlights:

The fighting scenes were really well choreographed. They looked as good as they do in movies, and those actors were really, really good acrobats. They must be extremely strong for some of the things they did.

There were some huge animals. A huge snake slithered down a pipe in one place, and there was a crab, starfish, and turtle I honestly thought were robots at first. The costumes were amazing to be able to cover up the fact that they were people so easily.

You know how a lot of times they show fighting sequences in movies from an over-head view? (Looking down?) Well... they did that in the show.... which means they tilted the stage vertically and everyone was on ropes. It was quite amazing. Plus, they wear fighting in a big puddle, and when they "stepped" on the stage, the water rippled. It was weird to see people walking up and down a wall.

People on the side platforms gave the illusion of shooting real arrows at the people on stage. When the arrows "hit," shafts shot out of the stage that they later used to climb around on.

They filled the whole stage with sand in one scene for a desert island.

There were tons of pyrotechnics.

There were fireworks inside. Really loud, really bright.

There was one part where they did shadow puppets with their hands... But these guys were REALLY good. Never seen anything like this.

A big bird flew way out over the audience.

They even illuminated the catwalks at one point to add to the scene.

Something died half-way through. All the actors froze... and sat there... for a long time... finally the music stopped... and then someone announced they were having technical difficulty. When they fixed it, they turned on the lights so you could see all the stuff back-stage. It was really impressive.

There was a ship in a storm in one place. People fell overboard and off the mast here and there. I wonder if they had ropes or if they used nets?

Ok, that's good enough.

Fireworks at end:

Teaser that has mostly the boring stuff: