Bridge To Shuttle Bay One

After being told one of us would be the ancestor of one of the Federations greatest captains[1], we were lead into a turbolift and brought to a different floor to be put on board an escape shuttle.

An easy illusion, using sequenced lights to give the impression we were travelling a great distance within the ship, while only moving a single floor.

Except not quiet. We actually never travelled vertically at all. Another clever illusion to avoid the expense of a purpose built elevator.

Inside the turbolift there were indeed pulsing lights to give the impression of vertical movement, just like in the series. Combined with a slight shaking, it felt very real. When the Enterprise took a few blasts from the Klingon Bird of Prey, the turbolift rocked, again, just like in the show, except we didn't have to fake it, the hydraulics did it for us. The shaking concealed the next slight-of-hand as they slowly and imperceptibly turned the entire lift about 180 degrees so that, when the door reopened we were looking at a new location, without ever knowing that the bridge set was just behind the wall.

After that it was just the simulator ride, which was great, but nothing compared to what we had just experienced. One neat touch was that the footage was projected on a curved, dome-like screen, so not only could we look out the forward windows, but also up through some skylights in the shuttle. That really helped sell the illusion nicely.

[1] It was me, obviously. Riker looked right at me.

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Two To Beam Up

Being teleported was, frankly, a mind blowing experience. Every rational part of my brain told me it was impossible, a clever trick and illusion, while every emotional part of my heart was crying with joy after decades of dreaming about living this moment.

Of course, it was a clever trick, an illusion. But even knowing how they did it doesn't take from the magic.

The first part was obvious. Told to watch a safety video, all our gazes were focused on the TV screens, and so too the strobe flash hidden beside them, blowing out our night vision when the lights went out.

The next five or so seconds was when the real magic happened.

The ceiling above us slid smoothly to one side, leaving a multistory opening above our heads. The four walls, including the one with the TVs and fake doors we were facing, shot upwards 60 feet at incredible speeds, uncovering the transporter panelling around us and the transporter control room with crew members in front. Then, as quietly as the first was removed, a new ceiling slid into place above us, enclosing the transporter bay.

What little noise the mechanisms did make were masked by the transporter sound effects.

At this point, a mere five seconds after we had been plunged into darkness, the lights came back up and all was revealed. The floor we were standing on had a property such that, when lit from above, appeared to have one design and a different one when lit from below. Tricking us into believing we had moved floors was as simple as turning on a light switch.

All of that was breathtaking, but it leaves one, final mystery.

Experiencing the whoosh of air in the darkness was amazing, because it totally contributed to the sensation of being moved by some means. The designer who thought to included that was a genius, right? Not quite.

When the whole mechanism was first being tested with actual people in it, it seemed only right that it would be the engineers themselves to risk life and limb before anyone else. Nothing should go wrong. It had been dry tested dozens of times. The mechanisms were precisely engineered to a ridiculous level and the timing was tuned to perfection.

This is how what happened next was told to me.

Standing in the drab grey false room, the strobe went off, the lights went out and more than one engineer screamed.

You see, when you pull four walls straight up 60 feet at high speed you create a suction effect as air rushes in to fill the space the walls occupied. That suction is experienced by anyone in the room as a whoosh of air, coming from around your feet and flowing upwards.

When the lights came up the engineers, frozen in their spots, silently looked around before one of them spoke up.

"We're keeping that in."

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Bridge To Shuttle Bay One

Welcome Aboard

Claire and I stood in the queue for the Star Trek Experience simulator ride based on the Next Generation era. We were both excited. We hadn't any idea what to expect, having read nothing about it in advance. We'd been on these kinds of rides before, where you and a bunch of others sit into a box on top of an enormous computer controlled hydraulic system and get thrown around in sync with footage to give the illusion of actually being on a rollercoaster, or flying in a helicopter.

But this was Star Trek, we were going to be flying through simulated space, buckled safely into our seats, safely located in a hotel very definitely safely on good old Mother Earth.

We lined up outside the simulator in a nondescript room, and were asked to first observe a safety video on a few screens above the ride access doors. The usual stuff. Claire and I were standing side by side.

Suddenly a bright flash blinded us all, and the room was plunged into darkness for less than five seconds. We heard a strangely familiar sound, felt a rush of air travel from our feet upwards and then the lights came up.

We were standing in an entirely different location than the room we had been in moments before. Let me emphasis that. An entirely different location. An officer in Starfleet uniform stood looking at us behind a console I had seen hundreds of times on TV where the doors we were supposed to go through had been. The ceiling and walls surrounding us, previously grey and drab, were now the familiar futuristic panelling of the transporter bay.

And, looking down, Claire and I both came to the same shocking realisation at the same time. The freaking floor was not the same one we were on moments before either, but the glowing discs of light we so knew and loved.

It was all I could do to just hold her hand and not cry. In that moment my heart was beating a thousand beats a minute.

I'm not crazy. I didn't for a moment think I had actually been teleported to a Federation starship, but every sense I had was telling me otherwise. My brain was firing off, trying to explain the sensory imputs my body was sending it that conflicted with all rational thought. Trying, and utterly, completely, failing.

"Are you all okay?" My attention snapped back to the ensign before me. "I'm sorry, but we had to emergency beam you out of there. If you follow this officer, everything will be explained."

We were lead down a familiar corridor, inset with the same familiar lighting, past familiar doors and then through a sliding door with the familiar whoosh sound and my heart went from beating like a drum in my chest to stopping dead.

At that moment I was standing on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, NCC 1701-D. Before me, on the big viewscreen, stars drifted past. This was a set, obviously, but once again, my brain was having a hard time explaining that to the rest of my body.

It all felt so real.

One of the two officers on the bridge welcomed us on board and told us she had someone that wanted to talk to us.

The stars on the screen were replaced with the much larger than life face of Commander William Riker, who informed us that the Klingons had found a way to travel back in time to our century. Their plan was to kill the ancestor of Captain Jean Luc Picard, erasing him from history. One of us was the target, but without knowing which one, they rescued us all. Now, he told us, we were to follow the ensign to a shuttle where we would be whisked to safety.

With one last, quick look around the bridge, we were all bundled into a turbolift, which, once the doors closed, started to move, the lights flashing by as we changed floor. The lights flickered and the lift shook as we were hit by the attacking Klingon vessel and alarms started to blare.

The same doors we had entered through opened and we were in a completely new hallway, rushed down to the awaiting shuttle, where we were strapped into our seats and blasted out into open space, high above the earth, as the Enterprise fought off the Bird of Prey. Our shuttle ducked and dodged, avoiding lazer blasts and zooming through the atmosphere. We flew down over the crowded lights of the Vegas Strip at night, banked around and landed on the roof of the Hilton. The seatbelts clicked open and we were lead out into an ordinary looking hallway. On a wall-mounted TV a news anchor was reporting on unusual lights in the skies above Nevada, but a stern looking government official was assuring the viewers that it was just a weather balloon.

And suddenly we were back in the public area, standing in the middle of the shop filled with magnets and posters bearing the likeness of various actors.

We were back on earth, safe and sound from our adventure, and neither Claire nor I had any idea how any of it had happened. We talked about all the theories we had, but when, a few days later, we went on the Behind The Scenes tour, the truth turned out to be far better than either of us dared imagine.

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Bridge To Shuttle Bay One

Beaming From Ear To Ear

In August 2008, Claire and I travelled the West Coast of the US on what we called The Epic Holiday. Along the way we stopped into a small desert town called Las Vegas in Nevada. Mostly this was to get married, but we also bookedd our stay at the Las Vegas Hilton which, at the time, was host to the long running Star Trek Experience.

We were lucky enough to have our holiday when we did too. In September of 2008, one short month after our visit, the Star Trek Experience shut down for good. Remember, this was before the JJ Abrahms 2009 reboot. There was no new series on TV and the last attempt at something was the generally disliked Enterprise. The whole exhibit was torn down and because it had been built in partnership with the Hilton and Paramount, neither could come to an agreement on how the sets would be handled, as they had both paid for the contruction costs. In the end, as far as I'm aware, everything was destroyed, a fact that breaks my heart every time I remember it.

The Experience had a bar modeled after Quark's Bar on board Deep Space 9[1], a gift shop filled with merchandise and memorabilia, a museum packed with screen used props and costumes and, the highlight, two rides to enjoy. The newer of the two was based on Voyager and involved the Borg and some 4D stuff, but the one that had been there since the start was based on The Next Generation, and involved the Klingons. It was much older and didn't have the 4D technology, so of course it would be the lesser of the two.

Nope.

Nope, nope, nope, nope!!

The Borg attack was a fun ride, and the first time Claire and I experienced "4D", much to both of our terror. It was cool, and hopefully I'll get to describe it some day, but the undeniable magic, the one that took both our breaths away was, without question, the Klingon attack.

I'm going to break what I have to say about the Klingon attack into seperate posts for clarity. One will be a straight description of the ride, which I can still vividly recall nine years later, and linked to that will be posts describing how each amazing element was done, which we learned thanks to going on the behind-the-scenes tour after. If I was posting this back in 2008, or even 2009 I might consider not revealing the magic, but it's been nine years, and how they achieved what they achieved should be documented and applauded.

I experienced something I never dreamed would be possible in my life up to that point, and have never experienced again in almost a decade since.

I'll finish this by saying that The Next Generation is the era Claire and I both loved and grew up with. It heavily influenced the person I am today, and the experience in the posts that follow will be treasured memories for as long as I live and prosper.

[1] Claire and I got married in Vegas, and wihle we didn't get married on the bridge of the Enterprise, we did have our wedding day meal in Quark's Bar. It was delicious.

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Bridge To Shuttle Bay One

August 5th, 2008

Claire and I were in Las Vegas this day last year. It was a Tuesday, and we were up early to make the most of a special day. Today, we were getting married.

We started by going to the State registrars office to register and get the official documents. There was a long line of happy couples ahead of us, and while we filled out the forms, we heard a multitude of languages and accents, including a few Irish voices here and there.

Arriving at the chapel early, we made sure everything was cool for the ceremony, confirmed our time and then, knowing we had a few hours to waste, headed across the street to Starbucks. Claire enjoyed a tea and muffin, while I was barely able to drink a juice and pick at a snack. The excitement was making me jumpy.

Ours was the first wedding of the afternoon. It lasted a blissful seven whole minutes, which we have on DVD, and ended with Claire jumping me, much to the amusement of the Reverend. We got a bunch of photos taken in and around the chapel and then took a drive around before heading back to our hotel, the Hilton.

We had our wedding day dinner aboard the Federation space station Deep Space Nine, in Quarks Bar. We enjoyed a wonderful, filling meal, with odd juice drinks and weird deserts. A quick dip in the outdoor pool located on the roof was the final touch to a perfect day.

The perfect start to a perfect year. And many, many more to come.

Las Vegas- A Special Guest Post

Driving the Space Shuttle, by Claire Ryan
I expect the first thing I'll be asked when we get home is "What was it like to drive the Corvette?" Well, as I am ever ready to anticipate the needs of my fans, I've asked Denis to let me do a guest post all about it.

The Corvette is about 12 feet long and barely comes up to my waist. It has only two bucket seats and a small, limited space just behind that serves as the boot - this is not a vehicle for serious touring, unless you fancy doing it at 200mph and you're traveling light. It's an automatic, naturally, and has a sport mode for extra acceleration. The air conditioning and satnav are essentials in America, this being the land of blistering heat and an Escher-esque road system. Everything in this car is either adjustable or motorised, which was pretty cool; I especially liked the little switch that moved the seats forward and back. On the outside, it's yellow with a black racing stripe, has four exhausts, and looks like it's about to take off at any moment.

So - there is a single button to start the engine. Press it, and you are rewarded with a growl like a mildly annoyed Siberian tiger.

I am not kidding. Go annoy a Siberian tiger, record the sound, and compare it to a Corvette.

But what is it like to drive? The answer is simple - it's like driving a $60,000 sports car that can get from zero to sixty in the time it takes me to blow my nose. All comparisons break down. You might as well ask what it's like to drive the Space Shuttle - there's nothing like them and we don't have any in Ireland anyway. But if I must try to describe it... it's an amazingly smooth ride, more like you're flying instead of driving. In sport mode, the acceleration and response is nothing short of terrifying - I haven't tested it, but I'm sure I could make it turn on a dime. Even when you're just cruising along a street, the power of the V8 engine is scary. It feels like it's just waiting to take off like a rocket, and only your foot on the pedals are holding it back. I did not once put my foot all the way down; this car is a beast, and you do not want to just let it go.

That said, I did get up to some serious speed on the freeway - and that's when you can really appreciate the price tag of this thing. Get to sixty, seventy miles an hour and it just purrs away, but push it up over a hundred... You'll feel the big V8 suddenly shift to sixth, and be rewarded with a sudden surge of acceleration that'll carry you up to a hundred and twenty and beyond. The first time I did it was just pure gold - I remember laughing like an idiot, it was so incredible. And it roars like nothing on earth.

Having the opportunity to drive this car has been one of the best and easily the most terrifying experience of this trip. By this stage, I expect that Denis has put up that video of the first few moments of my driving the Corvette (I haven't, but it's coming- Ed.), which should give you some insight of how it feels to sit behind the wheel of such a car. The power and style of this machine is beyond anything I have ever driven; no car in Ireland will ever measure up to it, which leaves me in the unfortunate position of having to save all my pennies and possibly changing the motor laws so I can get one imported.

If you're planning to rent a vehicle in America anytime soon, go to the nearest Hertz place and just pay whatever they ask for this car. It's worth every second of pure awesomeness that you will spend behind the wheel.

San Francisco- New Post City

Well, after driving for six hours from Vegas to San Diego, then taking a combination of bus and train all the way to Oakland, we've arrived at the next leg of our journey, Oakland and San Francisco city.

We had two full days enjoying the city, as well as enjoying two days doing stuff with Karen and her friends, and I already have loads of stuff to write about. Of course, I also have more to write about from San Diego and Vegas, though most of you probably already know the big news out of Vegas. So there's so much to write, and so little time to do it.

Plus, I've been uploading photos from San Diego, which takes a lot of time. I'm still not through the SDCC sets!

More to come soon.