An IMAX Movie Adventure

Apparently I am in a state where one of 40 theaters in the entire world are showing the 70mm film IMAX version of The Odyssey, so you know we had to do it.

Our tickets were purchased an entire month in advanced, it was the soonest we could get tickets and the showing was at 8 o’clock in the morning. Instead of risking potential traffic in the morning we opted for an overnight stay in a hotel where we watched the 1994 classic (?) Clifford, starring Martin Short while we ate our mediocre Wendy’s.

I woke up early enough to hit the breakfast buffet (my safe go to: plain bagel and those little packets of peanut butter) and to procure some coffee and we headed out.

I would like to give some kudos to this theater…it was BEAUTFUL. It was so colorful and fun, neon lights, patterned carpets, and even every toilet paper dispenser in the restroom was a different color that matched the confetti colored tiles. It was breathtaking. It was like stepping into 1996 and I was here for it.

While enjoying the sights we meandered down the deep hallway to watch the film. This is the 2nd time we’ve seen it, the first was in a decommissioned regular IMAX (big picture?) and we we surprised out how fast the film felt, at a nearly 3 hour runtime you would think we would be shifting in our seats for the movie to be done but each time we both could have sat there for probably another hour. This film envelops you and time just evaporates. Seeing it a second time I was really able to focus on some details and even notice some things that I missed the first time.

The theater was basically sold out at 8 in the morning and this theater of people locked in. Unfortunately the person next to me seemed to suffer from restless leg syndrome so my 70 mm IMAX experience also had a 4DX experience added to it for free. The dude was shaking my seat so bad but what am I going to do? He probably felt terrible.

After the film we got to take a bit of a detour behind the theater. They have a booth with windows where you can see the actual film, film case, and projectors used for the 70mm movie. It was so cool to see. They also had a poster where you could put a pin from where you were from to see The Odyssey in this format.

We took a photobooth photo to commemorate the occasion and then went on a tiny Grand Rapids adventure. We went to Rise (a vegan bakery!), several 2nd hand media stores, and I even got to see this crazy ass Castle apartment complex that one of my friends did a PowerPoint on and it felt famous to me. I also saw this really cool Potato Chip Ad but were were driving by so fast that I was only able to capture a blur as we drove by. It was such a fun Monday.