Wind rushing through your hair, chairs that glide, move and lurch, making you feel like you’re in the action and a thrilling introduction to the movie so good you won’t even believe it’s a trailer, the Cineplex 4DX movie experience is here and your kids are going to love it.
The 4DX movie is similar to the immersive rides in Disneyland or Universal Studios, giving you a full two-hour experience where you’ll be in the movie through the use of motion seats (spoiler alert: there’s a lot of motion), wind, flashing lights, mist and other effects, like a blasting of paper as vehicles sped through a market in the movie we watched.
The chairs move so smoothly, and are integrated so well into the movie watching experience that sometimes you don’t even notice that the chairs are moving at all. I caught myself looking to the chairs in front of me, to confirm whether the chairs were moving.
One of the most continual motions of the chair, aside from the movements, is the vibrating. The vibrating plates on the bottom and back of the chair were designed for the those fast paced action movies.
Here’s what you should know before you go:
- This is not a movie that you’re going to want to have popcorn at. Skip dinner, right before the movie because you’re boarding a two hour theme ride and as you can bet, the kids are going to spill the popcorn, or get nauseated from the movement if they had just eaten.
- There is a minimum age, as well as a minimum height that kids must reach before they can sit in the theatre. Children must be 3’4″ tall as there are no booster seats allowed in the 4DX seats.
- Seating is reserved. When tickets are purchased for the movie, you’re also choosing your seats. We chose to sit in the middle of the theatre, and were outside of the majority of the front side effects, the fog, etc. but the front row experience isn’t always the best, so we quite enjoyed mid way up the theatre.
- The movements in the movie can be jolting, like in the case of coming to a quick stop in a movie, or hitting another vehicle, or flying out of the vehicle – causing us to suggest skipping the movie with the kids if you’ve got a kid that’s prone to motion sickness.
- Don’t expect to be relaxed. Some people go to movies to ‘turn it all off’. The 4DX movie isn’t like that. You’ll find yourself constantly on edge, wondering when the next movement is going to happen and it does indeed heighten the excitement of the movie – but it also takes away from the ‘turn t all off’ that we mentioned above.
- There is only one location for the 4DX theatre in Edmonton, at West Edmonton Mall Scotiabank Theatre. Tickets are more expensive than the regular theatre, at upwards of thirty bucks a ticket, but for a one time experience, it’s a really cool, immersive way for thrill-seeking kids to have a brand new experience.
You can visit Cineplex.com to learn more about the 4DX experience.