An experience LOST on me...

Yesterday, in the spirit of lifelong learning I paid a visit to ‘The Lost City’, a much hyped exhibition that seemed to suggest an exciting edutainment visit. You can visit http://www.thelostcity.com.my/ for background information on the exhibition.

Ticket costs RM20 for adults on weekdays and RM25 on weekends. If you visit Summit USJ, you will find promotions on the exhibition everywhere and fairly nicely done. Located on the 4^th floor, it occupies the space formerly used by Prime College which incidentally was my previous office area way back then.

The experience to The Lost City is structured as follows:

1. Purchase tickets then proceed to queue. Here, groups are formed and a guide is assigned to a group.
2. Depending on your time, you either proceed directly to a 10-minute screening of an introductory movie or if the movie is being screened midway, you can browse around a museum styled gallery first.
3. The movie introduces you to the lost cities of human civilisation such as the Mayans, the Egyptians, the city of Petra, El Dorado, and a temple in Angkor. As the guide, ‘…you are about to watch how the lost cities of the world have been found by people’. The movie is fairly decent though it is mostly an assemblage of stock photos with an excited but monotonous narration throughout. I think it is designed to build anticipation but because they used the college auditorium which is a huge 400 seater hall, the space overwhelms the movie which is screened via a regular projector.
4. The gallery has a small collection of artefacts from the cities mentioned though there was quite a bit of artefacts on the Terracotta warriors and other Chinese artefacts. There are also 2 multimedia terminals or rather two computers with Flash games. Both games are Mayan influenced, one a simple board game and the other an insanely difficult math game that I could not complete without a calculator. You will likely take 10 minutes on average to complete the gallery. It is however guided and depending on the guide you were assigned, the experience can be favourable or challenging. I changed guides halfway as I jumped groups so I was able to see the difference.
5. After this introduction, you are then brought to the Lost City maze which is very much like a haunted house. The maze begins with a 3D walkway where you have to put on 3D glasses and observe 3D images flanking the walls and floor. The images are mostly of mythical creatures and fantasy scenes which is strange as these have no connection whatsoever to Lost Cities of human civilisation.
6. Then, after being jumped on by a staff member in black, you proceed to a narrow corridor with a bridge, similar to the revolving tunnel exhibit we have in Playsmart Langkawi. Once you enter, the entryway is closed. We walked to the exitway, found it shut and waited for 2 minutes before the bridge started to violently shake. It was juddering and shaking vertically and the motors were incredibly loud. It was not a pleasant nor shocking experience. After a few minutes of this, the exitway opened where someone will collect your 3D glasses.
7. We then enter a jungle like area where there is an assembled dinosaur skeleton. There is ambient music and when you proceed forward, the dinosaur skeleton’s head will abruptly roar and turn its head towards you.
8. After this, you will find yourself in what appears to be a Mayan ruins. There is a water feature with a suspension bridge of rope and planks. There appears to be some timing issues here. When I entered, I immediately explored to the left as there seemed to be a platform but I found another staff member in black crouching behind a pillar and shocked him (or her) instead. Then a Mayan head bust on the wall started speaking (metaphorically, as you can see the speakers behind) and said ‘Stop!’. So we stopped but then the following words suggested that you should be on the bridge by now so I walked to the middle of the bridge and listen to the narrative warning of death beyond this point. I waited until the mask said to ‘Leave this place now’.
9. The next area was dark and there was a glass panel with some rocks behind it. Not exactly sure what this place is for but once again, another staff member in black was waiting to spook guests though this time she was fairly obvious. This must be the ‘death’ that was threatened earlier.
10. After this point, we reached a room where there is an array of treasures and a whole bunch of disco lights and strobes started to swirl with loud music in the background. This area seemed pointless unless you want to go ahead and start dancing.
11. Leaving here, we were greeted by a security guard and shortly after a staff member who asked for our names, IC and phone numbers in the guise of entering it into a lucky draw. She also asked for feedback but when I said ‘overpriced’, she stopped asking me but asked my friends instead.

Overall, a disappointing experience that was hardly educational. Too much emphasis was placed on the design of each stop point in the maze and little thought to how the visit is experienced collectively. With RM20, anyone will be better off visiting Petrosains or add a few more RM to go to Aquaria.