My vacation ended with a blast! On Saturday, the 21st June '14 I went with my family and cousin Chaitanya went to a theme park named Imagica located in Khopoli - a village between Pune and Mumbai. It has several rides, shows and simulations which attract thousands of people in holiday time. It had opened on 18th April 2013 but not with all the rides. In fact, the theme park is still expanding to make a water park to be named "Aquaimagica".
There are three roller coasters - Nitro (the best one in my opinion), Gold Rush express, and Deep Space. Also, there are several shows, cinemas, water fighting games, children rides and simulation rides in the park. The Nitro is a floor-less roller coaster with several loops and inversions. Each seat gives the feeling you are in the front row. I boarded it thrice and enjoyed it thoroughly. Gold rush express has three drops in total which take the train to speeds of about 100 kmph. This I boarded twice!. Deep space is a rather small coaster ride meant to be in complete darkness. If it would have been longer, I would have enjoyed it more.
There are three shooting games which include Splash Ahoy, Bump-it-boats, and Alibaba aur Chalis Chorr. Splash Ahoy as the name suggests is a water game. You are aboard a ship shooting water cannons at others and also getting drenched. Bump-it boats is a similar game but the only difference is that you are alone in the boat and you are the one controlling it. Alibaba aur Chalis Chorr is an indoor ride where human figures spring up from places while you are shooting a few little green lights with laser guns to get more and more score. What we noticed is that we end up paying more attention to shooting than observing the setup and ambience.
There are three simulation rides too; which included Mr.India, Motion Box Theater, and I for India. Mr.India is a flight simulator that is based on the movie Mr India. Motion Box Theater is a roller coaster simulation. It could have been better if the car moved more than it actually did. I for India is a different type of simulation ride where we are raised to a height in a chair because of which the screen appears at slightly downward angle giving an impression of aerial view. On the screen were shown the great places of India shot from helicopters using high resolution cameras. It really gave a fantastic view of so many marvelous places of our country.
The plays and cinemas include Detective Bow Wow Show, Wrath of Gods, and Cinema 360. The Bow Wow show is an interactive show where the detective (a pug) arrives on the screen and makes fun of the audience with active interaction. Wrath of Gods is an act done by a fake archaeologist who takes us into the interiors of an old cave based temple where the gods become angry and start showing their powers to destroy humans who dared to enter the cave. We got to feel brazen wind, hot fire and water. Cinema 360 is a dome shaped theater where the whole dome itself is the screen. The cinema shown gave a 3D feeling without any 3D glasses. The screen did a very good job of presenting a beautiful mermaid princess under water with the screen presenting the picture in 360 degrees (in horizontal direction) around us.
There are four more rides to complete all the adult rides which I of course completed - Salimgarh, Rajasaurus river adventure, D2 Dare Drop, and Scream machine. Salimgarh is a scary house cart ride and it really really scared me a lot just because of people in scary dresses popping out of nowhere. Rajasaurus river adventure took us on a boat ride with dinosaur models on both sides giving us the feeling of being midst them. Then there is final drop where our boat plunges into water below. D2 Dare drop is a ride where a machine takes us up a pole really fast and then drops us really fast and then bounces a little before stopping. I wish it would have been for more time. Scream machine is something that I enjoyed really a lot. It is a suspended pole with a rotating disk at its bottom. When seated on the disk, we are taken to enormous heights on the pendulum (180 degree swing)!
All these rides made the trip to Imagica theme park really very enjoyable for me. As we were on-time to the park, we could board some of the rides twice and Nitro even thrice! This is an experience I can never forget.
-Suhas
29/6/14
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