The Sphere

Thursday, February 13, 2025

It was raining today. It said there was a small chance of rain, but I did not expect it to actually rain. We had spectacular luck driving to the Sphere – we parked facing the back of the handicapped signs, we so we were about as close as you can get. My coat was soaked through after hurrying through the rain to the door. Wow.

The lobby of the place was very futuristic looking – very cool.

This globe was only one of many 3D appearing images that appeared in this space. I took video of plants growing and spinning. There were people running and shapes swirling. Not too long after we got there, Keith said, “I figured it out.” I said, “Figured what out?” He said he understood how they were projecting the images. The grid behind them is full of blades spinning very fast. You can’t see the blades, but they are giving the images somewhere to be. I said, “It never occurred to me to wonder about it. It is just there. It is pretty.

Proof we don’t always think alike. 🙂

There were a number of stations each featuring an “Aura” robot. When the host introduced someone from the crowd, Aura would tell us interesting facts about their hometown and talk about what they were wearing. One Aura was showcasing the sound system used in the Sphere by pinpointing sound. There were four stripes of light radiating out from her. Each stripe had a focus – you really hear saxophone in one or piano in another. One demonstration simultaneously made a presentation in four languages. You could only hear the one in the stripe you were in and a jumbled mess of all languages outside of the stripes.

We both really liked the shirt with the big smiley face on the bottom. Keith checked for his size, but decided he might be too interactive with the shirt – his tummy would become the Sphere.

The picture/video changes constantly on the outside of the Sphere. I think it is on an hour loop, since we were walking home at very similar times and saw the same series of pictures. I wonder if it is actually an hour, so if you are frequently nearby you can use it as a clock. I need to investigate. This is what it was just after we walked out, and before it started to rain hard again.

We were seated up in section 405. We chose to sit there not because high seats are cheaper (this time) but because reviews gave us a clue that that is where we would like to see from. I thought they were perfect seats. The steps are quite steep, as are the seats, so you are not looking at the head in front of you. I was able to clearly see the phones of the two people ahead and just left of me who decided to video record the movie for the first half. They were together, so I did wonder WHY they needed two recordings. I also wondered why they thought they did not have to follow the no recording rule. I also thought PEOPLE ARE SO SELF INVOLVED. That goes for the guy SIX rows behind us across the aisle that was talking so loudly I could hear every word. SHUT UP. We all paid $100 to watch a 50-minute movie. We do not want to listen to you.

When the movie started, it was contained on the screen. There were people in sleeping pods on a spaceship who were being awoken by robots. The spacey stuff was very cool to look at, but I was seriously thinking really? This is it? This isn’t even as big as the IMAX theater. Why are we here? It’s interesting, but $100? Huh. The robots were telling the waking up people to remember Earth. It showed us a shot of Earth from space, then went closer and closer, and the Earth got bigger and bigger and then the Earth was giant and the whole place was Earth.

Okay. I was in.

The movie went from first multicell animals onto the oceans to plants to animals to us. The photography was brilliant. Then things went bad, and we used up the Earth and had to leave. Oh, bad us. It ended with us going to other planets, looking for a new home. Fingers crossed.

We saw lots of places that were gorgeous, and I wondered where they were. We came to a cathedral in the rain and Keith whispered, “Sienna?” I nodded, then we were inside, and I said, “Yep! Definitely.” When we were in Italy with Dr. Jerry and Mrs. Dr. Jerry in 2012 (when the family tradition of picture of the day/proof of life started), the day we were in Sienna I decided I had been in enough churches, and they were all looking the same. I was going to take my $3 entrance fee and put it toward gelato instead. No one was willing to leave me behind, sitting on the steps eating gelato, so I went along. We all walked in solemnly, then laughed out loud (then got quiet, because church) because it was a beautiful, beautiful church (stripes!) and I would have been sad to miss it.

I thought the haptic seat was … distracting. It didn’t really time out well with the video, so it just made me think about the chair instead of enhancing the film. There is a part with a lot of extreme natural disasters and there is general shaking that added to the intensity of the scene well, since there were no specific things that the movement was supposed to line up to.

It was a really good adventure – so glad we went. It is tremendously expensive to go to a concert there. I don’t know if I ever will do it, but I bet it is really spectacular.