Futuroscope!

On Monday, I went with Elodie, her daughter, her friend and her friend's son to Futuroscope!  I've totally wanted to go there for the entirety of the 5 months I've been here, so I was crazy excited.

I want a house in this style.

Mostly, they have what I'd call "attractions", rather than actual rides.  There are a lot of cool 3-D rides, a lot of which have motion too.  Think "Star Tours" at Disney World, only with 3-D added as well.  Very cool.  Especially one called "Animals of the Future", or something along those lines, where you looked at these habitats with these goggle things on and there were holograms of what scientists predict the animals of the future will look like - and they would actually come over and "interact" with you, and respond to what you did.

Although I suspect this one wasn't so much predicted by a scientist, but rather the designers of World of Warcraft.

There was one actual ride, where you sat in these robot arms and then the arms "danced" to music, choreographed by Kamil Ouali (the guy who did Cleopatre and Le Roi Soleil).  I went twice, and once I got "I Love Rock and Roll" and the other time I got a French song I didn't know.

It's hard to tell, but this is Elodie and Juliene.

 It was, in typical fashion, pouring, and since I'm from Spokane I of course absolutely refuse to wear a winter coat if it's not literally freezing, and since before that I was from North Carolina I think umbrellas are for sissies.  Needless to say I wasn't exactly appropriately dressed, but I sucked it up.  As all good Pacific Northwesterners know, weather is not an excuse not to do something that you want to do. 

I took this picture during the worst of the weather.  Hey, at least it kept the crowds down.

Balloooooooons?

About halfway through the day, someone pointed out that you could go rent headsets (for free, even!) so that you could listen to the movies in your native language.  Of course I went and got one, and was treated to the most stereotypical French voice over of all time in a movie about Van Gogh. "een 1875, Van Gogh decided zat 'e would..." I'm sure the people around me wondered why I was giggling.  On the other end of the spectrum, the light show at the end of the day was obviously translated by an American with an amazing sense of humor, because they used phrases like "what up" and all kinds of other slang.  If the Van Gogh movie was translated by Pepe le Pew, well then the light show was translated by Barney Stinson.

I was just waiting for one of the characters to say this.