5 girls and three boys. Oh yes, we formed a nice giggly group. All of us wanted to see Harry Potter III the movie. We also wanted to experience the Imax Dome theatre. So when Adlabs advertised Harry Potter in the Dome Theatre we fell for it – hook, line and sinker. What suckers we were! We pooled our resources and came up with the small fortune required to book the tickets. Mercifully, we did not have to go all the way to Wadala to book the tickets. Net savvy that we were, we booked it online. Cleaver uh?
On the appointed day, I borrowed my dad’s 1965 Morris Minor car and we all piled into it merely weaving in and out of the traffic and pom-pom hooting away anything that threatened to come within inches of my dad’s precious car. He’d have my you-know-what for supper if I so much as got a twiggy-wiggy scratch on his antique. Given the amount of time I too had spent repairing this old gleaming bucket of bolts, I must admit a grudging affection for it myself. At the Sion signal we even had a traffic inspector enquire about the car’s age and how much it costs to maintain etc. - nice chap even let us go before the signal turned green. Oh yea, traffic cops nice guys.
The Imax theatre by the way, is near to Sion railway station - take an auto from there. Do not go for late evening shows at Imax Wadala unless you have your own vehicle – any old rust bucket will do.
Arriving at the Imax theatre was like arriving at some remote God-forsaken place. A few stalls selling pav-baji (what else you expected in amchi Mumbai?), mark the start of your experience. Seeing a whole bunch of beautiful girls arrive, the stall owners brightened up and pounced on us with frightening speed. While the girls shrieked with delight, I was more worried about the car so I quickly steered it into the parking lot.
The whole bunch of us marched to the ticket counter to collect the tickets that we booked and paid for through adlabs website. Seeing no signs above the ticket counters we had to ask around least we end up in the wrong queue.
A close examination of the tickets revealed that there were no ticket numbers. A few enquiries latter, we were patiently standing in a queue that quickly forms to the left of the entrance. You need to be in the queue to secure the best seats. These are located the top most rows and towards the middle.
After a lot of ohh’s, ahh’s and animated chatter, the lights dimmed and the previews of a couple of Imax format films started. I almost fell off the seat. No kiddn! Unless you have the heart of a horse, you need to hang on the non-existent support as you will have an overpowering impulse to dive into the abyss below. Man, the Imax format takes your breath away. A big bonus I had not counted on – my girl friend clutching on to my hand tightly. Ahhh… paisa wasool.
Now comes the bitter part: The moment the Harry Potter film started, in spite of the fact that none of us was a rocket scientists, we realized that this film was not in the Imax format. It was a regular 70mm film being shown in the dome theatre. Result: severe distortion. Even my TV would have been better than this thing. Faslo rae faslo! Cheated. The adlabs people cheated us and the rest of the audience into believing that the Harry Potter film was in the Imax format. We fell for the oldest trick in the book – make believe. Simpletons that we were, just because it was being shown in the dome we thought it was in the Imax format. In India logic and reality are two different things. Lesson learnt.
There was no interval. So full 90 odd minutes latter, hungry and disappointed, we walked down the steps towards the food court. Girls wanted a sandwich and a soda pop each. Eight sandwich’s and seven Soda pop’s should cost us how much? Wrong! It cost us Rs 500 and then some!!! No Kiddn! As if being cheated into watching Harry Potter in the Dome was not enough, we were now being robbed in broad daylight. What a disaster. Expensive tickets to see a badly shown movie, and our pockets picked clean. Now that is what I call an experience.
So guys, if you want to experience the Imax, make 100% sure the film is in the Imax format and don’t forget to carry your own snacks.