Star Trek: The Experience Closing

[ImagineerAtHeart]

Star Trek: The Experience, located at the Las Vegas Hilton in Las Vegas, is officially closing.

On Sunday, June 29th, Cedar Fair held a meeting with the employees at Star Trek: The Experience to inform them of the closing.

The lease ST:TE had with the Hilton is up at the end of the year. Negotiations over a new contract were unsuccesful. The current contract requires Cedar Fair to return the area ST:TE occupies back to its original state. As such, ST:TE will be closing down in September instead of December when the contract expires.

The final day of operation will be Monday, Labor Day, September 1st, 2008.

If you have never been, or if you want to see it one last time, you have roughly 2 months left to go see it.

The facility has declined during it's 10 years of operation, (opening day was January 4th, 1998) but it still puts on a good show. Even if you don't want to fork over the $49.99 to experience the attractions, you can still dine at Quark's Bar, or check out the retail promenade one last time.

[techskip]

Honestly not a Star Trek fan, but I thank you for the info. If anyone has any pictures or TR's I would love to see them.

[vfire]

I'll make a pilgrimage in July to see it once before it closes. I won't be staying at the Hilton though, screw 'em. Thanks for the info.

[BC_DisneyGeek]

Sorry I didn't get to see the Borg film, as the original attraction was very well done. I wonder if they can salvage this and transplant it into a theme park somewhere?

[ImagineerAtHeart]

Sorry I didn't get to see the Borg film, as the original attraction was very well done. I wonder if they can salvage this and transplant it into a theme park somewhere?

I imagine they will just scrap it and send the various parts, projectors, simulators, etc... to some of the other parks. Possibly Knott's or Great America, since they have sent some of the surplus their before.

Paramount is usually picky about their liscensed items. I doubt you'll see the rides actually getting transplanted. Especially with the Star Trek exhibition in San Diego, I doubt they'll want something to compete.

[RooBear]

We were hoping to go the weekend of September 18th, when we'll be out there for my Mother's renewal of vows. Oh well. Those poopieheads. I am not a fan of Las Vegas, this was one of the few draws for me.

Peace?
Roo

[DisneyFan28]

is there parts of ST that will stay or is it everything( retail,cafe,weddings,4d ride,museum)

and what will the old area become?

[Retrocool]

Well shoot, I never got to go there and see this, and now I guess I never will.

Anyone able to tell me how they did the transport beam effect? Was it like a set change or what?

[GhostHost2]

I imagine they will just scrap it and send the various parts, projectors, simulators, etc... to some of the other parks. Possibly Knott's or Great America, since they have sent some of the surplus their before.

Paramount is usually picky about their liscensed items. I doubt you'll see the rides actually getting transplanted. Especially with the Star Trek exhibition in San Diego, I doubt they'll want something to compete.

Well they can also transfer it to one of the former Paramount parks such as Great America and give it a great name like Flight Deck or The Crypt.

Anyway this is really sad news, and Star Trek: The Experience being closed will be a major reason not to go to Vegas for me.

It was my favorite part of Las Vegas by far.

[ImagineerAtHeart]

is there parts of ST that will stay or is it everything( retail,cafe,weddings,4d ride,museum)

and what will the old area become?

It's all going. The space is going to be returned to whatever it looked like before ST:TE was there.

The Hilton is supposed to have some sort of plan for the area. If they follow the typical trend of Casinos lately. It will be some sort of pricey restaurant or a night club.

[ImagineerAtHeart]

[quote=GhostHost2;2928423]Well they can also transfer it to one of the former Paramount parks such as Great America and give it a great name like Flight Deck or The Crypt.

Anyway this is really sad news, and Star Trek: The Experience being closed will be a major reason not to go to Vegas for me.

It was my favorite part of Las Vegas by far.[/quote]


I know I am going to miss it. It was the closest thing to an actual theme park Las Vegas actually has. The Adventuredome and the new Springs Preserve don't count.


It was a great place to work, even though you had to interact with 21st Century Hew-mans.

[Athlonacon]

This is truly sad news. I am a huge Star Trek fan and have watched the franchise slowly deteriorate over the past 10 years, but this might be the final nail in the coffin for Star Trek as we know it. There will always be the new film, which will probably be successful, but it will take Star Trek into a more action-oriented direction rather than the highly intelligent sci-fi series it used to be.

I always made an effort to head over to the Las Vegas Hilton to at the very least eat at Quark's Bar. I'm not sure if this is the death of Star Trek or the death of the fun Las Vegas (before it turns into luxury condos, $50-a-plate restaurants and Broadway theater), but it sure was fun while it lasted. I miss the unpretentious Vegas, where everything had a theme and the main attraction was just plain fun...no ludicrisly expensive shows and restaurants.

The thing that disappoints me is not the destruction of the attraction, it was getting a little long in the tooth, it's the fact that it marks a distinct ending to a once flourishing franchise. It was hard to imagine in the early 90's that Star Trek could ever fade, let alone die. It was such a seemingly enduring franchise and we had 2 full incredible casts running concurrently! Even if the new film succeeds wildly, the franchise will be a victim of its own success and be more suited to the reality-show crowd that killed off the show in the first place.

I remember the first time I went there in 2000. It was literally as if I had died and gone to heaven. Star Trek music, episodes, characters, sets, props, models, and rides were everywhere I turned. It was as if someone saw deep within my wildest dreams of bliss and built an entire museum, restaurant and ride on them. Then to actually be on the Enterprise D's transporter, bridge and turbo lift...it was better than anything I ever could've imagined! To be immersed in that level of Star Trek, I don't think there's anything else on this planet that could've matched that kind of pure bliss.

I'd just like to thank the actors and designers and everyone who made this attraction what it was all these years. It was truly an amazing experience and one that I will never forget for the rest of my life.

[GhostHost2]

I'm not sure if this is the death of Star Trek or the death of the fun Las Vegas (before it turns into luxury condos, $50-a-plate restaurants and Broadway theater), but it sure was fun while it lasted. I miss the unpretentious Vegas, where everything had a theme and the main attraction was just plain fun...no ludicrisly expensive shows and restaurants.

Vegas has been going downhill for a long time. While my first and so far only visit to Vegas was in 2005, but I have heard of what was there before I went. The pirates show at Treasure Island use to be like Pirates of the Caribbean instead of a burlesque show. The MGM Grand used to have a huge indoor amusemnt park that was way better than the Adventuredome. Plus, the Luxor had a boat ride through Egypt which sounded awesome.

All the Adventuredome is, is standard unthemed rides. Vegas should have highly immersive Disney quality attractions.

[Athlonacon]

It's interesting for as much as Disney does wrong, compared to the other parks they are still head and shoulders above everything. While they have taken a creative dive in some areas, one thing Disney does that other theme parks don't do is keep their rides thoroughly updated. It would be absolutely unheard of for Disneyland to let a ride go 10 years untouched the way the Star Trek Experience was.

While The Experience was open 24 hours a day and didn't have the luxury of shutting down for a while, there are still plenty of other parks that do close that have let their rides deteriorate such as Magic Mountain and Knott's Berry Farm.

We hold Disneyland to a REALLY high standard, possibly even an impossible standard, but it's the lack of maintenance in rides like Star Trek: The Experience that remind us of just how much Disney does right with Disneyland. When it premiered in 1998, that area was every bit as amazing and themed as Disney themselves could've produced. But by 2008, the ride film was horribly outdated (the 1998 version of The Strip?) and nothing had changed since the day it opened.

Being a Star Trek fan is a *tough* job, considering the corporations behind it. Thankfully we always have Disneyland to fall back on. Even when that park deteriorates, like during the Pressler/Harriss era, it's still the best theme park in the world. That's pretty amazing when you really think about it.

[MickeyMania]

The MGM Grand used to have a huge indoor amusemnt park that was way better than the Adventuredome.

It was outdoors and it was awful. They tried to spend some money to sort of clean it up and added a bungee tower, and that didn't do anything. They had a ripoff of Space Mountain and one of the roller coasters was called (and I'm not kidding): The New Roller Coaster.

The licensed mascot/theme for the park was a newspaper comic strip called Tumbleweeds. Never heard of it? Me neither! But it was cheap enough that a bunch of generic looking cartoon cowboy suits could wander around while a guy in a cartoony MGM Lion costume joined them from time to time.

Plus, the Luxor had a boat ride through Egypt which sounded awesome.

The boats just floated around the casino level of the hotel around the edges. Guests had to ride them to get to their elevator lobbies but they were also being marketed as a tourist attraction as well, so the result was a lot of angry guests who felt like it was taking forever to get to their rooms because they had to wait in line behind a bunch of non-guests and float around in a dinghy just to get to their rooms.

Again, it's like they tried to out-Disney but screwed up. Disney's theming never negatively affects the guest experience or the efficiency of a location, and if it does then they change it.

Vegas should have highly immersive Disney quality attractions.

No. It's a different market and land values make it hard to justify a theme park now.