como park's indoor rainforest
january 09, 2007 @
22:32
link
We went over and checked out the new Rainforest exhibit at the Como Park Conservatory the other day. The official website claims the "$2.1 million exhibit is a total emersion experience which allows guests to visit an authentic neo-tropical rainforest and explore the relationships between plants and animals." Um, yeah, 'total emersion' is maybe overselling it a bit - all those people waddling around in parkas kind of wrecks the 'emersion' - but my nutshell review remains this: pretty effing mint and totally worth the visit.
The exhibit is an out-and-back loop that runs through the looks-giant-on-the-outside-but-feels-oddly-small-on-the-inside new wing of the Conservatory. You get to see some cool turtles, a really, really neat giant fish tank, an anaconda, some spiders, and of course a ton of awesome plants. There's other stuff, too. It's all very well done. Especially the fist tank. I could sit in front of that thing for hours. Except for the fact that they have giant buckets of tarantulas right next to the fish tank. Creepers. Move along.
Also this: it's super duper humid in there. Super. Duper. Every minute or so, steam comes blasting out of these hidden steam canons, JUST LIKE IT DOES IN THE RAINFOREST. If you wear glasses, be prepared for them to *seriously* fog up when you first walk in. If you have a camera, be prepared for it to seriously fog up, too. The awesome turtles are the first thing you 'see' when you enter, and it was both funny and sad to watch people whip out their new fancy Christmas cameras only to find that their lenses were glazed over with a think rainforest fog. (Mine took upwards of 15 minutes to clear up.)
We ate our picnic lunch in the new 'restaurant' in the expansion. They didn't yell at us for bringing in outside food, which is good, because there really wasn't anywhere else to eat and I [naturally] wasn't jonsing to pay $6.50 for a kids corndog meal. Yikes.
After lunch junior and I tooled around the zoo for a few minutes. The monkeys were in especially good spirits. They must have known we were coming.
Get over there.
Como Park Conservatory [comozoo]
Tropical Encounters Exhibit [comozoo]
ranty thought:
I LOVELOVELOVE the Conservatory!
wife thought:
Yes, a good time was had by all. Unfortunately, the website writers probably meant to say "immersion experience" rather than "emersion."
dave thought:
that's why i used the quotes, to try and avoid looking stupid. for once. because i understand that the point of the exhibit is to immerse yourself in the rain forest, not emerge in it. though with all that steam in there, i suppose i may have emerged a few times. so maybe they were right all along and we both didn't get what they were saying. i doubt it, though.