Last year sometime I was made aware of the Cernan Space Center at nearby Triton College in River Grove, IL when a former colleague posted on Facebook about taking her kids there. I’ve been keeping an eye on their show schedule and was pretty excited to learn that for the month of March they were doing a laser show called Ray of Light on Friday & Saturday evenings that included the following songs:
Ray of Light — Madonna
Perfect (perfecto mix) — Smashing Pumpkins
Wild Wild West — Will Smith
Praise You — Fat Boy Slim
Bodyrock — Moby
Confusion (Reconstruction mix) — New Order
Born Slippy — Under World
Last night we decided to check it out. First off, the space center itself is very tiny. Most of it is made up of the theater/planetarium which is set up like a smaller version of the Omniplex theater in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. There’s a gift shop on the premise that has space-themed items like astronaut ice cream and moon rocks. Our show was at 9 pm and started a bit late since the 7:30 pm show ran over.
When we first took our seats we were the only two people there. The guy running the laser show asked if we wanted to see the main show first or the mini laser show featuring some Beatles songs. I said I didn’t care, whatever he wanted, so he said he’d start the main show.
The show started off with the first song listed above and was accompanied by abstract patterns drawn by multicolored lasers which reminded me a little of the old visualizations Windows screensaver. Certain parts got really trippy which was fun, and kinda made me yearn for those days in college if you get my drift (and if you don’t, nevermind). All the songs had different patterns and some even had storylines told with animated drawings which I didn’t care for as much. My favorite visualizations were during Perfect by Smashing Pumpkins and my least favorite were during Wild Wild West by Will Smith (never was a fan of that song anyway).
A few people came in after the show started which was a bit distracting, not least of which because they chose to sit two rows in front of us when the entire theater was empty except for where we were sitting. Not only that but they smelled kind of bad (I wish I was kidding) but at least the smell dissipated after they had settled into their seats.
Once the main show was over the lights came up and the guy running it said that concluded the show. I walked over to his booth and asked about the Beatles mini laser show which was listed on the website and he, obliviously forgetting it was me he had spoken to before, said “when I first started the show there were only two people in here and they said they didn’t want to see it”, to which I replied, “No, I said I didn’t care what order you played it in” so he started that show a minute later, to which one of the other people there said, “Good, I was waiting for that”. Silly guy! I’m not mad, but shouldn’t he have played it anyway once more people came into the theater even if he thought I had said I didn’t want to see it? Tickets are $10 a person so everyone should get their money’s worth. It was only three more songs anyway (which, admittedly were rather boring) and overall the show was only an hour long.
In any case, it was a fun night out doing something different. Although based on the song choice and laser technology, we both speculated that they haven’t changed that show since it was originally created back in 1999!
I’d like to go back to the space center at some point to check out the monthly skywatch as well as see a holiday-themed laser show for Halloween and Christmas.