Cybermen in Cardiff: visiting the Dr Who Experience

[caption id="attachment_4030" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Robert at the Dr Who experience in Cardiff[/caption]

Robert, who's 12, writes:

We went to Cardiff especially to see the Dr Who Experience – as I’m a big Dr Who fan. Let me tell you what it was like...

The Doctor Who Experience is made up of two parts, and the first is an interactive experience where you have to help the Doctor escape from a giant time-distorting octopus. We started by getting our passes that allowed us to enter “the Gallifrey Museum”. These passes changed colour and vibrated throughout the experience which was really cool and made you feel part of the story. After entering the museum we watched a live feed of the Tardis in which, coincidentally, the giant octopus attacked. We were hurried out of the room by our tour-guide and made our way into section. After a video call from the Doctor himself and an interactive “ride” where we controlled the Tardis, our group travelled through time to help save the Doctor. We met up with some classic Doctor Who villains along the way, some of the rooms were incredibly designed and the whole thing was very exciting. However, the guide who took us through was very unenergetic and seemed quite bored by the whole thing, which was a real shame.

[caption id="attachment_4052" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Two versions of Davros![/caption]

After we had saved the universe, we entered a massive two-floor exhibition about Doctor Who. This held a number of Tardis from different series, and included the control panels, not just the blue police boxes.

The exhibition was also home to outfits from all series, including costumes used for the different Doctors, monsters and companions. There were even all the costumes from this current series and they were the real outfits they used in the show. There were plenty of other props and objects from the show’s history too, most with an information board telling you what the specific costume was. I liked it, and so did my parents as it went back over many years so it was very nostalgic for them!

[caption id="attachment_4053" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Cybermen through the ages[/caption]

Personally I really liked the section where it showed how the cyberman had evolved - it included different cybermen through the ages. You could also get into a dalek and pretend to be one.

[caption id="attachment_4027" align="alignnone" width="800"] Robert as a dalek[/caption]

There was also a green screen where you could get your photo taken in a Doctor Who scene which was cool (although not necessarily cool enough to spend money on!)

Overall I had a really fun day out. Personally, I enjoyed the exhibition more than the experience as it felt a bit childish and there was no real interaction. But I would still recommend it all to Dr Who fans. And there's a great shop at the end!

The Dr Who Experience is open until September 9th. Admission costs £14 per adult if booked online (£16 on the door), and £9.75 per child (£11.75 on the door). A family ticket is £41. You can find more information here.
We were given free admission in order to write about it but the Dr Who Experience had no input into this blog post at all.

 

More about Dr Who - the Dr Who Festival, by Daniel