Hemisfèric — Attraction in Valencia

Review for middle of October 2023, my second visit here in 17 years, as a tourist:

Exterior: Hemisfèric is an architectural masterpiece as all Ciudad des Arts buildings. A visual treat for all ages. Nice lit by the sun (during the day) or illuminated by artificial lights at night. I enjoyed walking & biking around it.

Interior: Here things could be improved: -everything is underground, like tickets, toilets access to "cinema" itself. -there is a cafeteria, a gift shop. -there are 2 kiosks for selling tickets, one of the wasn't accepting my card (no contactless, no inserting card with chip, no sliding the magnetic strip), so I had to redo the booking where it worked flawlessly from the first try. (yes, I was lazy and didn't book online since the beginning) -exiting from cinema forces you again to go underground (pass near cafeteria and souvenir shop) all in crowded spaces with people stopping like animals wondering about something. The guard did not let me exit towards the exterior where other non paying tourist were walking uninterrupted... -cinema - it shows it's age (it definitely requires an update). cinema video 🎭: It's nice to have everything projected on the inside of a sphere, however considering 2020+ TV screens I have access to experience is not that massive. I was bothered by the lower image quality projected. 🚫 cinema audio 🎶: a lousy experience if you're not Spanish native. Sound is projected in the chamber in Spanish, and for English/French you get a headset to wear. The headset is not covering your ears, so I constantly heard Spanish from the room and moments later the English from the headset which was at maximum level. (above comments for the Oceans movie)

I did return to bring my kid into this experience, being the first time she enjoyed it a lot. I won't return for a projection here another time unless they bring a new technology.

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Very disappointed with the staff and the facilities. I went with my sister and my mother. The man that was guiding all the group push a lot of people into the elevator and the elevator, of course, broke. Leaving us for a few minutes trap there, then the door open and we were force to use the stairs. Which you would think it is not a big deal, which I agree but my mother is an older woman for pain in her knees she cannot use stairs. The man was in a hurry and left us there, guiding the rest of the group, another woman came when the man left us and tried to make the elevator work but it was no use. We requested a refund since this was their problem and they weren't providing any solution, they refused and we argued and decided to leave empty handed.

Muy decepcionada con el personal y las instalaciones. Fui con mi hermana y mi madre. El hombre que estaba guiando nuestro grupo subio mucha gente al elevador y, por supuesto, el elevador se rompió. Dejándonos unos minutos atrapados ahí, luego de que la puerta se abriera nos vimos obligados a usar las escaleras. Lo que se pensaría que no es un gran problema, lo que estoy de acuerdo, pero mi mama es grande ya y por dolor en sus rodillas es imposible para ella subir escaleras. El hombre estaba apurado asique nos dejo ahí, guiando al resto del grupo, otra mujer vino tratando de hacer andar el elevador pero fue inútil. Pedimos la devolución de las entradas ya que este era un problema de ellos y no nos estaban dando una solución, no quisieron devolvernos el dinero, discutimos y al final decidimos...

WASTE OF MONEY - At least for movie about Amazone.

First start with the positive. It's a beautiful architectural building. Worth of visiting. (Because of that still 2 stars)

Now for the rest. The function as movie theatre Firstly you get 70's model earphones. Very heavy, uncomfortable and bad sound quality. I took them of after 5 min.

The movie about the Amazon was absolutely not suited for 3D/IMAX. Picture was stretched, bended and very low resolution. Like you're watching 720p on a 4K screen. Also the image was way out of focus and not sharp.

The movie itself had a bad script with the worse acting. Also the movie was originally in English but dubbed in Spanish. No issue if they had isolated the voice stream and moved it to the headset. But the Spanish was coming from the speakers and the English on the headset was completely overshadowed and impossible to follow. Like someone is speaking Spanish in one and English in the other ear.

So tip for the theatre. Invest on modern over the ear lightweight headsets Isolate the voice stream from the test of the sound and play it solely on the headset, or don't play the sound in the theatre at all and only play on the headset. Only play movies that are suited for 3D/IMAX.

Perhaps other movies are better and also when you're Spanish and you don't need the headset, it's better, but I only had this time to base my...