A visit to innovative film city bangalore

After a lot of (mis)communication, some 7 of us finally set out to visit innovative film city (ifc) near bangalore. Its located near Bidadi off the Bangalore-Mysore highway. There is a deviation to film city at around 3 kms from the Wonder-la gate. We initially planned to be there before the gates open at around 10.30 am. Since we had planned the visit on a Saturday, the morning started for most of us at around 10 am. We almost cancelled the plan since we were late according to our plan. But finally the enthusiasm overtook our lazyness. I had stayed back at Harish-Adi-Rajashekar-Mudit's (HARM) place previous night after celebrating Rajashekar's birthday at Leela palace. Varun, Modi and Ravish came over, everyone had some breakfast at HARM and we were all ready on bikes and the car by 11.30.
The Mysore road was as usual busy till the Rajarajeshwari gate and then it was quite smooth drive. After witnessing a road block due to a very strange accident (we still are not sure how the accident could have occured), we finally arrived the the ifc at around 12.30. We had only an afternoon to enjoy everything that ifc boasts about. There are two kind of entry tickets to ifc
1. The basic Rs.50 ticket which is just the entry and tickets have to be bought inside for individual museum/activity
2. The VIP pass Rs.699 which includes the ticket price for all the entries inside.
Without any second thought we opted the 1 st option of entry only and selectively purchased the entry tickets inside.

After a couple of snaps at the entrance we entered what is known as the main street. Its supposed to be a shopping street but at the time being only Bata showroom is up. We had read the reviews of ifc before hand so we knew what exactly to visit - wax museum, 4D theatre, mirror maze, Ripley's belive it or not (which was unfortunately closed for maintenance that day). Wax museum was good with most of the statues better than what we had expected it would be. More or less real life sized (we weren't sure of the real life size of those celebrities :)) You can have a look at these pictures on my online photo album
The next was to watch the 4D movie. Most of liked it, Modi didn't feel it was worth 100 bucks though. The 4th dimension is there are nozzles around to spray water, release air/smoke. Harish and Adi even felt some tickling tentacles near their legs. Others didnt feel it... we finally concluded it was because of our thick trousers that we didn't feel it. If you want to feel every 4th Dimension, a thin trouser is recommended :) Overall, its a must watch. There are some good video games in the same complex.
Had some lunch at the food court - there are options though not very good - udupi anand bhavan, pizza corner, some kabaab centres, north indian thali etc. Had a filling lunch and it was time for the mysterious mirror maze.
We had read very good comments about the mirror maze and hence had saved it for the last. It was indeed good. Ravish suggested hide-and-seek and it turned out to be good fun. Not very easy to distinguish between real and virtual images. The best at IFC.
We didn't have anything else planned but had around 2 hours to spend. Thats when we spotted the roller skates indoor stadium. We quickly decided to give it a try... Modi opted out and without any choice he had to gaurd all our belongings while rest of us were in the arena! We were all geared up in next 15 minutes will rollers, helmet, knee cap etc. As soon as I stood up after wearing all the gear I fell down (I was on rollers :)) The next 1 hour was fun. Varun and Adi had previous experience and were all over the place. Harish fell atleast 3 times. I never left the side railings and hence didnt fall. Ravish and Rajashekar were visibly tired within minutes and quit. Modi had the last laugh staying outside - photographing, video graphing and making fun of us... saala. But if you haven't tried the rollers yet, its a very good place. No time limit, 50 bucks and unlimited fun.
Since we had read the reviews, we didn't even thought of going to Fossil museum. There was some fossil search competition going on. Varun was constantly searching around one pretty girl there throught the search.
There was one singing contest at some booth. You can choose the song you want to sing from a huge database. The lyrics appears on the TV screen and there is background music. You need to sing looking at the lyrics. Only trouble is you voice will be heard on a loud speaker and hence we thought its a risk :) Finally we convinced the organizers to sing as a group. We chose the hindi song - 'Pyaar hame kis mode pe ley aaya' since its relative tune-less :) Unfortunately they didnt have it in their database, but still let us sing. We started off and we pitied the people around us. The organizers must have felt sorry for the audience and one of their DJs joined along with us to sing. Modi, however, restrained from making any sound on microphone :)
Finally we visited the miniature city - totaly waste except one artificial water falls. It has the film city's name on a small hill shaped rock in the hollywood style. Didn't good good pics there because of poor lighting.
We left the ifc at around 7pm. Had dinner at a dabha midway and reached home at round 10pm.
Overall, the ifc is a good 1 day outing. Don't expect too much of visual pleasure. It is still incomplete yet a very good outing for a day. It doesn't even cost you much - around 500 bucks including the lunch.
I did a crazy thing there at ifc. There is a cricket game. A machine shoots tennis balls at you and you need to bat. If you achieve some target score, you can play few more overs for free. A couple of balls came out of the practice area and one of them got stuck in a bush there. Modi pointed it out and I flicked it :)