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Aggressive auditoriums

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Web site for the Disney auditorium show about bugs

Disney has auditoriums that spray you with rain, shake your seat, pop things up behind or under you, and produce other effects that come off the screen or stage and down among the audience. The show is "realistic" but mostly it is surprising, and produces satisfying yelps and screams. The Museum of Texas History in Austin has a similar auditorium that "does" the windy dust bowl, a light rain, a rattlesnake under your seat, and a plague of locusts flying by your neck.

This is not exactly virtual reality and may be more akin to experimental theater than to theme parks. But like a theme park it produces a doubling of the audience's attention, feeling the realism of the startling effect and also wondering how it was done and what will come next.