An un-Innovative trip to Innovative film city

I am writing again after almost a month now. Yes, that is how much time my friends and I took to find one common holiday when everyone would be free. These guys have been screaming hoarse about their "Film City", through TV ads, newspaper ads and FM radio commercials too. It was time we college friends went out together- our last trip was to Bheemeshwari fishing camp way back in Oct 2008. It has taken 4 months to find 1 single weekend when all of us would be free!

And so we set out this Sunday, to spend an entire day at Innovative film city. It is located near Bidadi, just past Wonderla. One of my friends, Ajay had bought a Swift and he wanted to get every possible chance at driving it on the highway (even though Film city is just around 30km from Bangalore). This was also my first highway drive in the Accent so my hands were itching to get at the wheel too. Another friend of mine, Ashwin (a 100% Royal Enfield enthusiast) who had bought a Thunderbird cruiser was eager to get us all going on 4 bikes, but Ajay and I outnumbered him later ;)


We started off on Sunday at 8am. There were 7 of us in 2 cars. Ajay took the NICE road to join us at Kengeri whilst I took the Uttarahalli road. From then on we continued till we stopped for breakfast at Kadu Mane restaurant just past the Wonderla entrance on Mysore road. After cursing the waiter for delaying the service and bringing saltless Vada, we resumed our journey to Film city. Ajay had already been here once and he knew the way quite well. A left at the Bidadi cross just past Kirloskar factory saw us entering a narrow road. After a kilometre or 2, we came across the Toyota Kirloskar factory set in a gigantic, mind-blowing campus. However, my desire to visit the Toyota campus was soon rubbished by my friends :(


We reached Film city a bit earlier than expected- in fact it had just opened up at 10am. A couple of coconuts for everyone saw us quenching our thirst with Elneer (coconut water) before entering film city. The saga at the ticket counter is worth mentioning here. The "helpful" staff guy told us there were 3 packages- one was that we could pay 50 Rs. per head as entrance fee and then we would have to shell out 50-100 Rs. for every attraction thereafter. The second one was- at Rs. 699/- per head, we would be getting 12 coupons each which we could use for any attractions we wanted to visit. The third one was- at Rs. 1199/- we could use any of the attractions any number of times we wanted. He said since we were 7, if we went for the 699/- package we would be eligible for 2 memberships (which actually costs Rs. 5000/-) and we would be getting 50 extra coupons if we paid the extra 100 Rs (700 X 7 = 4900 + 100Rs.) . Only after everything was finalized and the bill was paid out did we realize that we were duped! 50 coupons / 5 people = 10 coupons per head, and the 2 members could use their cards for most (read "most", not "all") of the attractions. We were all along thinking that we each would get 12 coupons per head (for each of us paying 699/-) plus 50 extra coupons for the group. If you ever visit this place, beware of such marketing tricks.

And so we entered film city, walking down the main alley to spot a few familiar brands who have put up stores there- we even saw a Bata shoe store! The first attraction we visited was called "Innovative Talkies". Set in an olden days kind-of theatre style, there was Sholay and an old Rajkumar movie (Kannada) playing. The theatre was an old, rundown tent and you had 3 choices to sit- on the floor (on sand), on the benches or on hard chairs just like in the olden days. After spending 10 minutes watching the Rajkumar movie, we moved on to the next attraction.

It was a "Haunted Mansion" supposedly. With coffins, wooden skeletons and headless horsemen in the courtyard, small kids would probably get the fright of their lives. Repeated efforts by the "ghosts" to spook us out were in vain, and we ended up taking photographs with the ghosts inside the mansion :) We then promised to never waste the remaining coupons on such childish things. Our next stop was the Go-karting track. We had some great fun racing each other but the track guys cheated us in the number of laps we were supposed to be allowed to race. The coupon claims 4 laps, but the track guys stopped us at the third lap- very annoying indeed. The 4-D Cinema wasn't all that good either- Wonderla's 3D Cinema was better with more force feedback and virtual reality experience.

We moved on to our next attraction- "Mirror Maze". We were given plastic gloves, presumably to avoid fingerprint smudges inside. This was a good one- Mirrors were set along a winding path from entrance to exit and believe me, it was really difficult finding the exit. Groping around trying to see which was a mirror and which was the actual path saw us stuck in there for almost half an hour going around in circles! After this we decided to break for lunch- not many good restaurants are in the food court- what they call the 'Grub Hub'. There was plenty of choice for Non-vegetarians but very little for veggies- hardly a few restaurants had anything on offer for us. We finally chose a familiar name- Pizza Corner and got to eat some really cold pizzas (with a shortage of tomato ketchup sachets) after waiting for nearly an hour.

After lunch we got to face a cricket bowling machine which hurled balls at different speeds and places- giving us some batting practice.This was a good time pass and all of us had a go at this activity. It was great fun. We then visited "Fossil Museum"- dinosaur museum containing facts and fossils of dinosaurs. They even had some dinosaur working models emitting grunts and snorts and swishing their tail or head from side to side- another kiddish place.

We then went to the Arcade gaming facility and tried our hands at different games- Car racing, Bike racing, cannon shooting, Boat riding, flying a war helicopter and controlling a robot! After spending nearly an hour we visited the "Ripley's believe it or not" museum- This was awesome- in fact the only thing worth visiting- amazing collection of unbelievable events in history- collections of prehistoric articles, world war era articles, amazing inventions and discoveries, etc.

The "Louis Tussaud's Wax museum" wasn't all that great, with many wax statues hardly resembling the people they claimed to be! James bond star Pierce Brosnan's wax model looked more like George Bush and the Nelson Mandela wax figure looked like Morgan Freeman!

A couple of hours more saw us relaxing at the artificial beach which is quite well built- with natural sand and artificial waves in the water. There were a lot of people that day (being a Sunday) and the beach was overcrowded. It reminded us more of Kumbh Mela than of a beach. The water maintenance needs to improve a lot.

To end it all, we went to the shooting range called "Wild West". Use a rifle or a pistol and shoot down bottles situated around 40-50 metres from you. We got 10 shots. After each of us had a turn at the shooting, it was 6.30pm; all of us were tired and decided it was time to leave for home.



The return journey was quite pleasant. We took the NICE road deviation from Mysore road, to hit Bannerghatta road in less than an hour. I would attribute that travel duration to the decent speeds we could maintain on NICE. We stopped for dinner at SLV Ragigudda in JP Nagar, after which we dispersed, carrying home an empty wallet but memories of a good day spent together with friends. The next day saw most of us going late to office, courtesy the fatigue of Sunday's trip!




My opinion about this place is - It isn't worth the money if you are all adults wanting to have some fun. This is more of a children's theme park. It is ideal for a young family with school-going kids or couples wanting some 'romantic' outings. Most rides are childish- I would prefer Wonderla than this any day. Also, everything is overpriced- a glass of coke would set you back by 50 Rs, a single Samosa costs you 40 Rs. I had assumed the entire expense to be around Rs. 1000/- Rs. but ended up spending more than Rs. 2000/-. Last but not the least, be careful while you choose the packages or else you would end-up paying more and getting lesser coupons and still feel proud about it for a while (before you realize a while later that the staff guy outwitted you!)

On the personal front, my car was overdue for service. This Thursday I was forced to give the accent for service (even though I didn't want to part with the bill amount) and the regular servicing bill at Advaith Hyundai came up to a whopping 7k! My father kept grumbling that he hasn't spent that much on servicing for the Swift totally for the entire 3 years that we've had it! In Maruti we can just walk into the service centre in the mornings and give the car for service. In Hyundai you have to book a slot 2-3 days in advance and they come and pick up your car at your doorstep at the designated time. As much as I hate to, I have to admit that Hyundai is definitely priced around 4X times higher than that of Maruti's rates for almost everything- be it labour charges or spare parts. On the brighter side, I see that the Hyundai guys are much more professional and prompt. Also, the overall quality of the servicing has been great so I have to console myself with that :( Fortunately for me and my wallet, the Accent is a super-reliable, zero-maintenance car and the servicing interval is only once a year :-)

Apart from that, I have been pretty busy this entire month and have been staying back almost everyday to complete my work. I am now a Nokia employee looking forward to a great career with lots of challenges and fun. What's more? I get to experience the latest Nokia phones too! (Waiting to get an E71i or N79 from the company).

Until next time, ciao
KK