Sesame Street has gone through many changes over the years, but it has consistently remained one of the best educational programs for kids to watch. Over the last 5 years, much to my dismay, Sesame Street has gone from hand puppets, to a mixture of hand puppets and computer generated puppets. Along with that, the writing has been slipping, and the satire that entertained the adults has gone to kiddie territory, which is fine considering it's a kids' show, but with an attraction like this it's not fine. An amusement park attraction needs to be fun for both kids and adults, and this was kind of fun, I guess, but not one of the better 4-D attractions.
The Sesame Street Muppets were getting ready to make a big movie for the audience (The people going into the theater), but the projector broke. Luckily, Elmo figured they could just use their imagination to make the movie. So what we get is the imagination of Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, Telly, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and Elmo, and to go along with this, the audience is treated to some cool 3-D tricks, and a whole bunch of water dumped on them, to really give them the feeling of being the Atlantic Ocean I guess.
The 3-D here is really good. There are very few times where you can see 3 images. They come together as one nicely. The pre-show is strictly kiddie fare, so I suggest you only see it if you have a kid with you, if you want to know the plot setup, or if you're a fan of Prarie Dawn, Zoe, Rosita and The Count, because they only appear in the pre-show. The show gets progressively better as it goes along. It starts with this lame song from Big Bird. I would've preferred the Sesame Street theme song, but whatever. The imaginative stories these characters come up with are kind of amusing. Cookie Monster's story of the monster cookie was the best, because of the simple but great sets. The character of Telly seems to be mixed up with Muppet character Gonzo. Gonzo's the one with the chicken fetish doing weird stunts with them, not Telly. I hated the bad music throughout, and would've preferred no soundtrack.
There were a couple of strange jokes here, that just seemed odd to put in Sesame Street. The first is Oscar talking about Bob's septic tank. I didn't realize defecation was an issue on Sesame Street, but I guess I was wrong. The other joke is Oscar talking about being gassy. Again, these two very mild toilet jokes just felt strange. No kid would think twice about them, but I did. Oscar's a pretty raunchy character compared to the rest though, I guess, so it fit with his character.
Overall, this is an entertaining 3-D attraction, but Jim Henson's Muppet Vision 3-D is far superior, as are many other 3-D movies.
My rating: *** out of ****. 19 mins.
