There’s always been a whiff of scam about the Immersive Van Gogh experience that’s long been promised in Orlando. From the hard-to-parse differences between competing exhibits with similar names to the lack of an announced venue, something seemed off about bringing Van Gogh’s swirling landscapes to the City Beautiful.
That little gnawing doubt only got stronger when the venue unceremoniously rescheduled all of its dates and ticket times. Now, guests who are finally seeing the attraction (at its not-so-secret or special location inside the convention center) are fuming about the actual experience of seeing sunflowers blown up to terrifying heights.
A Reddit user called the rather expensive lightshow “the biggest scam…I’ve ever attended.” They said the art looked poorly stretched and oddly color-corrected, saying the event amounted to standing in one room watching videos before being shepherded into a large gift shop with poorly made reproductions of art on various items.
“Most of the art on the product in the gift shop, were stretched out, like a bad PowerPoint presentation, and the colors were not the same as the actual art. It felt like everything was brightened,” they wrote.
The original poster said that anyone who enjoyed the exhibit was likely on drugs to make the experience more agreeable. That led another commenter to share that drugs didn’t help.
“No worries there, I was blasted out of my mind and it still sucked,” they wrote.
Another person said they felt like they paid $100 bucks to stand in a dead mall.
“I agree with OP. Went this past Sunday and got bored immediately after getting there. No excitement around the event at all. Looked more like walking into the dead Artegon mall,” they shared. “The highlight of my night was getting a Big Mac meal after we left.”
A few did say they enjoyed the exhibit.
“I personally was expecting a multiroom installation rather than the one large one. From a content perspective, they definitely took liberties with the artwork, cut pasting and overlaying elements and animating brush strokes to the point it isn’t really just van Gogh’s work anymore,” shared one mostly content customer. “But the installation was technically flawless – not one seam between projections, no overlaps on the wall or bleed to other surfaces. Watching one and a half loops was definitely enough, and I won’t need to see it again, but I don’t regret going either.”
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This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2021.