Flyover's New Show: Awaken Canada

​The first time I saw Flyover Canada, it got me in the maple leaf feelies.  This was back in 2013, and I had recently finished the first edition of The Great Canadian Bucket List.  It felt especially poignant seeing Canada’s sprawling, diverse landscape on a 65-foot spherical screen, suspended on a moving chair that banked and dipped with the movement of flight.  The visual and sensory sensation of soaring over familiar cities and oceans, icecaps and prairies brought a tear to my eye.  For everyone else, it was impossible to leave the theatre without a sense of awe, wonder and pride, whether you had personally visited any of these places or not.  Located at Canada Place in Vancouver, I added Flyover to the Western Canada Bucket List and future editions, and have since taken a half dozen visitors for the ride.  It’s the perfect way to give anyone a powerful impression of Canada in a short space of time.

​This summer, Flyover launched a new show, entitled Awaken Canada.  It’s been over a decade since the original spectacle, and with new developments in cameras and drones, Flyover now benefits from some neat cinematic tricks that allow it to showcase different scenes that complement the original show.  As before, guests are first shown a short, immersive film before entering the main ride.  This new introduction is animated, riffing on a central, inclusive theme of Home.   What and where is home?  Locals, immigrants, seniors, kids, northerners and southerners all weigh in.  Home, they reveal, is a child’s hand in their grandmothers.  Home is a dip in a warm summer lake.  Home is the rain that falls in a city, or the big sky above golden wheat in the prairies.  Guests are then efficiently ushered through a short waiting area, and to their seats on different levels.  Rest assured, there are no bad seats with Flyover.  Everyone gets the same experience, so take your time, put bags under your chair, strap in, and get ready for flight.

​Awaken Canada starts up north, over the ice and snow.  Immediately I recognize some of the landmarks, places I have visited, places I have not.  Mount Thor in Nunavut was unmistakable, the largest granite rock in the world, gleaming in the sun.  “That’s the Blue Nose,” I tell my delighted kids as we enter Nova Scotia, “I’ve been on that boat!   And that’s Lunenburg!”    There’s no voiceover in the film, just one sweeping image after another set to music, a 4D experience as we soar through clouds and get sprayed by wind and mist.  “That waterfall is called Pissing Mare Falls, this is Gros Morne National Park,” I tell my daughter, who has a solid giggle.  She's getting the full  Canadian Bucket List narration.

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​We collectively  “whoa” when we fly over a northern community, and then suddenly dip into a small fishing hole to submerge into the cold ocean with a pod of beluga whales.  After the show, we all agree this was the best part of the ride.  Then we see fall foliage blooming in Ontario, and now we’re tracking a skier doing tricks across the urban playground of Old Quebec City.   The camera swoops through tunnels and between sails, clearly benefitting from drones that can go where helicopters cannot.  There’s more of a focus on people:  fishing, walking, riding horses, farming, and most spectacularly, climbing mountains and frozen waterfalls.  Unlike the similar-type rides at Disney theme parks (like Soaring Around the World, Soaring Over California etc) no CGI is necessary.   The production and timing of the shots however, is mind-boggling.

​Over the prairies, into the mighty Rockies, and across the sandy beaches of Vancouver Island, the flight concludes with a night-time time-lapse into Vancouver,  concluding with the northern lights, of course.  The ten-minute ride has taken in a lot, but a scenic journey over Canada can take a lifetime.    Leaving the theatre makes you want to discover more: to visit these places and see what they look like from the ground.  Having seen more of Canada than most, I can confirm it’s just as spectacular.