You hang. The picture does the flying.

This is a flying theatre, not a plane and not a Ferris wheel. You sit in a row of seats that leave the floor. A dome about 20 metres across fills your vision. Then the cabin pitches and the film starts. The whole picture, once the doors lock, runs about eight minutes.

The pre-show

Do not treat the lobby film as filler. It is the briefing: what the seats will do, where to put bags, who should walk out now. I used to watch people laugh through it and then grip the armrest like a first load. Listen. If a child is under the height line, this is the last clean exit.

Phones stay put. Loose hats leave. The seat belt is not theatre. If you cannot buckle without help, say so before we lift. Crew would rather delay a row than stop a cabin mid-cue.

What the seats do

The row rises and then it leans. You are not spinning. You are hanging in front of a curved screen while the hydraulics follow the camera. Dives feel like dives. Turns load one side of your gut. If you have ever sat too close in a large-format cinema, scale that by three and add a drop of air under your shoes.

Wind hits on cue. Fog sits low. Scent — cedar, salt, something sweet in the holiday cut — is piped, not imagined. I could time a load by the first blast on my neck. Guests who hate surprise air should know that before they sit.

What you feel

The show is short and dense. Most of the “wow” is the first two minutes, when the dome still feels larger than the room. After that it is craft: a coastline, a mountain pass, a city at night, depending on the cut. Your inner ear does the overtime. People who do fine on a ferry sometimes do not do fine here. That is not a character test. It is vestibular hardware.

Fear of heights is a hard no. You are looking down a lot. The floor is gone. If that sentence already bothers you, walk the plaza at Canada Place and look at the inlet from solid boards. The mountains will still be there.

After the doors open

Give yourself a minute on the way out. The light in the corridor is ordinary. Your stomach may not be. I used to keep a bench in mind for guests who had gone white. Water helps. A second ride the same hour usually does not.

That is the whole thing, described without a tagline. Eight minutes. A dome. Moving seats. Then you are back on the pier, and the seagulls are louder than the soundtrack.