Retailers have not only bottled the wilderness, but they offer plenty of free parking, too. Will that be cash or charge?
by B.J. Bergman
Somewhere between the La-Z-Boy and the great outdoors lies the American
Wilderness Experience, a special place where the scenery never changes, the cats
live in fishbowls, and admission is just $9.95.
For the more literal-minded, the American Wilderness Experience—or, as its
promoters are pleased to call it, AWE—can be found at the junction of interstates
10 and 15, some 40 miles east of that other land of enchantment, Hollywood.
Billed as a "multi-dimensional nature-based attraction,"
it's a new addition to the teeming Ontario Mills megamall, a 2-million
square-foot shoppers' paradise that boasts 10,000 parking spots and its
own police station, along with factory-discount outlets, multiplexes,
and even a magnet boutique. Bought all the shoes you can use? Maxed out your
Discover card? Hang a left at the food court. Then, as the billboard says, "Go Wild in the Mall!"
The world's first in-mall wilderness park promises "a totally
immersive wilderness experience" meant to entertain and educate visitors through "a unique
blend of technology, ecology, and wildlife discovery." The American Wilderness
Experience is brought to you by the Ogden Corporation, whose other recent
projects include a coal-fired power plant in the Philippines and a
290-slot casino in Aruba. Besides its Ontario flagship, the $2 billion
company has established a beachhead in Phoenix-Tempe's Arizona Mills
mall, and plans to expand its "location-based entertainment concept" to Grapevine
Mills (Dallas), Gurnee Mills (Chicago), Sawgrass Mills (Ft. Lauderdale), and at least four other
U.S. outposts. Eventually, Ogden hopes to export AWE to strategically targeted
less-developed nations whose quaint, benighted people still tryst with
nature by going outdoors.
Their day will come, I figured. But ours was here now. So, accompanied by a
fellow credit-card-carrying American, I followed the signs to
Ontario Mills, a place so vast it's arranged into merchandise-themed "neighborhoods." In a
neighborhood dominated by eating and entertainment, where Starbucks and
Dreamworks vie to goose your flagging consciousness, resides the American
Wilderness Experience.
Having ponied up our $19.90, my companion and I are greeted by a faux uniformed
ranger amid a variety of trees—some are crafted in three dimensions while others
are drawn on the wall. "Enjoy your wilderness experience," she says pleasantly.
"Just to your left." To our left is a thatched hut, also faux. Inside, a second
ersatz ranger shows off a real American kestrel, or sparrow hawk, obtained from a
rehabilitation center in the Coachella Valley. A third explains that we're about
to embark on "a half-million-mile hike" through five California biomes. For
reasons I fail to grasp, there is an advisory for pregnant women and small
children.
We move to an anteroom to make way for the next throng of hikers. As we wait
behind guardrails, we're treated to an endlessly looping video displayed on a
pair of monitors overhead. Baby ducks, baby foxes, baby penguins, baby beavers,
baby wolves. By third viewing we have all reached our cuteness threshold. Sensing
our impatience, a ranger advises us to take a bathroom break if we need one. Last
rest stop for a half-million miles.
And then—the experience? We're ushered into another room, with yet another video
monitor. The lights dim. The TV show begins. We meet Jonathan, a boy who wants to
become an architect "like his parents." His dream, we are told, "grew and grew
and grew," until it materializes on-screen as a shining city that looks, from my
vantage point, like a nightmare of sprawl. An owl appears to Jonathan, and to us,
to say that while his city is commendable, the young lad's forgotten something:
his dream "does not include animals." The English-speaking predator invites
Jonathan to "see the world through our eyes," whereupon we are herded into what I
take to be a small movie theater.
But this is no ordinary movie house. Welcome to Wild Ride Theater, featuring the
Simulator, the reason for that mysterious pregnant-woman advisory. We take our
seats to find ourselves trapped onboard a large trackless roller coaster,
complete with a safety bar across our laps. The floor rocks and tilts and pitches
as, through the magic of computer animation, we careen like pinballs through air
and sea past digital renderings of birds, bees, whales, dolphins, and critters
I'm bouncing too much to identify. We're seeing the world through the eyes of
some exotic creature, I think, but he's probably a UCLA film grad. The Wright
Brothers encountered less turbulence than these finned and feathered fighter
pilots.
Our landing, on the other hand, is picture perfect. After a four-minute trip, the
screen goes blank, the lights come up, and we're free to move about the
wilderness, conveniently located through the doors to our right. First stop: the
Redwood Forest, a simulated ecosystem described as "magical" in the AWE brochure,
which adds breathlessly, "Can this really be in a mall?" In a word, sure. In one
corner of the room is a stand of phony redwoods, through which I can see diners
grazing on "tumbleweeds" (salads) and "redwood burgers" in the adjacent
Wilderness Grill. In another corner are a handful of small window displays
featuring live snakes and salamanders. From a distant light—all right, another TV
monitor—appears the floating head of a cartoon camper, sort of a cross between
John Muir and Gabby Hayes. "Nothing like the wilderness to calm your soul,"
observes our Mr. Natural, who proclaims himself the "spirit of wilderness."
Then it's on to the High Sierra, where a pair of young bobcats sleep under a
make-believe pine tree in a picture window. (Like all of AWE's real-live animals,
they've been procured from a rehab center; a ranger tells me they were imprinted
as kittens when someone tried to "adopt" them, but I search in vain for
admonitions to others to leave wild creatures alone.) When the bobcats weary of
being ogled—the Experience is open 12 hours a day, seven days a week—they can get away from
it all in a pen backstage. Less fortunate are three roadrunners who share their
nearby Mojave Desert habitat—a glassed cubicle furnished with papier-mâché
rocks—with four desert tortoises. One manic bird sprints obsessively along a
six-foot ridge against the rear wall. At each end she stops, studies the painted
mountains, and abruptly reverses direction. A ranger assures me she's adjusting
well to confinement.
And so it goes, past the counterfeit Joshua tree to the mock Pacific Shore, with its live harbor seals and man-made
tidepools, then inland again to the Yosemite Valley, where a real red-tailed hawk
is framed against a perpetually frozen Yosemite Falls. We stroll by a porcupine,
a fisher, a badger, and sundry other live specimens, and before we know it we've
passed seamlessly out of the wilderness and into "Naturally Untamed," which
purveys T-shirts, CD-ROMs, and even Sierra magazine. In barely an hour we've
hiked to five imitation biomes, a full-service restaurant, and a nature-themed
gift store—all of it, the brochure reminds us, "just pawprints away from your
favorite Ontario Mills shops."
My companion and I make tracks instead for the parking lot. It's 4:30, a fine
autumn afternoon. Genuine, gorgeous mountains are visible through the haze. We're
surrounded by stunning California geography. Within 15 minutes we reach San
Bernardino National Forest and, once inside its boundaries, I pull our rented
vehicle off to the shoulder. Civilization and its discontents are still close at
hand—a car whizzes by every minute or so—but this is a huge step in the right
direction, with intimations of solitude and a vast pink sunset and green,
fog-shrouded hills. We watch till darkness descends. Nothing like the wilderness
to calm your soul.
And then I recall Jonathan, and I wonder if what they're selling in Ontario isn't
a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy. Add enough AWE to enough megamalls and you've
got just what the owl prescribed: unfettered development that "remembers the
animals." Throw up some subdivisions for shoppers' convenience, overlay with
infrastructure, and before you know it there's no more wilderness—just
computer-enhanced re-creations of biomes that used to be.
Someday, it occurs to me, the American Wilderness Experience could become the
American wilderness experience. Did that cartoon camper mean "spirit," as in
ghost?
