Apollo 11 show at Rose Bowl celebrates 50th anniversary of moon landing

Carlos Granda Image
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Rose Bowl's Apollo 11 show celebrates moon landing anniversary
The immersive Apollo 11 show at the Rose Bowl is helping Southern California celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

PASADENA, Calif. (KABC) -- Later this summer, the world will celebrate 50 years since man's first experience walking on the moon.

But all summer and into the fall, you can experience Apollo 11, a live immersive show at the Rose Bowl that allows audiences to go on an epic journey to the moon and back.

With images of flames all around you - you actually feel you're in an Apollo capsule as it re-enters the atmosphere. This is just part of the show that tries to take the audience to the moon and back as they celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

"You're in it, you're there, we're going to go to the moon," says producer Matt Churchill.

Something as big as this could only be held in a structure, well, as big as this. It's called the Lunar Dome and it sits at the Rose Bowl. It's the largest movable theater in the world at 40,000 square feet.

"It's very clever," Churchill said. "We were able with the way it's laid out inside to go small, so one actor can tell his story and then the lights can come up and we have a full size Saturn V rocket inside the space."

Inside there are dozens of projectors to give a 360-degree experience. But there are live actors as well. It's all about the story of the moon landing as told by a retired NASA engineer to his granddaughter as he tries to get her away from her smartphone.

"We wanted to concentrate on one of the 400,000 people who worked at NASA at that time to put a man on the moon. They all have an incredible story and when you talk to them they all say we did it," says producer Nick Grace.

At one point they unveil a nearly identical scale model of the lunar module that touched down on the moon in July 1969. They hope by to inspire future generations to imagine what comes next.

Director Scott Faris says "I want them to be so excited and have a great time. Secondly we're going to educate them because it's a historical tale and I think there's a lot of younger folks that don't have any idea what it took to put a man on the moon and what the space program really was."

This show will be at the Rose Bowl through the summer. Then they move the entire structure to Orange County. It will be at the OC Fair & Event Center starting in October.