
A long-time hotspot for locals, the Fort Worth Museum of Science & History’s Omni Theater IMAX welcomed over 10 million visitors in 37 years to marvel at the 180-degree ceiling and was a pillar of education and entertainment in the Fort Worth Community hosting field trips for kids all over the Fort Worth and Dallas area.
After closing its doors in March of 2020 at the start of the pandemic, the theater has remained closed for nearly 3 years and is largely unchanged since it first opened back in 1983.
Now the beloved theater is to undergo a $20 million renovation project that will see it once again return to the forefront of cinematic experiences.
Once one of the country’s most advanced cinematic experiences and the first IMAX in the Southwest, the theater has fallen behind somewhat and aims to return to its former glory by offering an immersive, state-of-the-art experience as it did for over 3 decades.
“The Omni is currently closed, but don’t worry—it’s coming back bigger and better than ever! New seats, mind-blowing visuals, a renovated lobby, and so much more await you, reads the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History website, “we can’t wait to share more as work gets underway!”
The dome will be converted into one giant LED screen that will reportedly “create an immersive experience like nothing most of us have ever seen.”
Its new digital dome will be the first LED Dome of its size in a museum in the world according to the museum offering a new 8K digital experience that is leaps beyond IMAX technology.
“So the footprint will remain the same but we are going to take everything from the inside out, if you will, and we will go to an all-new 8K digital LED dome which is at the limit of what your eye can see at this distance,” said Tammy McKinney, Vice President of Development and Marketing at Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. “The clarity and brightness will be something that you just can’t imagine.”
To preserve the history of the Omni Theater IMAX and add a little more nostalgia on our sentimental trips back, the museum is keeping the current IMAX projector system in place and turning it into an exhibit for people to experience as they walk into the new reimagined dome.
According to Fort Worth Museum of Science and History President, Orlando Carvalho, the new revamped Omni Theater will be “the first here in the country and the world that will have something like this in a theater this large. The experience that people will have when they come here to see a documentary or the films that we will show here will be tremendous.”
The renovation will be carried out by Byrne Construction who built the original Omni Theater back in the early 1980s. Scheduled to start in March of this year, the project will take 18 months to complete with an aim to reopen in August or September 2024.
[Featured image courtesy of Fort Worth Museum of Science & History]