Alcatraz Prison – An Epic Experience!

Talking about an epic experience! I went a few days early to San Francisco to spend some time on my own before the business tour through Silicon Valley with a Dutch delegation started. Check out the pictures below and the video of my visit to notorious prison Alcatraz where Al Capone was at home for four years (from 1934 – 1938)!

Americans really know how to build up an experience. From waiting in line for 30 minutes before the boattrip starts, you can read some more about the prison through a brochure and interactive installations and have your picture taken before a backdrop image of the island.

Interactive installations throughout the waiting area made waiting less annoying. In Dutch I call this a ‘wacht-verzachter’ in English you could call it a ‘Wait-watcher’.

During the boat trip the brochure sounds through the speakers.

On the island itself you can watch a 17 minute film about the island (comparable content of the brochure) and do an interactive audio tour of about 40 minutes explaining you all the different areas and stories that took place, even explaining how 5 inmates escaped from the island in June 1962. This event was immortalized later in a film called ‘Escape from Alcatraz (duh) with Clint Eastwood).

This is one of the cells where one of the 5 inmates that escaped slept. You can see how they dug a hole around the ventilation shaft. Eventually they all got out by climbing throughout the hole they dug, climbed up the heating pipes and … gone…  No one knows if they survived the mile swimming to the main land, since they were never found again.

A picture of the ‘arrival’ at Alcatraz Island. Originally build as a military prison during America’s Civil War.

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