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Pan Am Experience immerses you in 1970s airline glory days

Break out your avocado-colored bell bottoms. For a $300 ticket you can experience Pan Am first-class with cocktails, dining and hat-wearing stewardesses.

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Amanda Kooser
2 min read

Pan Am Experience flight attendants
Your Pan Am Experience starts with a smile. Air Hollywood

You have an opportunity to spend $300 on a ticket for an airplane that never takes off. What you're paying for is time travel back to the go-go days of Pan American World Airways in the 1970s. The airline famously went bust in 1991, but not before setting the standard for polyester-era travel luxury.

Air Hollywood, an aviation-themed film studio, is now offering the Pan Am Experience, an immersive jaunt back to a world where orange was a fashionable color and in-flight menus featured items like chicken in wine sauce, grilled filet mignon, and cognac.

The experience takes place in a re-creation of a Pan Am 747, complete with first-class and clipper-class cabin seats. You'll be treated to cocktails, dinner, and video and audio selections suited to the time period. "Everything from the china to the glassware is authentic with careful attention to the exquisite service delivery of the era and menu offerings of Pan Am," Air Hollywood promises. The flight attendants are all decked out in original uniforms, complete with gold buttons, wide collars, and weird beige and blue colors.

The dinner events happen irregularly. The next date is October 18. A first-class ticket costs $297, while a clipper-class ticket will cost you $197. Don't worry about leg room. Remember, this was back in the days when you could actually stretch you legs out on an airplane.

If you're aching to relive Pan Am luxury or just want to experience a golden era of air travel you missed, then the Pan Am Experience probably isn't the craziest way to blow $300 in Hollywood. You could always spend that cash on a short-hop flight coach ticket and instead enjoy the authentic experience of modern air travel with your knees in the seat in front of you and your neighbor's elbow in your rib cage while you snack on a bag of pretzels. On second thought, maybe you better book that Pan Am ticket.

Pan Am Experience food
Wait...did airline food really used to look like that? Air Hollywood

(Via Laughing Squid)