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Mickael Chatelain – Travel – review

Phil Sweeting — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:01:03 +0000

Travel is the latest release from Mickael Chatelain’s Gimmickmagic company. Perhaps our review will help you decide whether to make the journey to purchase it…

The effect

The spectator chooses a card (which is a free choice, and they may sign) and it is placed on the top of the deck. It then ‘visibly’ (more or less!) vanishes – and appears in the card box.

So yes – it is another signed card to impossible location effect. As the company’s name suggests, this version relies on a heavily gimmicked ‘card’ to do most of the work for you. I have to confess, when I looked at the gimmick, without watching the video, I had no idea what it was for!

But the gimmick effectively allows a sort of sleight free version of the Findlay Tent Vanish – where the card disappears under the slight cover of your hand. The gimmick also makes it possible to produce the card from the card case without any sleight of hand.

What do you get?

You get the specially gimmicked card. A not quite so gimmicked card case (flat packed – so you will need to glue it together). And a link to a short explanatory video online. The first 11 minutes or so explains how the whole thing works, and includes a slow motion performer’s eye view. Then there is a further 5 minutes of visual explanation (no words) about how to repair the gimmick. You are provided with some material to do this, but to be honest it looked quite fiddly to me!

The English explanation involves Mickael’s rather quirky accent which I am growing to love!

What do we think?

Travel in some ways seems like quite an elaborate solution for an effect which could be performed with sleight of hand. Now for the beginner this might be really quite a bonus. And there is a certain economy to the way the card reappears in the box in particular. In fact that’s probably my favourite part of the effect. The ‘vanishing’ part does feel slightly like overkill to me.

Probably not an effect for the more experienced magician. But might be of interest to someone just starting out and looking for a visual effect that’s easy to do.

Travel is available from the Merchant of Magic for £27.86 (at the time of writing)

[Bizarrely, as so often, the blue version is a cheaper price at £27.50!]

Review copy kindly provided by Murphys Magic to whom dealer enquiries should be directed.

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