The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure (the actual ride this time)

12 Comments Posted by on June 2, 2011

So yesterday I documented the line for the Little Mermaid, and today I hit it again to document the actual ride. First off I will warn you–there are

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

So if you don’t want to know what the ride looks like inside, then stop reading this post. You can click over to some of the categories on the ride and read older entries if you like. ————->

Anyway the Little Mermaid is over in CA Adventure but since it opens on June 3rd and I’m around for the annual passholder preview, I thought I’d go ahead and blog about it.

Today’s MYWTMouseketeers were Kristin and Audrey.

Audrey is on the left

Funny thing about the line. Kristin and I thought we’d get there right when the park opened. We met up at Theo’s preschool where her two older kids also go, then stopped at Subway and headed down to Disneyland. We got into DCA at about 10:05 (the park opened at 10) and there was already a nice long line.

And naturally it was in a different location than last night’s line. No, I’m not going to draw you another map. It went back down to Grizzly River Rapids and then instead of going through Communist Russia you actually went across to the World of Color viewing area and zig-zagged there for a while. Then Kristin went back later in the afternoon with the rest of the family and said that the line was in a different location/configuration again. So like I said last night, who knows where the line will be when it’s your turn. The nice thing is that the cast members were really on top of keeping people in the proper location so there really wasn’t any confusion.

This morning it took us just about 35 minutes to get on the ride, so again while it does cover a lot of physical distance, it moves along pretty quickly.

When you get into the dark room, you first meet Scuttle.

I had to look up his name

Scuttle starts telling you the story of the little mermaid, which is nothing like the original little mermaid story as written by Hans Christian Anderson. That version is seriously jacked up. As was Hans Christian Anderson himself. Weird dude. Did you know that he once stayed with Charles Dickens, and stuck around so long old Charles had to throw him out? True fact.

Anyway, then you have a bubble effect like you’re going under water. This is all projection.

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble

Oh also, fair warning here, my photography is not the greatest.

Anyway, Audrey REALLY loved the bubble effect.

Isn't she adorable? Almost as adorable as Theo!

Then you look up and you see Ariel swimming around above you. This is on a screen but looks super cool.

She kind of looks like a shark here, but really it's Ariel

Then you see Ariel sitting amongst her treasures on the ocean floor. And also a glare from a bad camera angle.

"I want to be where the people are"

If you time your photography right, you can get really awesome pictures like this one where the character is obscuring her own face!

I planned this

Then you go into the Big Room, that is really the centerpiece of the ride. It’s all “Under the Sea”ish and it’s like this giant piscene blowout. Tons of singing, dancing, and spinning around.

If the Little Mermaid ride were a frat party, the keg would be right where the purple octopus is

Fish singing merrily above you, and the starfish spin around

Then you round the corner and get to what I’m seeing called the Dole whip Ariel. That is, her hair looks like soft-serve ice cream. Apparently in the movie it’s fish swimming around her that do up her hair like that, but the ride leaves it out.

Don't shoot! Bad hair is not a crime!

And you come back around for another view of all of the cool dancing and singing fishies.

The keg is off to the right

A fuzzy Audrey really dug this part too.

Not fuzzy in real life

Following that, you approach Ursula’s Lair. I think this is one of the best parts of the ride. The animatronic Ursula is really well-done, and her crystal ball has moving images of Ariel, et al.

Oh wait, first you have Flotsam and Jetsam

THERE'S Ursula! Poor unfortunate souls!

There’s a screen where Ariel gets her legs

Disney is very discreet. No wardrobe malfunctions here!

And then lots of bubbles

Audrey liked this part too, but I didn't take a picture of her.

And then you get to another great scene–the Kiss the Girl scene. I really loved this part. It’s impossible not to sing along.

Sha la la la la la...

Just kiss her already! The suspense is killing me!

Then there’s the one place I think the Little Mermaid ride falls short. Here you expect Ursula to have her big confrontation and whatever that’s like 1/3 of the movie, but no, her entire fall from grace is relegated to a piece of plywood in the back.

She does look suitably angry though

Because Ariel and Eric have finally kissed. The glowing part in Ariel’s throat is her voice and it actually comes around and draws a cute heart around the two of them, but that was timed differently than my picture.

Finally!

Then you move to the wedding scene, which is a big celebration!

Everyone's happy! Yay!

The fireworks behind King Triton actually go off

On the screen, I mean. Not like actual fire.

And there’s the happy couple.

Thank you so much for the toaster and the table settings!

And your ride comes to an end.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye

In the movie, there is a slightly unsettling part. In the beginning of the movie, Ariel tells her father that she’s 16 now and should be allowed to get her driver’s license, or the mermaid swimming equivalent of her driver’s license. But then at the end of the movie she ends up married. At 16? Is this a good example to set for today’s young people?

Anyway, I also grabbed a shot of the outside of the ride.

The entrance

In addition to there being seashells in the sidewalk, there’s also some cool mosaic tiles

Pretty!

And the media was lined up across the way for the big opening on the 3rd.

I wanna be on television! Also, cool clouds!

And there you have it–The Little Mermaid!!!

Everything Else , ,

The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure Line

18 Comments Posted by on June 1, 2011

I don’t generally wander over into Disney California Adventure Park, formerly known as Disney’s California Adventure and now I think it’s all weird and stuff to not have the ‘s on Disney, so I’m just going to abbreviate it DCA like it’s always been done. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on at DCA, most notably Carsland (Cars-land), an entire land based on the movie franchise Cars, which is going to be unbelievably awesome but does not open until 2012.

In the meantime, Disney opened up a new ride–The Little Mermaid. It’s like a regular dark ride, but better! Because it’s new! It officially opens on June 3rd but like Star Tours (which also opens on June 3rd), they are holding Annual Passholder previews and today we went to one of them. Unlike Star Tours, you didn’t need a special winning email to get in line. Anyone with an annual pass could do it. So we did.

This post is about the line. Why? Well, I usually do the line and the ride in the same post, but this line was so long it really deserves its own post. Plus I don’t like to document a ride the first time I ride it–I’d rather just enjoy it. So yes, this is about the line. The whole post. About a line.

Sorry.

I’ll try to keep it as entertaining as possible.

The Little Mermaid took over a space that used to house some kind of movie thing with Whoopi Goldberg or something–I have absolutely zero idea since I never, ever went inside the building.

Yay! A new ride!

First I should point out that the whole line actually only took us an hour. Not that I like waiting an hour for a ride, just that this is the longest line I’ve ever been in in physical distance, but it moved continually and the whole thing was only an hour.

Also, you’ll notice that it was light when we started and dark by the time we got on.

You might think this means that the line is short, but you're wrong.

Now first you get in line parallel to the building. Looking down at the concrete, there are seashells embedded. It’s quite cute.

Oh look! Sea shells!

Your line goes across this lighted walkway

Lights! Walkway! Seashells!

And to your immediate right you see the line headed the other direction getting on the ride.

It's going to be a walk-on! No, no, no, no, no it isn't.

You move to the end of the lighted walkway and think you’re going to flip back around and get on the ride. Poor, unfortunate naive souls! Instead you hang a right and zig-zag a bit.

Twisty tree bushes--how do they make those things grow like that?

That’s the Grand Californian Hotel in the background, by the way. So after you twist and turn for a while, you feel like you should go right, which will bring you back to the lighted walkway and thus to the ride.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

You actually go left and end up facing the Zephyr ride.

This doesn't seem that bad--wait, are all those other people in line?

Now here’s where I’m going to start referring you to a crudely-drawn map. I got this screen cap from the official Disney site and it actually lies. Not only does The Little Mermaid not appear, the Grand Californian Hotel also does not appear. And Goofy’s Sky School, an actual roller coaster which will open in July, I think, is not on the map. And just when you thought there couldn’t be more things not on the map, there are! There’s a souvenir stand and the Corn Dog Castle.

So on the map, the circle thing with the TLM and arrow is The Little Mermaid. The red circle is the stage, which I’ll get to in a second. The yellow line is the lighted walkway, roughly, and the square is the zig-zagging area. The two pink circles are the souvenir place and the Corn Dog Castle. And then there’s a wall and Goofy’s Sky School behind it. Basically all of those trees are a total lie.

And the scale is really, really weird, too

Okay, now that you know where you are, or not, the above part of the line is in orange, with 1 being the lighted part and 2 being the zig-zag.

It still doesn't feel that bad.

So okay, this is pretty much going to be the longest blog post dedicated to a line ever written in the history of blog posts dedicated to lines.

Anyway, after you’ve done those initial zig-zags, you head back down to the front of the building

At this point, the people on the walkway are leaning over saying "Are you still in line for the Little Mermaid?" Yes, my friends. Yes we are.

Now Theo is a typical 2 and 1/2 year old, which means that he has a really hard time standing in line. He has a really hard time staying in one place in general, like anywhere, but line standing gets to be tough for him. Still, at this point he’s hanging in there.

It's still light outside

Then you get all the way down to the stage. Now this is a super, super, super cool part of the ride, because the boarding area is open and there’s a giant stage in front of it. I don’t know what they plan on doing on the stage but I did see a permanent industrial-grade bubble machine, and Theo really, REALLY likes bubbles.

We are turning again

I took this opportunity to snap a shot of the stage.

This looks really cool

And then you go right back down to the end of the lighted path again.

We're heading the wrong direction! The ride is THAT way!

This is where Theo got all antsy and Kevin jumped out of line with him to take a walk around. Anyway, in case you wanted to get back to the maps again, the black arrows trace that last part.

That is some quality drawing in Paint, isn't it?

Then it starts to get really disheartening because you approach the souvenir shop that according to the map does not exist.

Getting darker...

And then there’s just this like big mob of people.

Holy sh*t, this is a lot of people

At this point, Disney completely dispenses with stanchions and even rope and just sticks 5 zig-zags worth of tape on the ground.

It feels like you're standing in some sort of weird imaginary line at this point

You know there’s that story about how in Communist Russia, people were so used to waiting in line that one day someone just started a random line leading to nothing in front of some building and then like a hundred people lined up behind him? Well who knows if that’s true or whatever, but at this point in the line you’re really starting to feel like it.

Here’s our friend, the map.

Sad

And here’s where the Disneyland map gets weird on its perspective, because Communist Russia, denoted by the unhappy face, actually takes place more in front of the souvenir stand next to the yellow zig-zag square but in front of the Zephyr, which is that red post with swinging things that look like shiny silver logs.

And speaking of the Zephyr, this is where a very bored Theo becomes very interested in the Zephyr.

Oooooooooooohhhhhhhh

So interested, in fact, that Kevin and Theo bugged out of the line to go ride it.

DaddyDaddyDaddyDaddyDaddyDaddy HELICOPTER!!!

My brother-in-law joined the Army this year and has spent the last 6 months in helicopter repair school. He graduates in a few weeks (we’re so proud!!) and Theo has been fascinated with helicopters ever since we told him that Uncle Zach will be working on one.

Also we bought him a toy helicopter and made a lot of “chk chk chk chk chk” noises. He loves it.

Getting ready to board

Were we worried about them not getting back into line on time? No we were not. For one, the Zephyr, which I keep mistyping as Zephry, had only a 5-minute wait

That's Theo in the back, with my super-zoom lens on my little point and shoot

and two, the line was not even remotely headed in the direction of the building. In fact, it could not be pointing any further away.

Oh God, save me

Behind that long wall on the right is Goofy’s Sky School, formerly known as a Mulholland (I think) themed roller coaster. I’m not sure what’s taking them so long to open it, as I think they aren’t making any real changes to the ride. They were running test cars tonight.

Goofy's Sky School, opening...soon, I guess

You follow along the wall until you pass the Jumpin’ Jellyfish ride, which is some sort of bouncy up and down thing that seems pretty tame. And also, there’s a Yo Gabba Gabba dance called the Jumpin’ Jellyfish so if you’re the parent of a Gabba-watching toddler, that song will be stuck in your head.

You actually go past the Jumpin’ Jellyfish almost all the way to the Silly Symphony Swings before turning around again.

Swings on the left

And on the map

Again, the perspective of this map is weird

Once you feel like you’ve walked all the way to Buena Park and are now at Knott’s Berry Farm, you turn around and get to look at the entire line you just walked.

OMFG

But there’s good news, because at least you’re walking in the right direction!

We're getting closer--I can feel it! Also I can see it.

You come out again at the souvenir shop and Corn Dog Castle, neither of which exist

I'm a sad little souvenir cart

And if you were hungry, which I was, you really should have grabbed a corn dog when you passed the Castle the first time around.

I've heard these are really good

With Communist Russia on your right and the building in front of you, you can almost taste it!

Should've grabbed a corn dog. Seriously.

At this point, Theo was REALLY bored and Mommy had to bust out the emergency stack of Legos.

Here, Kid. Build a 3D replica of the line we've just been standing in

But you’re making progress! You’ve almost touched the building!

Now I'm getting excited again!

And at long last, you get to the lighted pathway again.

I can't believe we did all that crap back there

You get a glimpse into the ride building

I can't wait! I can't wait!

And catch sight of the main picture of Ariel

And a part of the clamshell you ride in!

At long last, you board the ride  hit another zig-zag

Are you effin' KIDDING me???

But then finally–FINALLY!!! You do get to board your clamshell.

It's adorable!

The nice thing about this ride is that it’s an Omnimover, which means it has a continuous load/unload, so as long as this line was, we never physically stopped moving. The second thing is that they made the shells nice and big–you can easily fit 3 people in there, 4 if you’ve got a couple of small ones. This is in stark contrast to rides with similar vehicles like the Haunted Mansion and Peter Pan, where 3 adults is a tough or impossible squeeze.

The line finally comes to an end, much to yours and everyone else’s celebration.

Yay!

Then you get to your undersea adventure.The crazy thing is, after all of this effort, the line is sure to change. I do think, however, that this will be the basic layout until the crowds thin out a little and they can start chopping off big portions of it.

And also, despite all of the pictures above, it only took us an hour to get on the ride.

It was a great ride, really! I’ll blog it as soon as I get more pictures. But here’s a little reward for hanging in there with me throughout this whole post.

Thanks for hanging around. Hope you didn’t die of boredom!!!

Everything Else ,

Disney’s Let The Memories Begin Tour (can’t come to Disney? Let Disney come to you!)

3 Comments Posted by on May 27, 2011

Exciting news, mouse fans! As a part of their year-long celebration of magic, celebrations, and memories that last a lifetime, Disney is touring the country helping you make some new memories of your own.

That’s right! Disney is bringing the magic to you! And you can also enter to win a trip to Disneyland courtesy of Southwest Airlines, which means that you can visit me AND eat a churro!

Be sure to visit the official Let The Memories Begin Tour site, where you can enter the contest and create your own magical memory photo.

First stop on the tour: Chicago

Time to Make Memories! Chicagoans are invited to come to Water Tower Place to participate in an interactive Disney photo experience. Consumers will have the opportunity to take virtual in-park photos and share them with others.

Windy City mouse fans can find the tour here:

Water Tower Place   835 N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611

Monday, May 30 from Noon-8:00pm

Tuesday, May 31 from Noon-8:00pm

Local Disney fans can also keep an eye out for the “Let the Memories Begin” team as they spread some PhotoPass “pixie dust” in Downtown Chicago on May 27 and 30.

Memories last a lifetime, so whether it’s your child’s first visit to Disneyland…

Theo at 6 weeks

…or his 50th+

Theo at 2 and 1/2

let Disney help you make magical moments with your family.

Tour Schedule:

Botson, MA 6/5–6/6

New York, NY 6/10–6/12

Washington DC 6/18–6/19

Atlanta, GA 6/24–6/25

Dallas, TX 7/8–7/9

Houston, TX 7/12–7/13

Phoenix, AZ 7/19–7/20

Denver, CO 7/26–7/27

Salt Lake City, UT 7/30–7/31

San Francisco, CA 8/5–8/6

Portland, OR 8/16–8/17

Seattle, WA 8/20–8/21

Calgary, Canada 8/26–8/27

Toronto, Canada 9/2–9/3

Puerto Rico 9/23–9/24

I only have details for the Chicago tour stop, but I will update as soon as I know more. In the meantime, keep an eye on the Let The Memories Begin site and prepare for an unforgettable experience.

Everything Else , , , , ,

Star Tours: The Adventure Continues

37 Comments Posted by on May 26, 2011

Okay, so today was my annual pass preview of Star Tours and to put it succinctly–totally effin’ awesome! Disneyland ran a sweepstakes for annual passholders to be assigned a window of time on a given day to ride Star Tours. I was lucky enough to get selected for today from 9-1.

Which was awesome. Be warned, I’m going to use the word awesome a lot.

Particularly because Theo was in preschool (it’s the only day of the week that he goes to preschool) so both Kevin and I were able to go. I added my friend Renee to the list, and then was also able to add an internet friend, Chris. The funny thing is that Renee, who is a professional (and amazing) photographer (she does destination photos too–watch this site!) had originally scheduled a photo shoot at 10am, but at the last minute her client had to cancel, which freed her up to come to Disneyland. Was that meant to be or what?

Anyway, I had my “winning” email which gave the time we were supposed to come, the number in our party, and my annual passport number, since the preview was for annual passholders only. When we arrived we had to wait until the whole party was there (both Renee and Chris got stuck in some insane parking lot traffic and ran a bit late), but then we headed to the Star Tours Fast Pass (FP) booth (formerly known as the Buzz Lightyear Fast Pass). I showed the email and we all produced our annual passes, and then got Fast Passes for immediate boarding.

Kevin, Chris, and Renee show off our first passes of the day

The cool thing was that you could go get another FP 30 minutes after the last one. This allowed us to ride four times, and we could have squeezed one more in. If we’d shown up right at 9:00 we could have done it a total of probably seven times, but four was just around right. In fact, four was insanely awesome. We entered into the FP entrance, and the queue inside and the ride itself turned out to be almost exactly 30 minutes, so we were able to just cycle through four times.

Unfortunately Kevin only got to ride it twice, since he had to go back to work and also pick up Theo from preschool.

Thanks for taking one for the team, honey!

I could barely contain my excitement approaching the ride. The cast members were vigilant about restricting access to the ride only to annual passholder sweepstakes winners, so that was kind of cool. Cool for us, I mean. Not really cool for all of the other annual passholders and guests who tried squeezing past the cast members to get in line anyway.

It's all space-agey and stuff

I think first I should let you know that I almost never went on the old Star Tours. I have an extremely sensitive stomach and while the original Star Tours wasn’t insta-hurl, it was an I-gotta-sit-down-after-this thing. I mean, even the carrousel makes me a bit woozy if I’m not specifically paying attention to what I’m watching. Since Star Tours: The Adventure Continues  is in 3D, I was particularly concerned about that, but I had to go on it anyway just because I didn’t want to let my blog followers down.

Who am I kidding? I would have ridden this thing with my own airline barf bag if that’s what it took.

The interior of the queue looked almost identical to the original queue. You can watch a big-screen publicity movie about all of the places you could go.

I wanna go there! For realz.

You also meet up with our intrepid friend, C3P0

C3P0 is seriously high-strung

You think you’re almost there when you get to this sign:

Passengers only. No terrorists.

But then you’re not.

Couple more zig-zags. Sorry.

Also in the queue is a robot working on a heat sensor thingie. It actually took me two rides to realize that the figures in screen are you as you walk by.

Kind of trippy

There are quite a few nods to the old ride. In this ride you are piloted by C3P0 and R2D2, but in the old ride you were piloted by this guy, who now hangs out next to the queue.

Pee Wee Herman was the original voice of this guy. No joke.

The 3D glasses are all kinds of cool. Instead of just the generic yellow ones they use at Toy Story Midway Mania, these actually look like nerdy glasses in an endearing way. And for some reason, the glasses completely up your cool factor by a good 300%

Mr. Cool has got it covered.

It’s the perfect opportunity for you to show off how hipster you are.

Renee and Chris in da house, yo.

Or just a fun friends photo opportunity.

I do NOT look like a guy!

Perhaps I should take a moment to explain Star Tours 1.0 before I go into how Star Tours 2.0 is different.

Star Tours is a simulator ride, so you all strap into a seat and there’s a movie screen in front, and then as the movie shows, your car (I mean space cruiser, like the whole room) moves along with you, creating the sensation of actually flying or whatever. As far as I know, Star Tours was the first to utilize this technology for an amusement park. I remember when the ride originally opened in 1987. Disneyland stayed open all day and night for 60 hours to accomodate guests.

Now with the advent of Fast Pass, there won’t be anything like that, and guests will actually have a fighting chance to get on the ride instead of wait in line 4+ hours. For non-Disneyphiles, Fast Pass is a system where on the popular rides, you insert your park ticket into a machine and it gives you a little ticket with a time window. You can then go do other stuff in the park and then return to the ride at your designated time and will get into the line via the Fast Pass entrance, which skips a good portion of the line. There’s only a limited number of Fast Passes available per ride, so if you want to go on Star Tours, then you should run to the Fast Pass distribution as quickly as possible once you get into the park.

Anyway, you board your flight simulator

Move across your designated row to the very end. Don't just pick a seat. This isn't Southwest Airlines.

You’re restrained by a simple seatbelt, and above you there are warning lights to fasten your seatbelt just like an actual plane. A metal screen blocks the movie screen in front of you until the ride starts.

You're almost ready to go!

The biggest and best difference between Star Tours 1.0 and Star Tours 2.0, aside from the 3D glasses, are the opportunities for different rides. There are four different segments of the ride: the opening, the first planet, the transition, and the ending. There are multiple versions of each of these elements, and the placement is more or less randomly determined, so you have 4 chances to get a different ride than the one before. Apparently there are something like 54 possible combinations.

The opening sequence is when your spacecraft leaves its hangar. There are two openings and we were lucky enough to get to see both of them. In one you’re kind of a doofus and blunder out of the flight deck, and in the other you meet Darth Vader who tries to stop you. Darth is my favorite.

You shoot through your first adventure scene, and then blast off into a warp or whatever it’s called, which is like a wormhole and is totally awesome because the stars are all whizzing past you and stuff. Then you come out on the other side to a planet where you will have your first chase/shooting scene. We landed on the ice planet of Hoth where you’re chasing bad guys and trying to avoid the AT-AT walkers, which if you aren’t up on your Star Wars movies are the things that look like giant badass metal elephants with blasters in their tusks. We also landed on a Wookiee planet, which according to my Standard Research Methodology is called Kashyyyk. Chewbacca is a wookiee and looks like all kind of cute and cuddly except that he packs as much firepower as Rambo. On the Kashyyyk, the wookiees are not cute and cuddly. They still pack the same amount of firepower and they want to kill you. You speed through Kashyyyk on what looks like a flying snowmobile–well you’re in your space cruiser, but the storm troopers are on flying snowmobiles. At first I thought we were on Endor, but it became very clear that we were dealing with wookiees and not ewoks very early in the scene.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, take a short break to watch the movies. The originals. Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Just those.

Okay really, I’m kidding. You honestly don’t have to have seen a single Star Wars movie or know who any of the characters are in order to enjoy the ride. If you’re familiar with the franchise it does add a small recognition element, but you’re not going to be lost or confused if you haven’t seen the movies. It’s pretty straightforward–the bad guys are the ones shooting at you, and our intrepid pilots are not really all that skilled.

Next you meet your transition character. We saw Admiral Ackbar, Yoda, and Princess Leia. They give a little spiel that I really was too excited to actually listen to (yes, all four times–except the last time when everyone was cheering so loudly you couldn’t hear what Princess Leia was saying anyway). Then you space warp again and enter into a final scene, which again is a chase scene and you reach your conclusion. We landed on Jar-Jar Binks’ planet, Naboo, twice. Now I know what you’re saying becuase I said it too–I DID NOT PAY HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS AND HOURS OF MY TIME TO SEE JAR-JAR-FREAKIN’-BINKS! But there’s good news, my friends! Jar-Jar’s part is actually very small. He only pollutes your experience for a short time and has a couple of lines, and they really dialed back his idiotic tone from the deranged adolescent chimp voice to a mostly unnoticeable, more subtle voice. The other planet we visited was Coruscant, the Imperial city planet. This is urban warfare at its best, if your urban area included a lot of flying vehicles, bad people, and fire. Coruscant included an in-cabin effect we didn’t encounter in any of the other planets, so it was very cool that not only did they switch up the destinations, they also switch up the effects.

Finally you make what is best described as a rough landing (rougher in some scenes than others) and your adventure is over. It’s a good, long ride, and very satisfying. They are supposed to randomize each of the four elements, but the our first and third rides were exactly the same. The second and forth switched it up a little, which was fun. It’s definitely a ride to ride over and over again. Even when we got the same scenes, I found myself noticing different elements. Disney doesn’t half-ass anything, and they spared no expense on making this incredible ride.

I didn’t take pictures while the ride was moving. Sorry. For one, no flash photography, but two, I just wanted to enjoy the ride which is hard to do when you’re trying to take pictures of it. So there.

Following the ride you have a photo op in which a cast member may or may not insert himself.

Hey Jason!

The ride was very cool every time, but it was really intensely awesome on our fourth ride. It was later in the window–nearly the end of our riding, and every single person on the ride had ridden it earlier. It made the ride a total communal experience. Everyone went crazy when we saw Darth Vader and again at Princess Leia. People were cracking jokes and cheering for the good guys the whole way. It’s hard to describe, except to say that I’ve never had a better group riding experience than our last ride. It was like when you watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show with a big group of people who know every line and know where to laugh and cheer. Except on a family-friendly ride at Disneyland. Awesome.

After four rides we were definitely tapped out. We grabbed an extra set of Fast Passes for souvenirs.

I took this picture at night with artificial lighting, okay?

The exit gift store was selling some cool stuff, particularly the commemorative coins. They are coins that were specially minted for the annual passholder preview. Only 2011 coins were made, so of course I had to pay my $30 and buy one. Mine is numbered 906, but I think Chris’s is numbered in the 300s. Still, I wouldn’t expect these to last very long.

It's a reflection of me taking the picture!

It looks better in real light. Really.

Anyway, I give Star Tours a three thumbs up, borrowing someone else’s thumb to do it. Oh, and as far as motion sickness goes, I was convinced that it was going to be even worse than the old Star Tours because it was in 3D, but it really wasn’t! I was barely even queasy, particularly considering that we rode the ride four consecutive times in two hours.

It was really awesome. Don’t miss it on your next trip here.

Tomorrowland , , , ,

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