My Year With The Mouse

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.

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.

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

Your line goes across this lighted walkway

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

And then there’s just this like big mob 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

And on the map

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

You get a glimpse into the ride building

And catch sight of the main picture of Ariel

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

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

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.

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!!!