There are no windows and no doors. Of course, there's always MY way out.

March 26, 2007 3:49 AM

Virtual Space Mountain! Wheeeee! (Click on the second video where you sit in front. What are you, a wuss?) Real video just can't do Space Mountain justice, but it does a pretty good job of capturing some other rides. Feel like revisiting some original Magic Kingdom rides without leaving home? Well here you go... Pirates, Mr. Toad, Small World, Haunted Mansion, Tiki Room, Thunder Mountain, Star Tours, Indiana Jones, Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Cruise, Matterhorn, Roger Rabbit, the late Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and a bunch of people covered in lightbulbs dancing to the world's most excruciatingly annoying synthesized music. During your virtual day at the park, please just remember to watch out for Goofy. That dude is nothing but a messed up troublemaker. And don't forget... the parking trams do not go to aisles B as in Bambi & C as in Cinderella.
posted by miss lynnster (23 comments total)

More:
What's always cool about Disneyland & what will never be cool again.
Secrets of Disneyland.
Disneyland of yesterday.
Underground Disneyland.
Want to be a Cast Member? (My personal advice: it's great & fun for the short term, but definitely not for a long-range plan.)
Maps of Disneyland over time (click "next map").
Disneyland backstage: then and now.
The man who bought the first ticket.
posted by miss lynnster at 3:57 AM on March 26, 2007

To me, if you want thrills, Disney isn't the place to go; that's why Six Flags exists. But I should mention a particular Disney ride. I went to Tokyo Disneyland last summer and rode Pooh's Honey Hunt at the insistence of my girlfriend because it looked "so cute". I agreed because the park was about to close and we only had to wait about 15 minutes. It was indeed cute, but actually blew my mind a bit. Hard to describe, but you're basically in a remote control car (no tracks or rails, smooth floors) and you fly around these rooms with lots of trippy day-glo colors and blacklights and spinning and swirling...I remember thinking if I were really brave I would come ride this again after dropping some acid (or the next best thing anyway). Definitely a good ride for a particular frame of mind.
posted by zardoz at 4:04 AM on March 26, 2007

Well, no. Disney ain't for thrills. No argument from me on that. I grew up in So. Cal though, and my parents divorced when I was 8 so nobody knew what to do with me besides take me to Disneyland. Sometimes we went twice a month. I could draw a map of 1970s Disneyland from my memory. Working at Disney pretty much killed my nostalgia for it for a while, but I have to admit that when I started making this post I got a bit of it back. :)

That "cute" ride sounds like either Mr. Toad or possibly Snow White (Scary) -- that's literally what it said on the tickets they had when I was a kid: "Snow White (Scary)." I always thought those kid rides were kinda like creepy acid flashbacks, actually. I remember going to Disneyland Grad Night when I was a high school senior, and there were more than a few kids piling into those rides to smoke pot. (Not me, of course. My halo was intact.)
posted by miss lynnster at 3:19 AM on March 26, 2007

"So, Mr. Mouse, you want a divorce on grounds of insanity?"

"No, no.... she's not crazy, she's f*cking Goofy!"
posted by Malor at 3:21 AM on March 26, 2007

For increased realism there should be a 30-minute wait before the video actually starts.
posted by ldenneau at 3:30 AM on March 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

30 minutes?! More like a couple of hours for Space Mountain on a crowded summer day in the 80s.

Bonus: photos of the architectural models and concept drawings from 1977. The future was here.

It's 2007, where's my flying car already?
posted by nadise at 4:30 AM on March 26, 2007

I wish the video had the awesome Dick Dale soundtrack that the ride had a few years ago. It kept breaking down so not enough people got to hear it, but when it was working it was great.
posted by litlnemo at 4:45 AM on March 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

miss lynnster, is it true that *all* the folks drawing a Disney paycheck are referred to as "cast members" -- not just the folks waltzing around the park in costumes?
posted by pax digita at 4:51 AM on March 26, 2007

I'm still pissed that the 20,000 leagues under the sea ride was out of order both times I made it to Disney Florida. I read the book and I wanted my ride dammit!
posted by srboisvert at 7:06 AM on March 26, 2007

dancing to the world's most excruciatingly annoying delightfully awesome synthesized music.

Fixed.
posted by JT at 7:18 AM on March 26, 2007

Disneyland's Club 33.
posted by the_bone at 7:24 AM on March 26, 2007

The best Haunted Mansion site ever?

(I loathed the Haunted Mansion when I was a kid, so I don't know why I enjoyed roaming around that website so much.)
posted by thomas j wise at 7:30 AM on March 26, 2007

That was totally unlike riding the thing.

This ride is one of the main reasons I miss Disney World (Orlando). I'll probably never go again though; the wife is aggressively uninterested, it's a long way to go for some expensive standing-around-in-line, and it won't be the same as when I was a kid. Ah well.
posted by Foosnark at 8:32 AM on March 26, 2007

If we're going to have a big weep fest over what Disney used to be, how about this tribute to the "lost" EPCOT - all the rides that have been revamped or rebuilt out of existance.

For me, the peak of things lost will always be Horizons, demolished to make way for a centrifuge. (although one can't forget the original, much beloved Journey into Imagination either.
posted by InnocentBystander at 9:02 AM on March 26, 2007

Really, foosnark? I'm shocked!

pax digita, yes, it is true. I never worked at the park but I still have my Cast Member name badge, you still get one just as a symbolic thing. It is also true that I once spent 12 hours of my life sitting in a chair at Disney University at Team Disney Headqarters (the studio lot in Burbank) listening to speeches like this (ahem):
::assumes plastic smile:: "How many times have YOU sat on a plane and someone asked what you do for a living? You tell them, and they say, "What? So what does that mean? What exactly do you do?" You try and try to describe your job to them but they really don't get it. Or they don't care. Well that will not happen to you any more. From now on, you an just turn to them and say, "I work... for DISNEY." Watch their eyes light up! Watch as they recall the first time they went to Disneyland and how much their families love Disney movies! Watch how happy you will make people."

This, my friends, is why I told people on planes that I was in insurance sales.

It is also true that they offered me 1/3 the hourly rate that I am currently making (it was a slow time & I wanted the job title on my resume so I took it -- but quickly realized I couldn't live on it), that although I given the work of 2 people, they wanted me to work 29 hour weeks so that they wouldn't have to pay me benefits, and that when I was a Disney vendor (before I was a Cast Member with direct deposit) they generally took between 60-90 days to pay me.
posted by miss lynnster at 9:11 AM on March 26, 2007

Disneyland's Club 33.

Heh, I'd always assumed that that was an urban legend. The photos really don't do my imagination justice. Has anyone been there?

Also, I went on Space Mountain when I was six years old and it scared the stuffing out of me. I haven't gone on any remotely scary rides since.

I came back to Disneyland as a teenager, during the era of the much-hyped Dick Dale soundtrack. I wanted to ride it again, but I just couldn't.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:17 AM on March 26, 2007

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Holdup. JOURNEY INTO IMAGINATION IS GONE?????????

At my office, crying is totally worse than watching porn.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:18 AM on March 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Woo hoo! I just found out that the Haunted Mansion Secret Panel Box I picked up at a thrift store for $10 is worth $50!
posted by miss lynnster at 9:18 AM on March 26, 2007

roll truck, sadly yes. The late Eisner era saw the ride needing a 'fresh look' which essentially boiled down to gutting the entire dark ride and replacing it with Eric Idle's laboratory. Whether it was fan letters or more likely the visit from (ride sponsor) Kodak seeing the new atrocity, the ride was shuttered again as Imagineers then tried to re-shoe-horn Figment into the monstrosity.

The result now, while still using many of the Figment animatronics from the original ride, is still a stale and dated ride with little repeat value. Ironic, since these were some of the reasons they wanted to gut it in the first place...
posted by cavalier at 12:02 PM on March 26, 2007

I'm still mourning the original voiceovers from P.O.C. before they made it all politically correct and wussy. Yeah, right... like pirates give a shit if you hold onto the safety rail.
posted by miss lynnster at 12:08 PM on March 26, 2007

thomas, thank you! What a cool site. I'm all full of anticipation right now, about nothing at all, as I have no real plans to visit anytime soon.
posted by houseofdanie at 12:34 PM on March 26, 2007

Ive been to Club 33. Its a nice dinner place. Good food, although it was a long time ago and my palate has changed some...

I remember ALL of these. Growing up and going to the Tiki Tiki Tiki room (drunk) was one of my highlights. As well as sitting in the front of space mountain, but in the back of Big Thunder. Gadget's go coaster was another fantastic ride... Ah, the memories.

I used to love the Jungle Cruise... I havent been back in years, although when we were going, it was like 10 times a month.
posted by subaruwrx at 1:43 PM on March 26, 2007

Heh. I hate rollercoasters with a passion. Even the baby ones at Disneyland. I know every freaking chicken exit at that place.

Last time I was at Disneyland, I was stuck for ten minutes at the very end of Indiana Jones. (Where he's standing and congratulating you on being lucky or some such.) Ten minutes stuck on a ride that lasts all of three minutes is a fricking eternity. I got bored asking the Harrison Ford mannequin about his alcoholism and wtf was up with "Regarding Henry," anyway?

On the other hand, when I was growing up in Fullerton (back in the 60s), my quiet, balding, and bespectacled neighbor Jerry was a god among the neighborhoods kids, because he was an engineer at the Matterhorn. I saw him once at D-Land dressed in full lederhosen. He was quite sheepish, but he could have walked on water as far as the neighborkids were concerned.
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 6:36 PM on March 26, 2007