Back in '96, my wife and I went to Disneyland for part of our honeymoon. She has a bad ankle, and can't climb stairs as a result. Well, there are quite a few rides with stairs as part of the queue, which makes it a bit difficult. For Splash Mountain, they just suggested she wait, for close to 2 hours, over in the exit area, while the rest of us (my friend who lives in L.A. and myself) go through the rest of the line. Yeah, right, on our honeymoon, we're really going to do that!
But, on the Indiana Jones ride, when I noticed it had stairs, there was a roped off area to the left just before the stairs. There was a cast member standing there, and I explained to him that my wife had a bad ankle, so she couldn't climb the stairs up and down like that. So he undid the rope and pointed to the wall where there were these metal looking panels on the wall, rather rusted looking. He said to push the button in between the two. When I saw the button, I noticed it had an arrow pointing up on it, just like elevators do. I pushed it, and sure enough, the metal panel opened, and it was a bloody elevator!
The three of us went up it, only one story, and the doors on the opposite side of the elevator opened. When we stepped out... this was the freakest part... we were upstairs, and WITHIN THE ROPED OFF QUEUE AREA! If you can't understand that, it's kinda tough to explain. You know, when you're upstairs, you see that part that looks like a drafting table and stuff for props? Well, we came out IN the scene! we walked across it, and found the other elevator, and went down it. Doing this, we must have skipped at least 15 to 20 minutes of wait time, too.
When we came out, we were right at the boarding area of the ride. I have to remember my wife's ankle more often at theme parks!
Robert, Disney Affecionado |
Back when I still lived in L.A., my friends Emilio, Amanda, and I went to Disneyland to celebrate Emilio's and my birthdays. This must have been back in '91 or '92. We got there about a half hour before the parked officially opened, so of course we waited in the roped off area of Main Street. I think we got there around 9 am and it opened at 9:30. We managed to get pretty close to the roped off part, and when they let go (announcing to everyone to WALK to their rides, which no one in their right minds are going to do) of the ropes, and we ALL took off like a shot towards the newest ride at the time; Splash Mountain. We got to the ride, and enjoyed a smaller than small line. After something like a 2 minute wait, we stepped into our log. Emilio and I had always been trouble-makers. We couldn't let our reputation down on our birthdays. So we proceeded to stick our hands out and stop our log from floating down the "river." The logs aren't being pushed by anything more than gravity and the force of the water, so it took only about a minute to finally get it to stop, and pile up logs behind us. We had a grand ol' time. That is, until we decided to finally let the logs go. We had, rather unwisely, tried to stop our log right before the first drop. Note the one after the up-ramp, but the first one after free-loating. The first GOOD drop. This, we learned later, somehow totally screwed up the computers, and set off the safety alarms. We jammed the ride so good that everyone ended up having to be escorted off the logs so it could be reset. They claimed it was going to be something to the effect of 45 minutes to reset. So we were promptly escorted, or should I say PARADED, through Disneyland, and to the security office. There we were interrogated, locked up in this dinky security room, and waited for our parents to come pick us up. We later learned that the only reason our parents had to come and get us was because of the bogus reason for stopping the log. We all told them that Emilio was feeling sick, and we didn't want him throwing up on us. He even went to the bathroom and threw up for effect. Well, if we hadn't done that, they said they just would have slapped us on the back of the hand and let us back in. But since he was "sick", they needed to send us home. Although it wasn't what most people would call a wonderful trip, we still had a ball throughout the whole experience. When I finally make that Descent 2 level to look like Disneyland, I plan to include the area we were escorted to in order to get to the security office. However, I don't recommend this sort of behavior to anyone else!! It was an expensive lesson to learn!! At THAT time, Disneyland was running a special during the off-season, where all California residents only had to pay $20/person to get in. NOW I hear it's a whole lot more expensive; and you DON'T get your money back!!! Robert, Disney Affecionado Click here to read a more detailed account. |
![]() Thanks to the lovely Shannon and all her pretty friends for this memory! |
One day at the land, with my cousin, we were back on the ol' dock for the Motor Boats. (in between Matterhorn and Toontown, on the water) Anyways we were back there and were riding the chairs like horses and this Disneyland police guy comes up to us and says, "hey, you kids going to ride any rides soon?" So we say, " yeah we're going to ride Small World." Then he walked away. We decided to stay, so we kept riding the chairs and laughing and having fun, then the police guy came back and said "I thought you were going to ride it's a small world, why don't you?" So we got up and got into the line, then the rest of the night it seemed like the police people kept watching us. But we had fun... -Beth- |
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