Google Saves Athenamama or "How Disneyland Got It's Groove Back"

I was thinking about Google's caching of the web, and wondered how much effort it would take to rebuild some of my lost posts. This is my first try. I Googled "Athenamama Submarines" and then retreived the post from the cache link. I then saved the entire page, (which was the whole of my "Life" Catagory,) on my hard drive. I only needed to do a quick edit to re-post this old entry about our recent trip to Disneyland.

Almost every year since my early teens, I have gone to Disneyland. A large number of those trips took place between 1975 and 1990, and for the most part they involved only myself, and one or more of my male friends. The reason for this was because my friends usually had no problem with getting up at the crack of dawn, getting to Disneyland before it opened, and staying there until it closed. In those days I thought nothing of spending sixteen hours at the park. In fact, as far as I was concerned, sixteen hours wasn’t enough.

Those days are gone. My male friends are either married, or have moved away, and as a result it has become burdensome to find anyone who would want to spend that much time at Disneyland. Besides, I really can’t physically tolerate that much walking, and standing. Add that to the decline in substance at today’s Disneyland for a much increased admission price, and it just doesn’t live up the claim of “Happiest Place on Earth” anymore.

This past weekend, however, I went with my wife and sister. My sister lives in Saipan, a small island in the south pacific, and part of the Marianas. I haven’t been to Disneyland with my sister in probably 30 years or so, that's why when she suggested in an email a couple of months back that my wife and I should accompany her to Disneyland during her upcoming visit, I of course agreed.

My sister has medical problems of her own, and consequently tires easily. My wife, on the other hand, is not a big fan of Disneyland, but goes with me out of love. I figured between the three of us it would be a short trip, and as I indicated before, the park isn’t the place it used to be, so I wasn’t going to be too disappointed if we ended up leaving early. As it turned out, we stayed for about eight hours, and we all had a great time, and the biggest surprise of all, the park actually looks fantastic.

Disney has let Disneyland slide over the past decade or more. Walt, never one with a head for money, built Disneyland out of love. Michael Eisner, maintains Disneyland out of love for profit. Under Walt, Disneyland was always clean, and well maintained. It was painted, steam cleaned, and groomed to perfection nightly. Even the light bulbs were changed at 75% of their life expectancy so that guests would never see a burned out light bulb among the thousands displayed throughout the park. Under Eisner the park looked like it had fallen on hard times. The last time I went I saw whole sections of paint peeling away from parts of buildings. I also saw rotted pieces of wood, exposed nails, and broken or missing ornate wooden carvings that are part of the meticulous attention to detail Disneyland is famous for.

Imagine my surprise, then, after passing through the bowels of that ghastly parking structure, handing over my hard earned $56.00, and having my camera case searched for WMD’s, to find that Disneyland now looks wonderful once again. It’s almost immediately apparent that some major work has been done to brighten up the park for it’s fiftieth anniversary. For one thing, it looks clean. I didn’t see gum on the streets, or litter in the corners or waterways. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough, or maybe I was in awe of the return to quality of appearance wherever I looked, but I was impressed with how clean it seemed to be in comparison to what I have become accustomed to.

The park has also been painted, and in some cases, repaired. Even the most widely recognized icon of Disneyland, Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, has been decorated with a fabulously inspired paint job that is so incredible I could not possibly do it justice with any description here. All I can say is it’s simply breathtaking. And it doesn’t stop there. All of Fantasyland has been similarly painted, and seamlessly adheres to the same color scheme as that of the castle.

I imagine it would have been a relatively simple task to just clean the place up and slap on a few coats of paint here and there, but Disney as done far more than that. The inside of the attractions look great as well.

Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room, which had been closed for over a year, looks gorgeous. The feathers of the birds are bright, the seats are new, the walls are clean, and all the animatronics actually work! It honestly looks brand new despite being over 40 years old. I am unashamed to admit this has always been one of my favorite attractions, and I force the party I am with to visit it each time I am in the park. While most people, including my wife, are at best indifferent to the Tiki Room, the place was filled to capacity when we went this past weekend. I haven’t seen that many people in it since the late 1960’s.

Seriously.

And as the crowd broke up and left, I heard nothing but rave reviews. I have always worried about the future of the Tiki Room. When attendance is down Disney tends to yank old attractions with no regard for history or tradition. But it looks good for now as far as this attraction goes. The recent refurbishment went a long ways in bringing people in to see the show.

A new, interactive attraction, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, has also turned out to be a smash hit. Once inside the ride, you discover your mission is to help Buzz Lightyear defend the galaxy. When you board your vehicle you find a permanently affixed ray-gun much like you might find on some shoot-em-up arcade video game. You spend the rest of your journey shooting at targets throughout the ride and racking up points that are displayed on the console of your vehicle. It’s like being inside a great big video game, and is loads of fun. I ended up with 91,000 points, and was awarded… nothing. But I had a great time!

Perhaps the most surprising moment of our trip, however, was when we went on The Haunted Mansion. The Haunted Mansion has been one of my favorite rides since the first time I rode it just scantly a year after it opened it’s doors in August of 1969. I still remember waiting in line, wondering how horrifying it might be. I was all of nine years old back then, and not knowing what to expect primed me to expect the worst. But the ride turned out to be light hearted fun, and I have hardly missed a trip through it’s halls whenever I have visited Disneyland since. Over the years, however, there have been some changes, and minor as they may be, the purist in me resents any change from what the Haunted Mansion was like all those years ago.

Probably one of the first changes was when the Changing Portraits in the hallway leading to the Doombuggy loading area went from changing simultaneously with the flashing lightning outside, to a slow morphing effect. I never liked the change, but as the years wore on I got used to it. Still, I couldn’t help but wish Disney would restore the original effect every time I walked by it.

Well, restore it they finally did. Last weekend when the walls to the stretching room opened, and I looked down the hall of the Changing Portraits, I saw the paintings transform from a normal portrait to one of decay, flashing back and forth in time with the lightning. I couldn’t believe it, and stood and watched the effect a little longer than I should.

My wife and sister, eager to move on, prodded me along and soon I found myself in a Doombuggy heading off into the ethereal abyss. As we neared the Séance room where disembodied Madame Leota summons long dead spirits from inside her crystal ball, I couldn’t help but notice that her crystal ball now free floats above the table! It’s an amazing effect that, even though is a change form how the scene was originally presented, really makes an impact when you see it.

Finally, towards the end of our day, we all decided to go over to Downtown Disney for lunch. We boarded the Monorail inside Disneyland adjacent to the old Submarine attraction, and this is what I saw:

Yup. The old Submarine ride is finally being prepared for some sort of reincarnation. I have heard that it will return with a Finding Nemo theme, but to tell you the truth, as long as I can take a voyage through liquid space in one of those cool submarines, I’ll be thrilled.

We really had a wonderful time. As it turned out my sister held up fine, and so did I. The three of us all enjoy each other’s company, and so that made the day that much better. I don’t know when my sister will be back in town, but I can tell you that I will be workin’ the wife at the end of the year to go back and see what other changes have been made at The Happiest Place on Earth.

Posted by Jeff at May 31, 2005 2:53 PM