Tuesday, October 9, 2007

DISNEYLAND! Part 1...

So yesterday 13 CalArts' students headed to Disneyland! We began our epic adventure at 7 a.m, left Disneyland shortly after midnight and put my head to my pillow at 1:30 in the morning! I pretty much lost my voice by the end of the day, along with a couple other people, but it was well worth it! Granted the 9 a.m. design class this morning wasn't too fun, but hey I'm not complaining---I'm actually pretty awake and have more of my voice back! So here's the tale(VERY image/video heavy---as it should be):

The drive had some heavy traffic and we arrived at Disneyland gates around 9:30. Our car consisted entirely of Disneyland ride songs(no movie music on the way there, however, on the way home, we turned on the Disney movie songs) and talking about general Disneyland stuff inbetween dodging traffic and figuring out the right offramp(didn't get lost though! yay). Anyways, we get there, meet up with the other 9 people and head for the gates and find:

Disneyland is completely decked out in Halloween decorations! I've only been to Disneyland during the summer months, so this was quite the change.


(Everything that's the color orange on that grass is made-up entirely of those tiny pumpkins!)

Main Street! We pretty much bolted for the first group voted ride:

Matterhorn! Still as bumpy as I remember and Harold the Yeti(yes that is his real name, little Disney trivia I learned in line yesterday) managed to make quite the impression on a couple animators--haha. So after grabbing Fast-Passes for Space Mountain, we headed over to Adventureland and rode:

Jungle Cruise! Sadly, on the way over we found out Indiana Jones was closed for the ENTIRE day for its yearly maintenance....we were so bummed the rest of the day! I LOVE this ride and it's become a bit of a family tradition to ride Indie whenever we visit, so that was the real only downer for the day. Anyways, we turned around and went back to Jungle Cruise instead:

Hey Mom! Think Annie would fit in with this crowd???? ;)

After Jungle Cruise we continued up the road and since it was in the area(and we had a lot of time before we could use our Fast Passes) we went on:


Since my last trip, Disney has added some of the movie elements into the ride, while a couple scenes were entertaining---I didn't really like how much emphasis was solely on the movie and finding Captain Jack Sparrow.....kind of took away from the ride a bit hearing the original track suddenly dubbed to say "WHERE BE CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW????" in some pretty random areas(Jack showed up 3 times, the audio mentioned him like 7 times at least). Davy Jones was pretty cool and when Jack was actually there, it was fun. Aside from the changes it's still the same lovable ride. =)

So I took a lot of video on this ride, however I'm just going to post one video(Blogger being a pain and not wanting to upload the 3 I hoped to share) and then share a couple general pirate-themed photos:



There you go Mom! =) I have more goodies for you when you visit in a couple of weeks(treats and more videos!)




After Pirates we headed over to:


Thunder Mountain!

I think THIS ride out of all of them received the most animation related talk while going up the hill. We had to have made our animation teacher proud when we started in on timing/spacing/etc. based on the roller coaster assignment we had earlier. =)

After Thunder Mountain we made our way back to Fantasyland and since the wait wasn't too long hit a couple rides along the way:


Here's Dumbo! We didn't go on this ride, but still. Had to grab a picture while walking past.
Rides included:

Snow White, Pinocchio, and...

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride!
(Large picture is for my Mom.=) Got to love Mr. Toad's Wild Ride! I did have a video of the entire ride, but 1)Really long and ate up a lot of memory and 2) Dizzy. The video was just hectic since the car was just spinning me every which way.)

Around this time our Fast Passes were ready to use, so we went and rode Space Mountain! SOOOO much fun! I haven't ridden that one in a LONG time(it was closed down when I went 4 years ago, so it's been at least 8 years). The picture taken of the car I was in is NOTHING compared to the other car. I had to snap a picture of the screen(sorry guys who are in this picture and don't want this to be posted---it's too good NOT to! haha)

Priceless guys! It gets a little fuzzy on ride orders and when we did what, so here are a bunch of photos/videos and commentary:


Can't forget Star Tours! Oh yeah and I had the chance to ride the brand-spankin'-new:

Finding Nemo Submarine Ride!

Mine! MINE! MINE!

While waiting in line for Nemo*only an hour wait! It's usually around 3-5 hours!* Jedi appeared and hosted a "Jedi Training Academy" across the street from us. So that's why I have a Jedi picture.
The actual Nemo ride was awesome! The effects were really fun. Nemo is lost again and goes through all these adventures in the sea and meets up with several well-known character while running into the bad characters(Angler fish scene and the Jellyfish were sweet!) Here's just a quick video because I don't want to spoil the experience entirely:


Here's BRUCIE! It's dark because we're about to enter the Angler fish territory....that and my camera doesn't take good videos in the dark. GO SEE IT IN PERSON! IT'S 100 times better than that little clip!

At some point while passing time between Fast Passes for both Splash Mountain and Haunted Mansion we visited the...


TIKI-ROOM!

I'm going to continue in Part 2, this is getting a tediously long....

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