Boat Races!

So my family and I went to Disneyland on Sunday to see all the Christmas decorations, and just to enjoy the holidays. The park was a little crowded, but for being the Christmas season, it was not bad at all.

We did the usual rides, Indian Jones and The Temple of Doom, The Haunted Mansion/Nightmare Before Christmas, Buzz Lightyear.

It was a cold day...maybe in the mid 50's all day, but my brother and I had the bright idea to ride Splash Mountain. In fact, there was no wait for the ride at all...and this is the ride that usually has a 45 minute wait all year long. Perhaps the cold weather scared everyone away...but not us! Well, we got in line and walked all the way to the loading docks where they asked for two riders. That was us, so they pulled us out of line and told us to go the lane number 1...yep...the front of the boat! Well my brother didn't want to sit in the very front, but neither did I, so I assured him that the people in the back will get the wettest, but I don't think he bought that...so we sat down and away we went. Did I mention how cold it was that day?

Anyway, long story short, we got soaked. I thought the ride was "Splash Mountain", not "Soak Mountain"...

Ah, and now to the title of the post...Boat Races...

So we decided that we wanted to go on "It's A Small World" since it was all decked out for the holidays, so we waited in line for maybe 25 minutes or so which I thought was supper fast for that ride. Well we got on, my bother and I again sitting in the front, and proceeded to enter the ride, got through maybe the first room of the ride when I noticed the boat was moving extremely slow...in fact...too slow. Pretty soon we were stopped dead in the water. Well we proceeded to drift along for a few moments as the electronic puppets continued to sing that oh so wonderful song! We were even going slow enough to fish out a FujiFilm digital camera from the water. Now, I'm not quite sure how you drop your camera on a ride that has a top speed of a half mile an hour...it's not like the owner of the camera got started from a large drop, or some crazy fast action...but perhaps they were frightened by the small electronic creatures singing...Well, the camera was a little rusted so it was obvious that it had been in there for a while, so I just gave it to the ride attendant when we got off...I told him we found it floating. (He didn't seem surprised that a heavy camera could float, but hey)

So by this point we are not moving anymore, and the ride operator had come over the loud speaker and told us to stay seated, the ride needed to be rebooted. (I have never heard of a water ride needing to be rebooted, have you?) So my bother and I decided we would rock the boat...you know...see if we could send anyone launching...it didn't work. So instead we grabbed on to the sides of the water track and pulled our boat forward, ramming the boat in front of us. Then we tried to push all of us forward...there were maybe 6 boats in front of us, but we weren't able to move us all out. So we backed our boat up, and rammed the boats in front of us again...not luck. (By "ramming" I mean we bumped into the boats at a whopping speed of 100 feet and hour...so no harm done) we had probably been sitting in the same spot for maybe 10 minutes or so and people were going anxious to get out. The music had stopped, but all the puppets were still singing and dancing like nothing had happened. Then the races broke out! Now the boat behind us was in a mad rush to back all the way out of the ride back to the future...er...the beginning, so we joined in, as did the boat in front of us. Man, that boat behind his pealed rubber and split! They were gone faster than we knew! So now it was a race to catch up with them...

Well we passed backwards in time through all the same 2 and a half rooms we had just gone forward in, meanwhile all the puppets kept on singing and dancing...

Half way through the race, and almost free, the ride was finished rebooting and we gradually started moving forward again. Here is where our plan back fired...we had backed up all the way to the beginning, and now had to ride the whole thing again! 30 minutes is way too long to spend on that ride...

He is a shot of the ride taken with my BlackBerry...

This is a stock photo...

Here is the Castle at night when it "snows" (Sorry...bad photos...its what to expect with a camera phone...)

All in all, it was a fun day at D-Land! (Wow...that was along post!)