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Sunday, September 20, 2009

Disneyland: One Man's Dream- Return of the Subs


We already established about a month ago that in 1959, the Submarine Voyage was added to Disneyland as one of three new E-Ticket attractions. Then we discussed how in 1998, the ride closed. Shortly after that, it was announced that a new ride would be placed there by 2003. Originally, they were going to put an Atlantis themed sub ride in the lagoon, but the movie flopped at the idea was abbandoned. It would be years before any ride would be place there.

Later in 2004, there was activity in the lagoon. A Sub was docked at it's original dock for an inspection, and to see if animated scenes would appear through the porthole.

Finally, the highly anticipated ride opened. Some people loved it; others critized it for being "just TV screens". Whatever the case may be, the ride had insanely large lines. It had the longest wait out of all the rides at Disneyland!



The story of the ride is that you are setting out to explore and undersea volcano. You "dive" (via bubbles galore) and are emerged in a wonderful underwater landscape. You see ancient ruins and characters from Nemo, and continue on to a large reef. As you go deeper and deeper, the cpatain commands that the sonar hydrophones be turned on, which actually allow you to hear the fish. It's at this time that we see scenes from Finding Nemo via projections in the show building while people are still in the submarines. At the end, you end up seeing the volcano, and the captain decides not to put any of this into the log because "no one would believe any of it. We better get out of here before we see a mermaid or a sea searpent" (in homage to the original ride).


The rise was popular. However, some quests can't go down into the sub due to claustrophobia, size, etc. So, Disney also has an alternate viewing area, where you watch the ride in a nicely themed seaside Marine Observation Outpost. To this day, it is not uncommon to find waits for the ride at about an hour. But what will be next for Disneyland?

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