Ghoulish Delight
01-24-2005, 11:52 AM
Went to the parks on Friday night and noticed a couple interesting things.
First, when I arrrived about about 5:30, I went into DCA to check out the ToT line, get a tortilla, and check out the Inspearations display. As I got to the entrance gate, I noticed something very odd. There were 5 gates open. 3 of them had printed out signs taped over the lighted "Entrance" signs that said, "Annual Passport Entrance". If you had an AP, you had to use one of these gates. When I got there, these lines were longer than the lines at either of the 2 gates where they were letting day pass guests in. Kind of nice for the day pass folks, certainly no skin off my teeth to wait an extra minute to get in. I crossed over to Disneyland at about 6. The signs were still up at DCA, but there weren't any entering Disneyland. And by the time CP joined me at around 6:30, they had taken them down at DCA.
The Inspearations statues were kind of fun. Most of them were blah, but there were some cool ones. My personal favorite is the Lobsta' Mouse (it's over out in front of the Tratoria) because it's creepy as all hell. Mickey with a lobster tail grafted onto his back, and mutant lobster claw hands. Another creepy one is "Mickey's Shadow" (in the amphitheater). It looks like plain-old Mickey until you walk around his back. Creepy. We did notice that it seems each one of the statues has a hidden Mickey on it somewhere (some more hidden than others). We had a fun looking for a few of them, but got bored.
After we checked those out, we went over to Disneyland. They are once again working on the facade of the Emporium, and they have blocked off the the shop that's behind the clock shop that connects from center street through to the Emporium. If you're in the Emporium, there's just a big wall. Also on the construction front, they seem to have expanded the construction area for the Plaza Pavillion, with construction walls reaching all the over to Coke Corner, blocking off that second level of seating (and bulging out into the Coke Corner seating area a little bit).
And the final observation of the night came as we walked along Big Thunder Trail towards Fantasyland. We were passing the curve that leads into the wiggling rock lift hill, and as a train approached, it seemed to trigger some really loud sound effects that we know we've never heard before. It sounded like either a loud rumble, or some sort of roar, and a squeaking noise. Very loud and noticeable. And it was only triggered when a train came by. So we rode. Unfortunately we were in the second row, and the effects weren't triggered until the front of the train was almost already past the little ante-chamber before the lift hill, where the effects were coming from. So we're unsure if there was any sort of visual to go along with the effects, but the sounds were definitely new to us.
First, when I arrrived about about 5:30, I went into DCA to check out the ToT line, get a tortilla, and check out the Inspearations display. As I got to the entrance gate, I noticed something very odd. There were 5 gates open. 3 of them had printed out signs taped over the lighted "Entrance" signs that said, "Annual Passport Entrance". If you had an AP, you had to use one of these gates. When I got there, these lines were longer than the lines at either of the 2 gates where they were letting day pass guests in. Kind of nice for the day pass folks, certainly no skin off my teeth to wait an extra minute to get in. I crossed over to Disneyland at about 6. The signs were still up at DCA, but there weren't any entering Disneyland. And by the time CP joined me at around 6:30, they had taken them down at DCA.
The Inspearations statues were kind of fun. Most of them were blah, but there were some cool ones. My personal favorite is the Lobsta' Mouse (it's over out in front of the Tratoria) because it's creepy as all hell. Mickey with a lobster tail grafted onto his back, and mutant lobster claw hands. Another creepy one is "Mickey's Shadow" (in the amphitheater). It looks like plain-old Mickey until you walk around his back. Creepy. We did notice that it seems each one of the statues has a hidden Mickey on it somewhere (some more hidden than others). We had a fun looking for a few of them, but got bored.
After we checked those out, we went over to Disneyland. They are once again working on the facade of the Emporium, and they have blocked off the the shop that's behind the clock shop that connects from center street through to the Emporium. If you're in the Emporium, there's just a big wall. Also on the construction front, they seem to have expanded the construction area for the Plaza Pavillion, with construction walls reaching all the over to Coke Corner, blocking off that second level of seating (and bulging out into the Coke Corner seating area a little bit).
And the final observation of the night came as we walked along Big Thunder Trail towards Fantasyland. We were passing the curve that leads into the wiggling rock lift hill, and as a train approached, it seemed to trigger some really loud sound effects that we know we've never heard before. It sounded like either a loud rumble, or some sort of roar, and a squeaking noise. Very loud and noticeable. And it was only triggered when a train came by. So we rode. Unfortunately we were in the second row, and the effects weren't triggered until the front of the train was almost already past the little ante-chamber before the lift hill, where the effects were coming from. So we're unsure if there was any sort of visual to go along with the effects, but the sounds were definitely new to us.