Space is now Launching!
 

Space Mountain is open and sending guests to space. I'm going to swing by later and ride (the wait is 115 minutes at the moment and I'm sure it will be longer tonight). We'll post pics when we get home.:cool:

Hey, husband! Should we go tonight?

Times like this I wished I lived in Irvine.

We are meeting some people at the Hub at 6. But, there's a good chance we'll be there earlier.

Check thine email.

Pictures! We want pictures, news, review, and comments as soon as you get back.

Have fun all you lucky Socal'ers. :)

I am tempting to write many bad words because I left DL a scant 5 days ago.

I am also tempted to make another trip this summer.

I am putting on my space suit and preparing for launch

We're leaving in just a bit and will ride Space first thing. I will have my PDA and can post from the GC or Uber has his trio if he joins us. I will do my best to be a good reporter.

Or, I'll just call someone to post for me.

ThinKrisps will be arriving around 4:30.

Oh, and I'm coming, too. :)

Hmm, perhaps we need to call the Mousepod hotline afterward as well?

For all those you on the edge of their seats - yes, GD and I are going. Cell you then, NA. :cool:

Yes, calling the MP Hotline is a given. He'll want to hear, even though he's on a sunny island in the sea.

I rode Mummy too many times today... I'll ride Space on Sunday...

Were I not going in two weeks, I would also be spewing French-type invectives at them.

Sigh -- I will have to wait until Winter. Still, I am looking forward to reading the trip reports.

O. M. G.!

Not only does Space look great, but it is smooth and filled with stars. The sound track is fun and tres swanky! We rode it twice tonight. We had a big group of people both times. There were LoT people and MC people all excited together. It was amazing!

However, the second time we rode there were 13 of us. Twelve of us all went in one "train" (really 2 attached rockets). Poor Jim was left to ride - ALL ALONE - in an entire train. We got to the point where they send us to the right to go up the lift but we veered to the left instead. WTF???????

Our last look at Jim, he was sitting in the front row of his train, all alone, holding his refillable coffee cup high to cheer us.

Well, we were told that our sound wasn't working so they had to take us out. HA! So, they literally PUSHED the train backstage and had us get out, row by row. Of course we were hooting and hollering the whole time, snapping photos along the way. Even the maintenance men were amused by all of our joyful noise.

We were taken back out through a CM-only entrance and put in place for another train. Right before loading, they decided we shouldn't all be on one train and split us up. Sound problems, my foot!

So, we sunk a rocket tonight! Who knew it could be done? But, leave it to this group to accomplish something of this sort.

I did enjoy my own private rocket!

All I can say is WOW!!

Way to break Space Mountain, guys. Two years in rehab, and at gets sunk by a group of Disney Geeks. :rolleyes:;)

When do we get to see the pics?:D

I am so totally jealous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe I'll have to swing by tonight!!!

GAH!

<-- JEALOUS!

Sounds like you guys had a great time! I am soooo looking forward to checking it out.

It's SO FREEKIN COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO PRETTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO very PRETTYFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What, you haven't been taken off to the Fat Train unload before?

Nope, never done the fat left turn before. It was quite a treat!

We took plenty of pics but posting them will have to wait a day or so.

As for the ride itself...I was a 6 year old all over again. Truly a blast, and well worth a wait. I even enjoyed the music! To me it's a whole different feel on an old favorite.

There's obviously a lot of stuff in there that they aren't lighting up yet...can't wait for Rockit!

This is motivating me to make an early morning run up there tomorrow! Cool!

Yep, your train weighed too much. Nice of them to be sensitive about it though. ;) This has happened to me before, when loaded with another party of very, very large folks in the front. They split us all up, after pulling us off to the left.

Don't break it before I get a chance to ride it!

Woohoo Space Mountain is back!







I'm particularly pleased about some of the tributes, particularly this one:




You can see the rest of my photos here

Wow, look how filthy those drop ceiling tiles are:
http://photos.xenarchy.com/displayim...lbum=15&pos=13

;)

Woohoo!

It will take me a long time to get over the loss of the roaring of the coaster, that added so much to the ride for me. But otherwise, I'm very very pleased. Although with the limited scope of the changes, they aren't going to be fooling anyone by calling this a "new attraction".

A friend and I got there around 4pm on Friday. The posted wait time was 60 minutes, but we got through in about 45. The line seemed to move pretty well. I love Space. I miss Space. It was so cool to be able to ride it again. I'm not thrilled about the new song (it sounds kinda tongue-in-cheek "Mission Impossible"), but maybe it's just a matter of getting used to new music. I was always one of those who preferred Space without music because I like to hear the roar of a coaster, but the buildup on this is pretty cool, all the launch talk stuff as you're making your way to the top. I love the new effects at the end. When we got back to the loading station, we kept waiting for them to release the lap bar, but as we got moved further up, it never released. I started chanting "ride through, ride through", mostly kidding. Well, ask and you shall receive. They ended up letting us go on again, so we got two rides for the price of one! Woo hoo! That was awesome.

A little while later, my husband joined us, so we got in line again, around 6pm. It took a while longer this time because the ride went down twice while we were in line. Some people got out of line every time it was announced that it was down, but we stayed. When we finally got through the line after it came up again, my husband and I ended up getting front row! That was awesome. It's been so long since I was even in the front row. Even though I refer to it as the biggest blow dryer, I forget how much wind you actually get in your face.

I love having Space back up!

You should've seen the sink! Grease relief city! But, this is a working area, not a show area. I'm ok with it dirty.

We rode it around 5 pm or so on Friday as well. Quite a long wait, about an hour, but we decided to do it anyway. We were roasting in the sun on the roof. Maybe they should put up some sort of shade up there to keep people cool on those hot days like Friday.

Anyway, the que was cool, I like the space station feel. I also caught that Hench reference. Was cool. Definitely felt like you were walking through a space station and I know cause I have been in many. No idea what it looked like before it went down so I can't really compare it to the previous DL version. The loading area looked really cool. Loved the air gates and the funky lighting effects in the different clear plastics. The ride broke down while we were in there so they turned all the lights on for about 15 minutes. But luckily, it got going again. I don't know what effects were new or what not, but I was not particularly impressed with any of them. The amount of stars were cool but the ride wasn't as impressive as SM in DL Paris. Still, it was a fun coaster, prolly better than the florida one and it is a definite nice addition. It's weird to have things to do in tomorrowland.

Also checked out the ASIMO exhibit. While a bit campy and a ginormous commercial for Honda, the robot was impressive none-the-less. Also had some fun doing the VMK in park quests. Not very challenging but fun in a mini mouseadventure sort of way.

Napsto called me on Friday night and told me to meet him at Burbank High at 9:30pm to go ride...we hopped in his truck at 9:30 on the dot, and were walking up the ramp to Space at 10:25pm.

I liked the queue, I loved the way the outside of the mountain looked...at some point in the queue we saw the group...I would have loved to hang back and ride with you guys (especially after reading about the sunk rocket) but Napsto is antisocial under the best conditions and was especially so on Friday. Bummer for me, but oh well.

I was thrilled that they didn't change all that much inside the mountain, but it felt a bit slow to me (although that could just have to do with what row we were in.) The music cut out on us...and it was so quiet...it was weird. I look forward to riding with the music on the whole time. I did find the camera flashes at the end to be painfully blinding. All in all, SM was always my favorite ride, and I'm just pretty damn happy that it's open again.

At first, Napsto was not happy with it. I guess he had seen a bunch of commercials that I've not seen for the "new" Space Mountain, so he was expecting more. But he did call me early the next morning and say that the more he thinks about it, the more he liked it after all...

Wern't there rumors of diffrent day and night tracks (as in music). Has anyone noticed a diffrence yet?

I don't think they are going to use the night track (and turn it into ROCKIT MOUNTAIN) until later in the year. However, they were testing Rockit Mt during the CM previews, so who knows.

Yesterday (Sunday), my Monkey and I headed to the park - we got 10 rides in on Space, including one trip to the side track (we had overshot, and were gonna get to re-ride, but a little boy in our rocket didn't want to ride again). It was nice to see Space's PLC/Allen-Bradley again, and the CM seemed a lil weirded out when I was pointing out what a couple of displays indicated. :)

Despite all our rides on Space, we managed to do quite a bit else - including a run over to DCA, for a nearly walkon ride at Tower of Terror.

What's a PLC/Allen-Bradley?

From what google can tell me, its some sort of industrial control panel...

When it comes to coasters, Matt is our Geeko Supremo.:snap:

I have never been on Space:eek: Roll on November!:D

I went yesterday with Greg to ride Space and ran into Mara, Mono Blue, Matt 'N Rose, Darkbeer and Ms. Darkbeer (dang I suck on names) in line! Woo what a ride. First time we rode in the back and second time in the front. Space is now WAY better in the front, since the track is so dark and that lift tunnel is soooooo cool now.

As far as RockIt Mountain is concerned, Greg shined a high beam light from his cell phone at the huuuuuuge asteroid that is now sitting where the orange golf ball used to be. (The lights are normally off on the asteroid). Al said that the RockIt mountain thing is supposed to be more "psychedelic", for whatever its worth.

As fun as it is to make goofy faces for the camera at the end, I wish it wasn't so incredibly blinding that the part where it seems like you go backwards appears half-assed. But it is still cool.

My vote: Two thumbs up. Fine summer fun.

(Also, as CoasterMatt noted above... so wierd how Dland was relatively crowded (45-60 min waits for Space).... and ToT was literally walk on. Oh ok, so we waited 2.5 seconds for the guy to show us where the library was.)

From Dave Althoff Jr's Ride Technology pages
The Allen Bradley unit is a human interface for the PLC - handy for keeping logs of incidents/incursions/downtimes/resets... that sorta thing.

Never underestimate the power of an idiot!

Yeah, I noticed that there was something suspciously hulking and dark in the middle of things. Also, there are clearly a few arches that straddle the track that seem like they will be lit for Rock-it Mountain.

Saw an ad for Space at the movie theater yesterday. Dangerously close to false advertising, if you ask me. The imagery they showed on that ad has NOTHING to do with what they actually did to the ride. If they keep that up, as well as the "new attraction" crap, I predict they will be fielding a lot of complaints from many very underwhelmed visitors.

Out of curiousity, what movie/theatre chain was it attached to?

What did they show in the commercial?

Hyping RockIt Mountain is one thing but hyping Space Mountain will be a major misstep. Most people are not nutty Disney freaks who go 30+ times a year like us. Most people didn't even know it was closed or anything and won't be blown away by the "new" space. I mean, even the family that goes once a year or so won't be that thrilled. Probably they came last year and went "oh darn, space is being renovated" and this year, whee, it's open. Unlike us, who have been 60 times since then.

It was a Pacific theater. The imagery they showed, while obvious to anyone with at least a couple brain cells that it was not actual ride footage, implied large-scale changes to the visual effects of the ride. Things like firey graphic projection looking stuff. Hard to descibe, because it was very abstract, but, especially if someone already knows the ride, it made it seem like a LOT more was added than the few minor tweaks they did. Honestly, judging from what I could see of the darkened structures-to-be-used-later, I doubt that even RockIt Mountain will look anything like what they showed.

Finally uploaded our photos from the day.

http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/Albu...1&a=31816810&f=

Notice a few things:

* The impromptu flyover, accompanied (thanks to NA ) by the requisite Flight of the Valkyeries

* The seemingly stripped, or painted, or primed submarine inside the cave

* The ever so important gallon jug of vinegar backstage at Space Mountain.

Man, that CU of "ONE TON" was just inexplicably funny... after I've read accounts of you guys and that ride whose "audio" was not uh... balanced.

Nice pics of Gus Gus and €'s asses.

Was the ad that you saw this one?

Nice bits of Mission: Space (you can even see a few shots with 4 people across with OTSRs)
Bits of Paris's Space Mountain: Mission Deux
and a TINY smidgen of pseudo DL Space Mountain...

If that ad was what I was expecting on riding Space Mountain now, I'd be pretty upset...

Yup, that's the one. I'd liken it to showing the bounce room from Tokyo in an ad for our Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

OMG! That commercial is the most blatant example of false advertising I've seen in a very long time! "Hold on, breathe deep, find the end of the universe, no barriers." Yeah, right. :rolleyes:

The commercial shows asteroids exploding, debris and asteroid fields, volcanic mountains, rockets flying through smoke and gas, and a giant spaceship in the stars.

I loved the re-opened ride with its slight enhancements, as would most Disneyland fanatics, but that commercial is setting up Disneyland and poor Cast Members for an onslaught of complaints from Joe Public, or at the minimum will create major disappointment from guests. :mad:

OOOHHHHH! COOL! I haven't ridden THIS ride. When can we go?

Maybe, just maybe the Space that is launching now, is not the one that is launching on the 15th. After all, useally previews are to make sure that operations are working correctly. They may turn on more effects at the real opening. Just a thought. ;)

LOL yeah and maybe Jake Gyllenhaal will come to my office in an hour and bend me over my cubicle.

I was laughing my arse off at that commercial. I feel sorry for the Town Hall CMs. :p

Jake just looked up at me and said to say thank you, but he's busy. :p

Maybe.... I was right! ;)

Actually, we saw that projection on Sunday, the 3rd. It was really hit or miss (pun intended), and I don't think most people even realized what it was supposed to be.
In all honesty, I don't want to see a bunch of projections, because the more they do that, the more light in total is in the dome - the darkness is really fun...

BTW, wanna see the inside of "new" Space with the lights on? Check this out.

There are arches in there, just like Space Mountain at DLP has - as you can see in this picture.

Damn... you can't see the loop in either of those pictures

Yes, I've seen that asteroid. So far, that's nothing like the commerical showing asteroid fields--and your rocket maneuvering around them! Don't get me wrong, I love the darkened ride experience with stars everywhere and completely surrounding you during the ride; it's just that the commercial is deceiving.

Sorry MM, I saw that asteriod the first time I rode it. It's a cgen 3d asteriod. I yelled "cookie!" when I saw it, just for old times sake. :)