A weird day at DL - - 4/22

RU42

New Member
Original Poster
A mess doesn't begin to describe my day at DL yesterday. One big huge giant mess.

I get to the Park a little after opening and head to TL. The wife has never ridden Buzz. Get there at 9:20 and Buzz is down. Oh well, I need to do some Matterhorn taping. Walk over get in line for a bit and then the loud speaker comes on - sorry folks, we are having mechanical difficulty. Not a biggie yet, frustrating, but not raving...yet.

I decide to go to the Monorail to check out the Sub Lagoon. I get there and sure enough, sorry we are closed for an hour.

Still not complete mad yet but getting close, I decide to go over to AL/NOS area. Walk up to Indy go grab some fastpasses. Wait, there are 10 CMs lined across the front of Indy. Sure enough, closed (and remained down all day.) I walk deeper into the Park getting really steamed. Other guests are too.

Amazing enough PotC (which I did not ride) was working as well as HM (which I did ride.)

Let me take a quick break here. Remember DLR collecting images for the mosaics. Well, several are up. There is Buzz one above his new store in TL. There is a Fantasmic one outside the French Market. There is a HM one on its fence (facing the dock.) And there is a Snow White one outside her auditorium. Those are the only ones I saw. (Pictures coming later.)

Back to my ranting. I move over to Tiki Room and saw a good show. We decide why not grab some lunch at Bengal. Things seem to be picking up now. After lunch we ride the MH twice and Buzz once. My wife has to leave so I am on my own.

It is now 1:50 and I am just sitting down on the now functioning Monorail. I get a call, the 50th Parade is supposed to be coming down Main Street. I make a quick loop of the Monorail and sure enough, I enter the hub area just as 4 of the floats are coming from the MH area to MSUSA. Not the parade mind you, just 4 floats to shoot a commercial. (Video coming later today.)

Now the clouds are really coming in. I decide to head over to AL. I needed to film the Tiki's outside the Tiki Room. I get there, sorry - we are having mechanical difficulty. It is 2:40, 20 minutes to the Aladdin Oasis show. Why not. I buy a bag of chips and an Iced Tea and get in line. That is when the downpour hits. I take some cover in the AL Bazaar. It lets up and I head back to the AO line. Sorry, due to the weather we are closing the show. That's right folks - Tiki, AO, JC, and IJA are all closed.

I mumble a few things under my breath and head nowhere in particular. I end up passing between MH and Alice. I was surprised not to see a huge line for Alice. In fact, as I looked closer, no line for Alice. Yep, she was down. I looked over at the Tea Cups - yep, they were down too.

At this point I just basically decided to save everyone time and go crazy. I mean you can either start screaming at this time or just laugh. I chose the later. I went into TL and just looked around. I watched HISTA; the first time in a long time. I even went into Innoventions. It has to be at least 5 years since I was last in there. And I will say, I am impressed. Hi-Def is all over the place. The exhibits are better, still not great, but better.

What else can I tell you about the day. Oh yea, the Lagoon. Wow, the Lagoon looks weird drained. (Video coming later.) Tomorrowland is looking great. I didn't like the bronze scheme they used to have. The new muted gray's and the deep metallic blues are very cool looking.

So, despite the comedy of ride's going offline; I had a good day. I mean I was at DL which is better then a whole lot other places I could have been. I will try to get to the photos this morning and the videos this evening - time permitting. Check the Visions Fantastic web site to find both. (I will post link info here as they become available.)

RU
 

dolbyman

Well-Known Member
hehe what a mess :lol:


how were the overall crowds ?.. the only time I was there (summer 2000) it was totaly runover .. same in wdw this year ... so sad that I only had vecation times for those parks :o
 

cherrynegra

Well-Known Member
Ugh, I'm so sorry to hear so many attractions were down. This is my fear that's preventing me from driving down from San Francisco for a "quick trip." I get there and everything is closed!! Hope it goes better for you next time. :wave:
 

RU42

New Member
Original Poster
Let me stress, this is not normal. Sure, rides go offline but yesterday was insane. The biggest problem was how wild spread it was, it threw off the traffic patterns.

IJA was offline most of the day, if not the whole day. Tiki went down early afternoon and was not up 4 hours later. While others went down most came back up.

DOLBY - Hard to tell about the crowds yesterday. If everything was running I would have called it light. Even in the worst hours of the 'offline' (midday to early afternoon) PotC and MH hit 30 mins. Buzz didn't go over 45. The 2 longest were Splash and Roger at 75-90 most of the day; which is not too unsual.

RU
 

RU42

New Member
Original Poster
I was not able to take any pictures, but digi cam had a problem. I will be making a short video from my shots - which is better anyways since the Lion King float had Simba and Nala AA's.

I might try to pull a couple frames from the digital footage.

RU
 

dtd2

New Member
Alright cool my sister Has been in la because her school choir thats shes in and she called last night saying she watched them make a commercial for the the parade and took pictures, but she didn't go on a lot of rides because they didn't have a lot of time , but they performed there .
 

jaylenofan86

New Member
cherrynegra said:
Ugh, I'm so sorry to hear so many attractions were down. This is my fear that's preventing me from driving down from San Francisco for a "quick trip." I get there and everything is closed!! Hope it goes better for you next time. :wave:
A trip without me! How DARE you!? :p Just kidding Gordon! I see a call coming your way in the near future! :p
 

CaliSurfer182

New Member
I am just curious if there was an explanation for all these ride shutdowns. I know rides Occasionally have a problem here and there, but that is a lot of "occasionallies" in one day. I wonder if they are just making sure everything is prime for the celebration.
 

RU42

New Member
Original Poster
Nothing was ever offered for explanation that I heard of. There was one rumor of electrical problems between MH and BLAB (in the morning.) Since they are close to each other I guess that was possible. Other then that, no clue.

RU
 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
CaliSurfer182 said:
I am just curious if there was an explanation for all these ride shutdowns. I know rides Occasionally have a problem here and there, but that is a lot of "occasionallies" in one day. I wonder if they are just making sure everything is prime for the celebration.

Not sure about Indy and the others, but...

The closure of Alice In Wonderland and the Teacups is rain related. Neither attraction can operate in the rain. The cars on Alice slip and slide down the outdoor section of inclined track, and the turntables on the Teacups lose their traction when the mechanics become wet. Disneyland isn't as weatherproofed as WDW is, since there are usually a dozen or less rainy days a year in Orange County. Teacups at WDW are covered for just this reason, but at Disneyland they are out in the open and once it starts raining they close for at least 3 or 4 hours to dry out.

This winter was the wettest on record though, and we had at least 20 days of rain from October through April. It is very rare to have a rainy day this late in the season, even if it only lasted for 30 minutes like it did on April 22nd, but after the winter we just had it kind of didn't surprise anyone.

Both Alice In Wonderland and the Teacups reopened by early evening on April 22nd, because I was in the Park that day too and I saw them operating that evening around 6:00pm.
 

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