To 74 & the rest of the whiners responding in this thread:
I've been on Disneyland's SM quite often now, being a new resident of southern california (go annual pass!). While I do love and appreciate the on-board audio and lift tunnel, I don't really understand why it's so monumentally important that these two things be included for you whiners to be happy.
I actually love the silence in the WDW ride, because space itself is a vacuum. To me, the music in Disneyland strays way too far in the whole "Telling us how to feel" category, rather than adding to the story of the ride. With the exception of Ghost Galaxy, the music doesn't say anything other than "Woooeee we're in space!" Yeah, I got that. The pitch blackness, stars everywhere, space-station themed queue, and fact that I'm sitting in a freaking rocket ship in TOMORROWLAND sold the story there. Cheesy synth music doesn't add anything to said storyline; all it does is force something on you. Ghost Galaxy, of course, is markedly different, but that's not the point.
So to me, the only thing that would have made the whiners happy here would have been at the very least on-board audio, a neat but ultimately unnecessary feature, a re-entry tunnel change (even though I love it and never saw anything wrong with it, fine, I'll hand that one to you), and a "smoother ride".
What this equates to is that you wanted them to basically remove EVERYTHING inside the mountain, and design and build what amounts to a completely different roller coaster, since the current system has no way of physically supporting the added weight of an on-board audio system (no, I don't have the data to back that up, but think about it - these systems are designed very specifically to the finest detail by people with engineering degrees, to be able to handle a finite amount of weight - quit emailing me). You wanted this done during the single worst economic crisis in this country since the great depression. Oookay. I know you can't please everybody, but yikes.
Another lapse in logic: We knew we weren't going to get an entirely new ride. So why are you people acting so surprised?
You guys are like spoiled kids on christmas, throwing their presents against the wall and screaming about how they didn't get that 21-speed bike...and of course, it's soooo easy to make a caricatured scapegoat out of TDO. No, I'm not saying they're saints or anything, but I find it way too convenient to direct tantrums at what amounts to a snidley whiplash-style cartoon villain. I can just see them now, with their monocles and black top hats, twirling their mustaches, and POURING over this thread as though their lives depended on it...
Yeah, right. Half of them probably think the internet is a tool used for catching trout. You ever think that maybe the reason they couldn't redo space mountain was because, oh, I don't know, a lack of time and money?
overwhelming:zipit: