I love the Indiana Jones ride because it successfully captures the feel of the movies. You've got statues out the wazoo, gods staring down at you from the roof and massive lines. Wait, actually, that might not have been a feature of the Indiana Jones movies. Hm.
But the ride itself is a lot of fun, of course. Where else are you going to ride a jeep past gods that shoot laser beams, rooms with giant snakes, and the famous giant boulder, all with the Indiana Jones theme blaring away? Nowhere, I say. You can't put a price on that amount of awesome. (Although Disneyland does.)
By the time we exited the Indiana Jones ride, it had started to rain a bit. We had our Fast Passes to Splash Mountain but decided not to use them, rationalizing that Splash Mountain probably was not the best ride to go on if you were expecting rain afterward. (It never ended up raining that hard, so I guess we chose poorly. :()
With that mind, we walked to Tomorrowland and decided to seek refuge in the Honey, I Shrunk the Audience show. It's been so long since I went to the show that I completely forgot Eric Idle is in it. Recalling that was sort of weird at first. It's about as amusing as you'd expect, whatever your tolerance for anything related to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is.
After eating, we went to Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, where we were greeted by Buzz himself. Amazing!! Confession: I kind of suck at this game. Been playing video games all my life, but I cam no good at this. There are nine levels of proficiency, and I could only get up to the third and fourth levels (with 80,000+ points and 100,000+ points). It's embarrassing. :( lol @ Laura messing up Derrick by using the lever to spin the pod at inopportune moments.
Then we went to a shop, and WALL-E and I spoke with God.
Well, not really, but God theoretically could have been peering down at us at that exact moment and chosen to bathe WALL-E and me with wondrous light. Totally could have happened.
With God's blessing, Laura, Derrick and I hightailed it to Autopia, in which people drive cars on a highway of sorts. I tried to act cool by leaning one arm out the door and driving with the other, but that ended up with me driving like a moron, so I stopped. It was smooth sailing the rest of the way. If only actual driving were so easy!
Our last stop in Tomorrowland was what I had been looking forward to all day -- Space Mountain. It's by far my favorite ride at Disneyland, because it's just two minutes of people zooming through space at high speed. Who wouldn't want an experience like that? While Laura and I were in line (Derrick had to sit this one out, because some bad food he ate earlier in the day was catching up with him), someone who got off the ride cackled like a madman and shouted, "Man, I love this ride!!!!!!" That is basically how I feel every time on get on Space Mountain. I'm a little kid experiencing it again for the first time.
I don't think I had my mouth closed the entire time. We're rushing through galaxies, turning and dipping everywhere, and I can barely breathe because of the excitement. Now that's a ride. Space Mountain is the best.
Our last couple of rides were in Fantasyland -- first, a classic, the Matterhorn, which is always somehow rougher and bumpier than I remember. But you get a nice view of the park from the top of the mountain when you're not being chased by Yetis. The final ride was Peter Pan's Flight, which was an appropriately sedate conclusion to the evening, because we were all dog tired by then. Damn did we ever do a ton of walking. Jeez. Afterward we did some mucking around Main Street U.S.A. before taking forever to get home, but hey. This is long enough already.
So, yes, I suppose I will end it here. If you read the whole thing, then good job to you. It probably did not take nearly as long to read as it did to write. But it's worth it, though, because I had a hell of a time, and I am sure Laura and Derrick did, as well.
