updated  May 2, 2001

Thursday June 17

We hit the monorail at 8:30am. The track is obstructed in one spot due to the California Adventure construction. Here are a couple of pictures of the construction. They were taken from the club room at the top of the Disneyland Hotel.

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We rode Star Tours and Space Mountain with virtually no line and took a car ride down Main Street to the Carnation Cafe for breakfast. This is a great place to eat. The line was short, you eat outdoors and have shade from the umbrellas.

We decided to come to Disneyland instead of Walt Disney World because we figured the weather would be MUCH nicer (this is mid-June) and the crowds would be less. There is so much going on right now in Orlando with the expanded Disney Downtown area, Test Track, Fantasmic, etc. at WDW and all of the additions at Universal Studios. We decided to let the dust and the crowds settle in Orlando.

Our decision was perfect!

The weather was great, the crowds were small. The only downside was that they have really ripped up the Disneyland Hotel complex with the construction.

We headed for Indiana Jones where there was a 40 minute wait. Then we made a reservation for a 3pm lunch at the Blue Bayou. We rode Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain and took the monorail back to the hotel for a short rest before lunch. This time we took the tram back to the park since the monorail wait can be quite long due to the construction detour. 3pm lunch at the Blue Bayou, great as always.

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We rode the Jungle Cruise and went to the Tiki Room. It is SO nice to see the original Tiki Room!!! I videotaped the entire show. As you probably know, the Tiki Room has been updated at WDW. The four bird hosts are gone, replaced by Iago and ??????. The music has gone from Polynesian to Reggae. The new show is ok. My son really likes it, but in my opinion nothing can compare to the original. We have noticed that before the WDW show was changed MANY people (like 1/3 to ½ of the audience) got up and left during the show. After the new show no one left. But, at Disneyland, no one left the original show! I am not sure what that says about the different crowds.

We ordered a custom CD in Tomorrowland.

On to Rocket Rods!!! This is the new ride on the old WEDWAY Peoplemover track. I Really miss the old Peoplemover. I guess it will still be at WDW. Anyway, the Rocket Rods are fun. Disney claims they are the fastest ride, not counting the Monorails. I think they run about 30 MPH. I think the highest speed in Space Mountain is around 26 MPH.

This is not a very good picture, but it is all I have. It is a 3D, or stereo, picture. You should be able to print it out and see the 3D effect. I use the Argus Stereo camera and viewer.

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The cars hold up to five people. Two in each of the back two rows and one in the front. The cars leave the circular loading area and head to the first straight track to wait for the green light. The lights go red-yellow-green and the car shoots off. The cars make a strange sound, especially during the high acceleration. This means they always make extra strange sounds since they are almost ALWAYS accelerating. The cars accelerate and decelerate a LOT. The actual running speed doesn't give much an impression of high-speed. It is the acceleration that gives the thrill. The loud whirring sounds can be heard for quite a distance. They can even be heard from the street!

It is a short ride, about 2 ½ minutes. It always had a long line, from 40 to 70 minutes. We thought it was well worth the wait.

The line starts at the old Circlevision ride. It snakes around the old Circlevision staging area (outside of the automatically opening doors) and then enters the old Circlevision theater. The staging area is set up with movie screens showing old movies and cartoons about the future. There are also old ride cars painted with florescent paint. They have a monorail engine, a Skyway car, a People Mover car and a Tomorrowland Speedway car. There are large blueprints of the Rocket Rod car and of the old Flying Saucer car on the wall. The old "futuristic" cartoons are entertaining, showing the fifties view of the future with automated highways.

Next the line snakes through the actual Circle-Vision theater. Sometime the ropes were set to wind around many times in the theater. Other times the ropes were set to only fold back a couple of times. They show some regular movies of old car designs that were futuristic, like cards that can turn on a dime. There is also a film of Walt talking about the future. Then they show the old Circle-Vision film. The first part at normal speed and then the rest at a high speed. This can be quite nauseating!

The line leaves the theater and enters a hallway lit with blacklight. It shows a map of "future" Rocket Rod stations. It lists stations at the hotels and the other parks and even to other locations, like the Disney Studios. I am guessing that this is just to set the mood, though it would be GREAT if they had a track going to the hotels!

The hallway leads to the rear of the Star Traders store and to the stairs that take you to the tunnel under the Tomorrowland walkway. This gets you to underneath the old People Mover station.

There are stairs from the tunnel up to the Rocket Rod loading area.

The Indiana Jones lines that can snake all through Adventureland, though the top floor of the Jungle Cruise, are probably the longest, but the Rocket Rod line is the most complex. The Rocket Rod ride uses the old People Mover track that goes through Space Mountain, Circle Vision and other ride and areas of Tomorrowland.

On each straight part of track the cars accelerate and at each curve the decelerate. There are dark areas with strobe lights and even a "hat snatcher" trick near the end. When it is cold at night this ride is very cold. A few times we saw cars stopped along the tracks. We were stopped once. I don't know why this happens. I don't think it is a loading issue, since the cars come together for loading very much like the People Mover cars did.

This is a great ride, we rode it several times.

At 6pm we rode the Matterhorn. What a GREAT ride! The line was about 30 minutes. Once again, Disneyland does such a great job of the queue areas (compared to WDW). The plants are ones found in Switzerland, the music is Swiss and the architecture is Swiss. You should ride Matterhorn during the day and again at night. You see different things with the different lighting. It is hard to see one of the Snow Monsters during the day.

We headed back for another ride on Big Thunder Mountain. Then we took the train from Tomorrowland to Toon Town so we could see the Grand Canyon Diorama and the Primeval World. These are dated but worth seeing. I have pictures of these in an old Disneyland ViewMaster set. I thought they were long gone since I had not found them on my last two trips here. Then I discovered that they could only be seen from the train ride. I am glad we finally got to see them.

At Toon Town we rode Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin. This is not one of my favorites. We also rode Gadget's Go Coaster. It is not a bad little coaster, but the line is way too long.

We headed back to the Pirates for two more rides. I was mapping out the route on my ride blueprint. The blueprint doesn't show the transitions between levels very well.

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I couldn't figure out where the drops were or where the Blue Bayou was on the print. I was able to figure out that the two drops bring you back to just under the Blue Bayou and you are heading to just under the entrance of the ride, this is where the scenes start (scene 1 - upper grotto).

The park closed at 9pm tonight.

We headed back to the DL Hotel and ordered room service. The Caesar salad was good and very large and reasonably priced. We ordered ice cream but they called back to say that they were out of it! How can you run out of ice cream?

FRIDAY, June 18, 1999

We left the room at 9am, boarded the monorail at 9:30 and were in line for Indy Jones by 9:40. The wait was about 35 minutes. We had breakfast at the River Belle Terrace. This is a nice place to eat and look out over the lake and New Orleans Square.

At 11:15 we rode Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. This is a MUST since they closed our Toad at WDW. The DL version is much better anyway. The scale of the queuing area and the front façade are better at DL. In WDW it is, er was, just another ride from the front. The queue was a big snaking line under a metal awning. At DL the outside of the ride looks like an English Cottage. The queue starts in an English garden. These are small things but they make a big difference in the feel of the park. Also, devil scene at the end is HOT and STEAMY. My glasses always fog up. That never happened at the WDW attraction.

We then rode the Storybook Boats. We missed this one on our trip a couple of years ago because for some reason they close this ride early in the afternoon. WDW does not have this attraction. It is really neat to see the miniature scenes of the stories. The bank of indigenous desert plants was interesting.

We took a popcorn and lemon ice break. We found a friendly little mouse in the bushes by the lemon ice stand and fed him some popcorn.

While in line for Alice in Wonderland we noticed that John left his Frontierland Gun on the bench. We figured it would be long gone. He went back to the bench and the CM running the lemon ice stand had picked it up. He noticed John and gave it back. AMAZING!

We rode Alice in Wonderland, also not at WDW. We headed back to the room and drove over to Hobby City. We had seen ads for it in the AAA guide book. What a disappointment! There was one big hobby/car/models store that was good. The other stores did not interest us. The little amusement park looked pretty sad. There were people in there. Why don't they get in their cars and drive the 2 miles over to Disneyland?

We stopped at Ralph's for discount Knott's Berry Farm tickets. We visited the Constitution Hall replica. The reenactment was pretty good.

We headed over to the main park. We were totally confused. The park maps that they hand out are of little value. We couldn't find anything. They atmosphere was very different than that of DL. We panned for gold and went through the Mystery House.

We left and headed back to DL. We stopped at Jack In The Box for antenna balls and PEZ! They are selling PEZ of Jack! Cool!!!!

Jack-In-The-Box PEZ	And the antenna ball
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Saturday, June 19, 1999

Today we decided to try the tram as the hotel recommended. We left the room at 7:20 and arrived at the tram stop at 7:28am. The tram dropped us off at the main ticket gate at 7:50am. We were in line for the Big Thunder Mountain Railway at 7:55am! There was about a 15 minute wait. We rode Star Tours and then had breakfast at the Carnation Café at 8:45. We got in line for the Matterhorn at 9:10 and had about a 30 minute wait. We rode the monorail back to the hotel to check out. We checked our bags with the bellman and got back on the monorail at 11:20am. The new Tarzan Treehouse had just opened. Just before there were CMs and Imagineers walking through it to make sure everything was right. I liked the old Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse, but the Tarzan version is good too. The story of Tarzan is told through the scenes of the walkthrough. They still play the old SwissKaPolka music! There is an interactive area at the bottom with lots of musical instruments to play. We spent about an hour on Tom Sawyer Island and headed back to the Pirates at 1pm. We rode the Autopia at 2:20pm and walked through Innoventions a 2:40. It is in the old Carousel Of Progress building. They have many exhibits inside and it still rotates. At 3:10 we ate lunch at the Blue Bayou, then some shopping and relaxing. At 5:45 we got in line for the monorail back to the hotel. We picked up our bags that we left at baggage check and left at 6:15pm.

Sunday, June 20, 1999

We spent the day at Universal Studios Hollywood. I rode Jurrasic Park at 10am. I was drenched and FREEZING. We saw the Terminator 3D show. It is good, but very loud. We rode ET and Back To The Future. There is not nearly the sensation of flight in the Back To The Future ride as there is in Star Tours. I hear they are updating the Star Tours flight. I hope they don't screw it up. We took the Backlot Tram tour. This is a good ride. It contains many of the rides from Universal Studios Florida that you have to stand in line for separately. Here you can see them all from the tram, Jaws, Earthquake, King Kong, etc. The Universal gift shops sell a neat smashed penny wallet type album. It has pages with clear pockets to hold the pressed pennies from the many presses throughout the park. We saw the new Disney movie Tarzan at the theaters at Universal Citywalk. The huge theater was sold out! We had to sit in the front row. They have a deal where you get your parking ticket money back if you go to a movie there! We went to the Griffith Park Observatory at 8pm. We got to look through the telescopes to see the area of the moon where the first landing was. The wait for the telescope was LONG, about 1 hour. The museum inside has lots of good displays. I really liked the one on meteorites. They have a good gift shop also.

Monday, Jun 21, 1999

Back to Disneyland for the day. Our plane leaves at about 6pm tonight. We arrived at Disneyland at about 9:20. No monorail this time. We had to park in the lot and take the tram like common folks! We ate breakfast at the Carnation Café and were in line for the Rocket Rods by 10:10. We got in line for Indy Jones at 11:20. The wait was about 45 minutes. We had ice cream and took a horse trolley ride and got in line for the Matterhorn at 12:45pm. The wait was about 20 minutes. We headed to Big Thunder Mountain where we waited about 20 minutes. Saw Country Bear Jamboree at 2:15. This is a TOTALLY new show. I know the old show was getting OLD, but this new show is no so good. It is pop songs and most of the humor is gone. All of the characters are the same, but they are all dressed as tourists or something. They need to re-write this one again. At 3pm we went through the California Adventure preview tent. They have neat pictures and models of the new park. They also have some special California Adventure quarter presses with very good prices!

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