When you visit Disneyland, you can’t help by being impressed by all the detail that goes into creating the magical atmosphere. While waiting in line on Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, I noticed these clever license plates hanging on the wall. Here’s a little puzzle for you: can you name the Disney cartoons referenced in these plates?
Our good friends at Hidden Lincolns have notified us of a new — and very rare! — hidden image of President Lincoln in Disneyland.
Everyone knows that Walt Disney was a huge Lincoln fan. That’s why he asked Imagineers to hide little tributes and images of Lincoln here and there all across Disneyland. Continuing this tradition, Imagineers have added a secret surprise animation to the “mist wall” projection in Pirates of the Caribbean. If you’re the lucky one-boat-an-hour that reaches the projection at the correct time, you’ll see this:
The animated Lincoln warns guests that the Union will not tolerate piracy then sees them on their away. It’s awesome!
For future reference, don’t do this:
Hideous mistakes in this picture include:
Have you got a photo of someone being a moron at Disneyland? Send it to liar(at)disneylies.com and we’ll be happy to shame them publicly!
During our most recent visit to Disneyland, we noticed three interesting things. Have you ever noticed these before?
Strange Sign
While aboard the Mark Twain, we noticed this sign on shore:
We had never seen this before, and weren’t able to locate it from the ground when we returned. Can anyone tell us what “The Olden Rseshoe” is or what the sign is supposed to refer to? It’s probably some kind of obscure inside reference, because it’s a complete mystery to us!
Revealing Call Board
In the queue for Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin we noticed this rather telling sign:
Read the listings carefully. For all of us who have been wondering for years exactly what kind of animal Goofy is supposed to be, this sign clearly lists “Dog Tricks — Goofy”. So sure enough, Goofy is a dog! Take that all who thought he was a weird hybrid long-eared chipmunk!
Wacky Warning
By far our favorite little treasure that we saw for the first time was this “government mandated” sign on the wall in the lobby of the Blue Bayou:
We blew up part of the picture so you could see the detail, but for those without squint-o-vision, the relevant sentence reads, “[Pregnant women] should also limit their consumption of other fish, including Nemo”!
Wow, those Imagineers really know how to hide little treasures where you’d least expect them!
This morning, the Haunted Mansion wasn’t particularly crowded, so we stayed back a bit and let the other guests go by after leaving the stretching room. We were looking at the portrait of the man and discovered that if you stand there long enough for the crowd to have moved on to their Doombuggies, the portrait talks!
Here’s what it said:
When your wife gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade — make her take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t care if she has an axe; what the hell is she going to do with that? Demand to see your wife’s mother! Make your wife rue the day she thought she could give Captain Gracey lemons! Want to cut off my head? Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna haunt your house forever! With the lemons! I’m gonna get Leota to conjure a spectral lemon that pulls a thousand ghosts here! And we’ll leave room for you!
I don’t know if this is new or if it was just there for Father’s Day, but I will say this — it’s probably the weirdest and most obscure reference in the entire mansion!
Just had dinner at Flo’s V8 Cafe in Cars Land. It was awesome! Everything had spicy, delightful V8 Juice in it — even the pie!
Disney California Adventure’s Red Car Trolley now travels the rails from the park entrance to the Tower of Terror with just one stop between them (at Goofy’s Sky School). The cost for a ride was initially planned to be five cents, but due to recent adjustments to the Disneyland Resort’s pricing schedule, rides are now $75, one way, with monthly payment plans available.
Like the monorails, the trolleys are named for their color. For example, the two trolleys running today are Red Car Trolley Red…
…and Red Car Trolley Yellow…
In this second picture, you can also see how forced perspective is used to make the cars look longer when seen from the front, helping to disguise the fact that they had to be downsized in order to fit DCA’s roadways.
The attraction nearest to the entrance to Cars Land is Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree, named after Tow Mater, the tow truck namesaked for a tomato by a illiterate parents.
Cows are tractors in the universe of Cars, so the small tractors that pull the Junkyard Jamboree vehicles represent baby cows, making Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree the only veal-powered attraction in the park.
The attraction is a series of interconnected circular platters upon which a herd of attraction vehicles ride in sort of a triple-looped figure-8+ configuration.
Guests sit in trailers behind their tractors, but the trailers are not attached to the platters and therefore swing violently back and forth with each turn, giving riders the thrill of fast action and potential whiplash. The whole thing is a little like what Bug’s Land’s Francis’s Ladybug Boogie would be like if Bug’s Land’s Francis’s Ladybug Boogie was fun.
During the attraction, Mater himself can be heard over the loudspeakers singing a song to which the attraction vehicles “dance.” At the end of the ride, Mater honks loudly, causing the tractors to “tip,” spilling guests onto the ground and inspiring them to make room for the next group.
The second of the three major attractions in Cars Land is Luigi’s Flying Tires, which is themed like a tire dealership and banks on the fact that a tire (British “tyre”), lying sideways with a series of evenly spaced radial high-pressure leaks, will slightly hover.
It is rumored that John Lassitire was very interested in Cars Land having a remake of one of the classic Tomorrowland attractions, and after narrowing his choices to three (the Flying Sucers, the Phantom Boats, or the Paint Chip Hall of Fame), he chose the Flying Saucers. The original Disneyland attraction was only part of the park for about five years due to its tendency to break down, injure guests, and draw uncomfortable amounts of attention from silently hovering black helicopters filled with expressionless men in black suits. By using improved technology, having riders sign an injury waiver, and disguising the vehicles as tires, Imagineers were able to get past all of these problems.
After walking through Luigi’s nicely themed queue, guests are immersed in a series of visual and spoken instructions such as this one…
…spelling out the copious rules and suggestions for enjoying the attraction. For example, no trying to fly over the attraction’s barriers; no standing tires on their side, connecting them with axles, and building a monster truck; and you may not ride if you are pregnant, hoverphobic, or tired (pun!).
The vehicles themselves are fashioned to look like large tires. This is a big surprise to guests who have not been paying attention.
The tires hover under the influence of massive electromagnets embedded in the attraction’s surface. The up side to this method of levitation is that it is very powerful, allowing the vehicles to hover with even the largest guest or group of guests aboard. The down side is that after each ride the surface must be searched for keys, glasses, retainers, etc., that have been sucked off riders. Guests passing in wheelchairs may also find themselves irresistibly drawn to the attraction when it is in operation, and the entire area is instantly fatal to anyone with a pacemaker.
In addition to the attraction vehicles, Luigi’s is littered with huge, inflated beach balls, which do not float (since they are non-ferrous) but which guests can pick up and throw during the ride. Being hit in the face with a huge beach ball looks like this:
It is a particular irony that an American park named for California would have an Italy-themed attraction featuring beach balls made in China.
On our first visit to the new, improved Disney California Adventure, we were so busy exploring and documenting the wonders of the new restrooms that we didn’t have time to properly investigate some of the other exciting new rides and attraction that the park has to offer. We returned yesterday to remedy the situation, only to discover that the park was closed to the public for the day (apparently someone in maintenance had misplaced the key and they had to wait for a locksmith who was, of course, late).
Today, the crowds were a little larger (the park reached maximum safe capacity some ten minutes after opening and gates were closed some two hours later), but at least we were able to make our way in.
We will be updating the DCA portion of DisneyLies.com shortly with complete information on all the new goodness, but for now, we thought we’d share some of the photos we took during our exploration, starting with three from Radiator Springs Racers.
The entrance to Radiator Springs Racers…
…is quite detailed. Unfortunately, because Cars Land took so long to construct, there is already some evidence of rust and age on what should be sparkling new signage. We didn’t find this particularly irksom as it actually added to the ambiance of the place. One criticism we had, though, was the color of the car on Racers’ entrance sign. Although we are not Imagineers and assume that everything was done for a reason, we wish that the car had been painted red as a sly nod to Cars’ Lightning McQueen. We have forwarded this suggestion to Disney, and hope that they will implement it in the near future.
The queue for RSR has many interesting things to look at, such as this fountain:
If you look carefully, you can see that the rocks slightly resemble the radiator of a car with a spring suspension, hence the “Radiator Springs” name. In the background, a sign humorously says that the spring is the “8 3/4 wonder of the world”. According to official Disney publicity materials, the original wonders of the world in the Cars Land universe are:
1. Great Pitstop of Giza
2. Hanging Greyhounds of Cabylon
3. Statue of Harley at Davidson
4. Carlosseum
5. Great Whitewall of China
6. Paver of Rhodes
7. Headlighthouse of Alexandria
8. Carhenge
8.5 Leaning Tower of Tires
8.75 Radiator Springs
The attraction itself is quite spectacular. It was too difficult for us to take photos during the attraction as we were so consumed with shouting in joy, but there was a handy place along the exit path to take photos as seen here:
By running multiple cars at once NASCAR-style, Radiator Springs Racers is able to handle some 9,000 guests/hour, which means that at expected crowd levels over the next few weeks, lines should never be more than a few hours long.
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