We went on a Thursday, and we thought the school kids had one more week to go before spring break. Oh, how wrong we were. No grown-up ride had less than a three hour wait, and even the dinky ones had waits of 45 min and up. It's a Small World had a 50 min wait, if you can believe that. All Fast-Passes had been suspended because of the massive crowds.
We started with innocently high hopes and headed straight for Big Thunder Mountain (as I'm slowly overcoming my fear of roller coasters, that's a recent victory). The wait was three-and-a-half hours. Scratch that. None of us had any interest in standing in line three hours for anything. We looked around. Same problem with Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain. We lowered our standards. Even still it took thirty minutes just to get a ferry to Tom Sawyer Island. The canoes looked possible, but the wait for that was 45 min.
We wandered around for four hours until finally, crestfallen and defeated we decided to call it quits and go home, taking in Pirates of the Caribbean on the way out. The wait for that was down to 40 min...oh boy. The line snaked through parts of the antechamber we'd never even seen before. Once in a boat, all the disappointment was forgotten and we were having the fun we'd come for. We were finally at Disneyland! Then suddenly, half-way through, the boats came to a dead stop. Lights on; music and sounds off. There was an announcement that there was an unspecified problem with the ride and that we should please remain seated. This was repeated every two minutes.They wouldn't even tell us what the problem was. Mechanical breakdown? Bomb threat? Maybe the anamatrons were rising up and slaying the humans? But floating in a meter of water, we couldn't imagine any real kind of peril.
We remained safely seated for the next half hour.
We were stuck in the scene where the pirates were chasing the women around. It got kinda creepy with all the animatronics spasming and scuttling around, silently, unceasing. We started cutting up to kill time. Even the Japanese girls behind us started goofing on the endless announcement.
Finally the announcement came that we were to evacuate the boats. Staff in waders came out and started pushing our boats back to evacuation points.
This was literally a dream come true. I've always wanted to get off the boat half-way through and get backstage. Even back in Texas, where we had a similar ride at Six Flags, where it would be so easy to step off, but you didn't because you'd probably be banned from the park for life. But now it was happening. If I could've chosen any ride to evacuate, this would've been the one.
It was too cool, getting to step off the ride and go backstage. We exited through a fortress near the town siege scene. It looked like backstage at any theater, if not a little neater. Lots of plywood and scaffolding. The staff were markedly professional and competent. Up some steel stairs and into the back lot. It looked a like a movie studio, with the big, square, white, sound-stage-esque buildings, and trailers. We were wondering if they'd offer some compensation like a free ticket for another time. They gave everyone passes for a ride of their choice. Without deliberation, we went straight back to Big Thunder Mountain where the wait was up to four hours...except for us! And what I didn't dare them was that we had so much fun evacuating that it was like being offered desert after having cake & ice cream.
This was literally a dream come true. I've always wanted to get off the boat half-way through and get backstage. Even back in Texas, where we had a similar ride at Six Flags, where it would be so easy to step off, but you didn't because you'd probably be banned from the park for life. But now it was happening. If I could've chosen any ride to evacuate, this would've been the one.
It was too cool, getting to step off the ride and go backstage. We exited through a fortress near the town siege scene. It looked like backstage at any theater, if not a little neater. Lots of plywood and scaffolding. The staff were markedly professional and competent. Up some steel stairs and into the back lot. It looked a like a movie studio, with the big, square, white, sound-stage-esque buildings, and trailers. We were wondering if they'd offer some compensation like a free ticket for another time. They gave everyone passes for a ride of their choice. Without deliberation, we went straight back to Big Thunder Mountain where the wait was up to four hours...except for us! And what I didn't dare them was that we had so much fun evacuating that it was like being offered desert after having cake & ice cream.
What started out as the worst ever trip to Disneyland turned out to be one of the best.
Here's a video of us stuck on the Pirates ride:
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