I had my first opportunity to ride Toy Story Mania at Disney’s California Adventure during the Annual Passholder preview. My first impression was that it was awesome. If you ask my wife, she’ll tell you the exact opposite. She absolutely hated it.
Now, I heard a lot of hype from the Disney’s Hollywood Studio’s opening and I was very much looking forward to the attraction. So here are a few of my thoughts.
Being that my wife is disabled and we have a baby, we got to enter through the disabled entrance and switch pass area. We got to bypass a huge line and go right on the ride. One comment about the queue, it’s very boring. Especially compared to the DHS version. The line has only midway style signs around the queue. It fits with the theme of Paradise Pier, which is very boring itself. Many of the elements in the DHS queue are inside the ride. Mr. Potato Head stands prominently in the front of the attractions and the line does pass him for good interaction. When we observed him, the line area was empty so I had to yell at him. It just didn’t feel that interactive, but I willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since it’s a preview day.
The disabled entrance is immediately at the main entrance to the attraction. They load you directly into your own vehicle and then that vehicle is loaded directly into the ride queue. The ride vehicle is quite large. It had two smaller cards which holds 4 people each. The guns are attached to the lap bars and the left gun is fired by a pull rope which is very reactive. The right gun has the pull rope and button on top.
We arrived as they just started to let the first group on. So they were letting a lot of empty cars go through. They soon let my vehicle on and I was the only one in my vehicle and the cars before and behind me were empty. It was a little creepy. Then the uncomfortable feeling I get when sitting in the load area while everyone is looking at me wondering why I’m on the only on the vehicle. Now the ride officially begins.
Your cars moves through this maze, much like a serpentine pattern and you see various Toy Story characters. The first thing I notice is that it's pretty bright inside the attraction. I expected it to be much darker like the Men In Black ride at Islands of Adventure. You get to the first screen and you're given instructions about shooting and the score. Very cool. Then you get into the game and you're firing away. The 3D technology is amazing. From the get go I did not even realize that I had the glasses on. The guns are very responsive and the target is excellent. What I like is that you're not shooting just to figure out with red dot is yours (like Buzz Lightyear). I was able to rapid fire without much fatigue. At first I can to figure out the scoring. The easy targets are not worth many points. The goal is to find the hidden targets, which are usually at the edge of the screen or appears in a different color.
This was nice, but when the ride is delayed and you're just sitting in front of a screen, they continue the game. You just can't earn any points. I was caught in the ring toss section and when you throw a ring around a rocket or alien with a jet pack, you get a nice cool breeze.
In the end, my score was 154,000 and I won a cat.
To me this was a lot of fun. The graphics and game play was amazing and I would ride this ride a lot. I'm sure there's going to be a single rider line.
My wife on the other hand was not impressed. I get the feeling she wanted a traditional ride. She felt it was merely a 3d video game. She also got to the reality of the ride. You go into a room with a lot of movie screens and you shoot things. There are no animatronics to look at and no cohesive story. It's a video game. I'll try to post some pictures.
