Shelby's Life and Whatnot

"That Ride You Hated..."

Kevin and I are working our way through riding every attraction at Disneyland that we've either never been on, has been changed significantly since our last ride, or we haven't been on in the last 20 years.

Yesterday we hit Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin.

Our expectations were low, but our curiosity was very high. At Build-A-Bear, I usually ask the children (and their parents) what their favorite rides were. California Screamin' (the largest roller coaster here), Space Mountain (an indoor roller coaster--my personal favorite), Tower of Terror (one of those indoor rides where you sit in an "elevator" and it drops you unexpectedly. I've never gone on it because I don't own a shirt that looks good with barf all over it), and Pirates of the Caribbean top the list. However, sometimes kids will give very funny answers.

For example, one little girl said, "My favorite ride? Ummmm [looks up at her mother] that ride you hated and said was a complete waste of time?" The mom, with the flat expression of someone who waited a very long time for a very lame ride, said, "Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin." The little girl said, "Yeah, that one!"

We were also intrigued because it has a FastPass. For those of you not familiar with the FastPass system at the Disney parks, it's a new(ish) feature on the most popular ride where instead of just waiting in line, you can get a FastPass ticket with a given return time (an hour window), walk around the rest of the park, and return at your designated time and wait in a very short line. FastPass is a win-win situation on crowded days, since you don't have to wait in line, so to speak. The reality is that you are still waiting that amount of time, but you get the opportunity to do other things like shopping and eating (the win for Disneyland).

Anyway, last night we headed over to the Car Toon Spin to check it out. The sign at the door said the wait was 43 minutes. We didn't time it, but that seems about right. The ride itself was...kinda lame. It was like a Fantasyland ride (like Mr. Toad, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, etc.) where you are in a car on a flat track and the ride takes you through several rooms. Usually the rooms tell a story, but in this case I didn't particularly notice that. The thing that made the ride different was that you could spin your car, much like the Teacups. So you just kind of drive along through different rooms spinning your car. I can see why the mom was upset about it.