On Monday, Disneyland unveiled the new submarine ride. For those of you who haven't kept up with your ride lore, the old sub ride was closed in 1998, because it was expensive to run and could only schlepp a few people at a time. I guess people were kind of upset to see the old sub go, and one of them was Marty Sklar, at the time Disney's creative chief. "He publicly threatened to
lie down on the busy street that fronts Disneyland to prevent the subs
from being deep-sixed." Wow, he'd die for a sub ride? Now that's passion, people. Anyhow, boomers begged for the return of the ride and so finally it was overhauled and gussied up and finally relaunched as the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. Argh, not the clownfish!!! Will he never go away?
The new ride has gotten rave reviews from advance riders. "'IT WAS AWESOME!!!!! i would TOTALLY WAIT IN LINE for like 6 hours for
it,' wrote one satisfied rider...And even before its official opening to the general public today,
dozens of grainy, blurry and dark videos had surfaced on YouTube." You know what? I just went to D-land a month ago (looong story) and I wouldn't wait in line for 6 hours to ride on Johnny Depp's lap, let alone squeeze into a tiny sub to oogle a clownfish. But just so you know, my childhood memories of the old subs were colored by the fact that 1. they smelled like feet, 2. I waited for almost six hours in the heat to get on it, and 3. while on that ride, I discovered I am claustrophobic. Age six. There's my trauma.
If you get a chance to raise the periscope on this puppy, let us know if we should believe the hype. Meanwhile, I'm just going to try to steal the animatronic Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride for my own foul purposes.
