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Time Transforms Rio del Tiempo to Gran Fiesta Tour

Characters keep sneaking more and more into Epcot. This park started out as a permanent World’s Fair, but it doesn’t come across that way anymore. Nemo has taken the Sea, Lion King has been to the Land, Ratatouille and Beauty and the Beast are in France, and Frozen is in Norway. To celebrate Epcot’s 40th anniversary, let’s take a look at the Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Cabelleros, the first attraction at World Show Case to be transformed to a character ride. Rio del Tiempo Rio del Tiempo was conceived as an attraction to celebrate the history and culture of Mexico. Like the other original attractions at World Showcase, you can see a country’s influence on the pavilion. The Aztec temple facade drew people for shopping, dining, and the ride entrance. Once you boarded this gentle boat ride, you’d float by a volcano and another Aztec temple. After that, you’d take a trip through time that would show you snippets of Mexico’s ancient, recent, and modern history. The physical componen...
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Height Restrictions Translated to Age Ranges

Height restrictions keep kids safe, but they can be frustrating. If you have ever taken kids to the parks, you know what I mean. Every cast member measures a little differently, so sometimes you make it all the way to the loading zone and then get turned away. Other times your kids are just slightly too short, and you wish they would have worn taller shoes. One of the most difficult things, in my mind, is planning trips and figuring out how long it will be ’till your kids can meet height restrictions. Especially when some can ride and some can’t, the younger ones want to know how much longer ’till they’ll be big enough. I don’t know any parents that have memorized a growth chart and can say, “My child will grow 1 inch in the next 9 months, so we should plan a trip then.” When we plan trips with our kids, we just keep measuring them and telling them to eat a bunch in hopes they’ll be tall enough for more rides. Fortunately, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has released data that sh...
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Are the Rides Darker than Normal?

Have you ever thought one of Disney’s darkrides looked darker than normal? Maybe things were hard to see, or they didn’t glow the right way. I’ve heard this blamed on an old paint job or lights that need replacing. The blame always seems to go to the maintenance team. But normally, the too-dark-darkride has nothing to do with maintenance. It has a lot more to do with queue design and time of day. Theme parks are not built for the slow days. The walk ways, ride capacities, queue sizes, restaurants and show offerings are designed around keeping crowds entertained and busy. So are the visuals in the rides. Imagineers expect that guests will be waiting in line for each ride. Particularly for dark rides, they build indoor queues. This keeps the crowd entertained while they wait, but it also give you a gradual transition while your eyes adjust to the lower level of light. Take the Disneyland Haunted Mansion as an example. When the queue is full, you start off in the bright sun, and make your...
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Tips for Staying Off Your Phone in the Park

   Everyone needs some Disneyland tips these days. It's getting harder to avoid spending all day on your phone at in the park.  Genie+ , posted wait times, mobile orders, virtual queues, show times, park tickets, dining reservations, Photo-Pass, and customer service are all handled through the  Disneyland App . It's becoming a frequent complaint from park goers. And since the Disney apps are not well optimized for battery usage either, so many guests have to take battery packs to extend life. Some of it is unavoidable, but here are some tips you can use to reduce the time you spend on your phone. Prioritize experience over recording. There are Point of View (PoV) videos of full ride throughs and shows all over YouTube. You can find a video of just about anything you'd like to see, and it'll be higher quality than you can get. Focus on enjoying the experience, not recording it. Set alarms for Genie+. People using Genie+, the service that gets you into most of the Ligh...
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Disneyland Hotels and Transportation

Picking a hotel is hard. You want a hotel that’s close to the park, clean, and inexpensive. But around Disneyland, you have to compromise a bit. If you’ve been to Walt Disney World, you may expect that the majority of the visitors stay in Disney owned hotels. That’s not the case at Disneyland. Lots of visitors stay at nearby hotels or the rely on the parking system. Disney Hotels Disney has three “on property” hotels. These hotels are owned and run by Disney and are part of Disneyland. These are high quality hotels with the Disney name, which means they can be a pricey. The Disneyland Hotel was built in 1955 for Disneyland’s opening. The hotel has gone through several expansions and upgrades over the years. It’s located at the west side of Downtown Disney. It’s very close to one of the two monorail stops (the other stop is inside Disneyland), so you can get into the park without walking through the shopping district. The Grand Californian opened with California Adventure. It has an ent...
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Magic Kingdom had WHAT in Tomorrowland?

  I'm something of a late comer to Disney World attendance. My home park was Disneyland. I did go when I was little, but my memories are pretty vague. So going back as an adult has been fun, because a lot of the attractions seem new. But, I've been going back through some of the old attractions, trying to get a feeling for what I missed and how the parks have changed. Gran Fiesta Tour is an interesting one for me. I rode it, not knowing that the Three Caballeros were a relatively new addition. I thought it was a cute way to use some old characters. But I was surprised that those characters were there, because the Three Caballeros had always seemed so obscure to me. Don't get me wrong I thought the characters were great, I just didn't think anyone know who they were. Then I found out that the ride had originally been called Rio del Tiempo, I was just about cruise through Mexico. That made sense to me. It's a right showing off the country, which is something that belo...
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Don't Get Crushed by the Boulder!

The Boulder at Indiana Jones Adventures is one of the most iconic and thrilling elements of the ride. Guests on the ride are sent hurtling through a temple, chased by a giant rolling boulder that appears to be just inches behind them. But how does this impressive effect actually work? The boulder is actually a large, lightweight ball made out of fiberglass and other materials. It’s attached to a track system that is hidden from view, so guests can’t see how the boulder is propelled forward. The track is a series of curved rails that guide the boulder along its path. The boulder is mounted on a metal frame that is attached to a motorized system. The motor moves the frame forward along the track, which causes the boulder to roll forward at a speed that matches the ride vehicle. This creates the illusion that the boulder is chasing the guests. To make the effect even more convincing, the boulder is covered in a special material that creates a realistic-looking texture and helps it blend i...
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