This is a motion shot of the cars coming into the loading platform. The ride track is EXACTLY the same as it ever was. Same dips and turns same start and same stop. Take it from a three time annual pass holder that's been visiting Disneyland every year since 1981, there has been no change in the ride track. What is different are the details. The ride is as smooth as glass. There's less light in the mountian so it's harder to see what's coming. The onboard music/sound effects have been improved as has the lighting inside the mountain. The old "red arrows" on the riser tube are gone, replaced by some impressive full surface visual effects in the cylinder. Also new is a section of sliding track in the loading area designed to slide one pair of cars to the side and accomodate loading of dissabled riders without disturbing the flow of cars. I beleive it also would serve to remove a car due to excessive weight (if a car moves too fast and catches up with the car ahead the ride engages a braking system to prevent a colision, it then creates a cascading braking back the line and shuts down the ride for hours while riders are evacuated manually or the cars are manually rolled down the ride one by one) by allowing them to pull the cars to one side and re-arrange the riders without disrupting the ride. A similar system is used on the Matterhorn.

It's hard to see in this photo from my camera phone but this is the space ship that hangs from the celing in the loading area of Space Mountain. It's silver now and has a new cockpit and fins attached to the stern. It's kinda funny lookin if you ask me and definately not an improvement. If you take note of the hull number though you'll catch one of the "hidden oddities" that have been incorporated into the design of the ride. This is ship number "D-05" in other words, Disneyland '05. The theme of the ride is to send you aborad "Space Station 77" and await your shuttle. "77" as in "1977", the year Space Mountain opened.

Soooo Space Mountain was waaay cool. Just being able to ride at all was cool, more so knowing that the ride doesn't officially open for another two weeks. These are pictures from the outside of the ride. From top right: The warning sign at the entry to the ride which has been re-vamped from the old "escelator" style entrance. The lights on the mountain have been changed a bit as well - they're basically steel blue with powerful strobes mounted at the base of each truss which flash either randomly or sometimes in sequence illuminating different sections of the mountain facade. This photo of the mountian exterior was taken from the center of the the elevated terrace in front of the mountain. The entrace to the ride should be familiar to those who've ridden Space Mountain before. Just inside the entrance was this cast member watching a monitor and letting a few dozen people on the ride at a time.

We stopped in at the "Carnation Cafe" on Main Street for dinner and Emma got a real treat: Her own mini hot dogs. Thanks Grandpa!

Walking though the gift shop adjacent to "It's A Small World" I noticed this apt Disney reproduction of the classic Milton Bradley game.

I snapped a photo of "The Temple of The Forbidden Eye" on my way off the Indian Jones ride.

This is still one of the greatest rides ever developed!

Last month we found these for sale in Disneyland but could not for our lives figure out what they were supposed to be or do. Since there was no packaing, title, or instructions it seemed it must be something that would be pretty obvious to the masses, but we remained dumbfounded. At last, during this last trip my father had a stroke of brilliance and realized they were stoppers for a wine bottle! It made perfect sene after that, of course the cork would expand and be unuseable after opening but I, being raised in an home where neither my parents nor thier parents consumed any sort of alcohol, had to think through the thing rather than simply identify it.

Emma and I stopped at Pooh Stix Bridge for a photo op.

We moved from the expensive confines of the Hyatt Long Beach to the inexpensive confines of the Fairfield Placentia. Hannah and I stayed here back in January so it wasn't hard to track down.