In a
previous
post, I roundly decried the plan to demolish Mickey's Toontown
and replace it with “Star Wars Land.” As one of the reasons for
this plan is Toontown's low traffic, I pointed out that when Bear
Country was suffering from flat attendance, the solution wasn't to
rip it out but to add a big attraction (and re-name it, but that's
more a consequence of the Bear Country name being too specific in the
first place). Here, then, is a description of the sort of ride I
believe would do for Toontown what Splash Mountain did for the area
now called Critter Country.
This
ride is designed for Mickey’s Toontown in Disneyland. It combines
the overall “look and feel” of Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin
with the motion simulation of the Indiana Jones Adventure and the
shooting-arcade interactivity of Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters to
create a dark ride adventure that is both fun and funny for the whole
cartoon-lovin’ family.
Concept
The
nefarious Beagle Boys have escaped from jail and robbed the First
National Bank of Toontown! Every available police officer is on the
case, but the wicked Beagles have gone to ground in the seedy Back
Alleys of Toontown, where everyone is a crook. It’s up to the
guests, armed with comical “stun guns,” to clean the place up and
catch the Beagle Boys before they get away with all of the town’s
money!
Location/Footprint
The
entrance to the ride is located in the Downtown area of Toontown,
where all the “official” buildings are such as the bank and City
Hall. A section of the employee access road immediately behind the
facades has been re-routed to dip underground, and the queue for the
ride built over it, leading around the back of Toontown to the show
building, which is built in the space formerly occupied by Gadget’s
Go-Coaster and the Chip & Dale Treehouse. The exterior of the
building is decorated to look like a new apartment complex called
Rubber Arms. (For added laughs, an array of “door buzzers” has
been added to the visible portion of the building for guests to push
in order to hear what the residents have to say!)
Pre-Show
The
queue takes the guests through sets designed to look like the
Toontown Central Post Office, First National Bank, and finally the
Police Station.
The
Post Office walls are bedecked with portraits of the Beagle Boys and
other wanted criminals, with posted rewards (in “simoleons”)
corresponding to the points they will be worth as targets on the ride
later on. They all look like extremely stereotypical cartoon
lowlifes, with eyepatches, snarling expressions, heart-shaped tattoos
that say “MOM”, that sort of thing. TV sets in the corners, such
as might be installed to keep people entertained while waiting for an
available postal clerk, display a continuous loop of animated “news
story” about the recent bank robbery and other crimes.
In
the Bank, the giant safe door swings forlornly back and forth, its
hinges creaking, so that everyone can see it has been cleaned out.
Nearby is the office of the bank’s president, Scrooge McDuck. His
door is closed and his window shade is drawn, but his silhouette (a
digital projection effect) can be seen against the shade and his
voice can be heard as he shouts over the phone at the Chief of
Police. The Chief apologizes that most of the city’s cops are
currently attending the annual Policeman’s Ball, but he’ll assign
every remaining officer to the case and recruit some emergency
volunteers to make up the difference.
The
Police Station is the most elaborate portion of the queue. Simple
moving figures of desk cops can be seen at their workstations, while
an audio-animatronic Chief of Police (an original character who looks
like a bulldog), standing in front of a city map, explains how to
recognize criminals and how to operate the “stun guns” in order
to catch them. He also encourages guests to tag anything that looks
like it might be stolen goods (i.e. is marked with a target), so the
police can pick it up as evidence later. And he lets guests know that
he will keep in touch with them via radio during their foray. All
this information is repeated on signs in case the noise level
prevents guests from hearing the Chief or they just aren’t paying
attention to the audio.
The Ride Itself
The
ride vehicles seat four apiece and resemble cartoonish
black-and-white police cars. Each one is equipped with four of the
aforementioned “stun guns”—laser emitters of the same type as
those used on BLAB, but the casing is molded to resemble a boxing
glove on a retracted spring, with the laser in the “knuckles.”
Pulling the trigger causes the glove to pop out slightly as the laser
flashes. Each vehicle is also equipped with motion-simulation
technology similar to that of the Indiana Jones Adventure, though the
motion is much gentler—this is a challenging arcade-style ride, not
a thrill ride.
As
the vehicle sets out, the Chief of Police comes over the “radio”
speakers, reminding the guests to watch out for more than just the
Beagle Boys. The first portion of the ride is called Larceny Lane,
and is populated by a few small-time crooks worth only a small amount
of points. This gives guests a chance to get used to the “stun
guns” while there’s not much at stake yet.
Then
the car makes a sharp turn (the motion-sim platform tilts slightly)
into Lower Beagleville, and riders get their first encounter with the
Beagle Boys! A whole clan of them! “Careful!” says the Chief.
“They’ve got dum-dums!” Sure enough, the Beagles are holding
silly-looking guns and firing “dum-dum bullets” at the guests, as
evidenced by puffs of air and little flicks of light coming at them
from both sides. Extra points can be scored by shooting the guns so
that the Beagles drop them. As the car progresses through the set,
more Beagles pop up in the windows of the run-down buildings, out of
manholes, etc. At the end of the scene, a trio of Beagles in prison
stripes—the escaped bank robbers—can be seen loading sacks of
money into the back of a van. Lucky guests can shoot a hidden target
on the sacks for lots of bonus points. “That was them! Don’t let
them get away!” the Chief bellows.
The
car turns again, into a narrow street. There are no crooks here at
first, but there are valuable things they have stolen—TV sets,
heaps of jewelry, rare paintings—all with targets to shoot. Halfway
through this section, there is a screech of tires and the Beagles’
van pulls out from a side alley in front of the ride vehicle and
drives ahead of it for several seconds, exposing a high-value target.
At the end of the scene, the Beagles swerve off again and the riders
lose sight of them.
Now
the car enters Shady Acres, the really rough part of town, and the
guests can tell because the vehicle starts to bump and jolt like it’s
running over potholes (more motion-sim). All of the hoodlums living
in the Back Alleys are alerted to their presence now, and there’s
no end of thieves and ruffians to take aim at. Attentive guests will
recognize them from their Post Office mugshots. The track winds
around and the car tilts, all the extra movement making it that much
more of a challenge to get in a clean hit and score points, but to
make up for it, all the targets here are high-scoring. All the while,
the Chief is shouting “helpful” advice such as “Look out!” or
“Get ’em!”
Now
comes the climax: a final showdown with the Beagle Boys! The track
here makes a wide turn around a central area in which the Beagles’
van, covered on all sides with targets, is doing donuts, offering
every side to the guests in turn. Just before the guests’ car
leaves the scene, headlights flash and more cop cars pull up to the
van, surrounding the Beagles. One set of “headlights” on each
side of the track is actually a camera flash, photographing the
guests.
For
the denouement scene, no points are scored and the motion-sim comes
to an end. The guests find themselves cruising alongside the First
National Bank as the Chief congratulates them over the radio and an
audio-animatronic Scrooge thanks them for their help and promises to
cut them a check in the morning for a number of simoleons equal to
their final score. As they leave the scene and return to the boarding
area, he can be heard to mutter, “Of course, simoleons aren’t
legal tender outside Toontown!”
Post-Show
The
exit queue passes back through a hallway of the Police Station. A
door to the break room is open, leaving visible a box of donuts on
the table and a TV set showing the same animated news program seen in
the Post Office, only now the anchors are announcing that the Beagle
Boys and several other notorious Toontown criminals have been
arrested. Just before the exit, which debouches near Donald’s Boat,
there is a bank of computer terminals that guests can use to bring up
their photos and e-mail them to themselves, as on BLAB. Each photo is
assigned a unique alphanumeric code which can be used at the
Disneyland Photo Center to order a print of the photo, or of the
promised check from Scrooge.
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