The Fabulous Disney Babe
Page 1 of 1
The usual corrections and thanks and addendum:
The Hyperion attraction was not to be a simulator, it was going to be an all-live suspended monorail attraction, traveling over 2000 feet of track. Seventeen cars, three per train. The show would have been about twenty minutes, with 20-30 Audioanimatronic figures appearing in the scenes: The eight scenes were to have been: The sunset scene, the aurora borealis scene (which would have been seen from the Disneyland Railroad as well), the daylight scene where the vehicle flies through the icebergs, the grotto/whales scene, the rock cliffs/garden scene (wooly mammoths, unicorns, griffins, dodoes, pegusai, etc.), the ice-covered field, the volcanoes, and the storm scene.
• • •
The Captain Nemo Adventure (Nautilus II)
This attraction would have been accessed in one of two ways: the Nautilus walk-through, similar to the one that is now found in Disneyland Paris' Discoveryland, or, nauseatingly enough, immediately following a large meal at the Nemo's Grand Salon Restaurant.
The queue winds through Nemo's secret laboratory, like the one in Vulcania in the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, glimpsed briefly as Nemo destroyed his island. Guests enter a huge circular room, and see Captain Nemo and some of his crewmen on a command console platform in the center. Captain Nemo describes some of his experiments and inventions to the group, including a new exploration submarine, capable of submerging to before-impossible depths. The lights flicker and dim and an alarm sounds; the captain explains that the power has gone out in the stairwells and there are not enough Ruhmkorff lamps for the whole group, so they will have to use an alternate method to return to the surface of Discovery Bay - one of the before-mentioned experimental submarines, which will hold 150 people. (There would have been two of them, but guests would only see one at a time, similar to the theatres in Flight to the Moon/Mission to Mars.)
The seating arrangement is very similar to Flight to the Moon/Mission to Mars/Alien Encounter, with four levels of seats in a circle, and four huge "windows" visible, "closed" at the moment. The main showpiece of the room is a trim indicator, which tells passengers how much they are tilting, and small Davis lamps set on swivels to remain continually level no matter how the ship may move or tilt. On either side of the "viewports" (the "windows/screens") are glass tubes with the usual copper and rivets holding them together. Captain Nemo's voice is heard on the loudspeaker, saying that guests are going to submerge, travel out to the Pacific Ocean, tour the underwater areas of Discovery Bay, and return to the dock.
The glass tubes on either side of the "windows" fill with water as the vehicle "submerges". Lights flash different colors and various bells and whistles (no mention of "Dive! Dive!" is made, sorry!) The "windows" appear to open as the interior lights dim, showing beautiful undersea dioramas. The level trim indicator, along with the Davis lamps, are indicating that guests are traveling deeper into the ocean.
The vehicles pass Captain Nemo's crew farming the ocean floor and the vast machine-age mechanics of the underside of his laboratory structure. All is peaceful until something goes terribly wrong. An alarm sounds, warning of an enemy vessel approaching. It is one of the 19th century warships from the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. When the Ship That Flies No Flag fires on the submarine, Nemo can't resist, and rams the ship with the touring submarine. As the vessel once again "submerges", passengers get to see pieces of the ship sinking around them. (If you haven't seen 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, this echoes what is, for me at least, one of the film's most disturbing moments - they ram an enemy ship and the passengers of the Nautilus watch from the viewport as the enemy crew die underwater when their ship is torn apart. Not at all nice, and very odd for a theme park, I'd think.)
Because of the force of the collision, the submarine loses control and plummets down, down to the bottom of the ocean, where passengers see phosphorescent fish and other weird animals that live so far below the surface of the sea, they have never been exposed to sunlight. (Yes, yes, I know it doesn't get that deep off the Pacific Coast, but it makes for a great story!)
As the vessel rises, no one on board getting the bends or anything, it is suddenly attacked by - you guessed it - a giant squid. The ship repels the beast with an electrical charge and resulting sparkly special effects, but not before the monster manages to crack open the center hatch at the top of the "vehicle" and get a couple of tentacles in to menace the front-row guests. As the submarine emerges into a thunder and lightning storm at the surface, the squid disappears, and the submarine re-enters Discovery Bay, scraping the sides of some of the walls as it travels due to rudder damage during the adventure.
Discuss It
-- Michelle Smith
Michelle Smith can be reached using the Talkback form below or by emailing her at [email protected].
The Fabulous Disney Babe's column is posted every Friday and when ever else she has something to say. For more on Michelle's background, see her first column. She also offers The Fabulous Tour: Disneyland Secrets and Stories. Click here for more information.
The opinions expressed by our Michelle Smith, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future plans of the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted June 8, 2001