![]() ![]() Now sporting a “Great Goofini” theme, the coaster train looks like a set of small acrobatic planes and, after a pull up to the top of the lift, glides easily down through loops and swirls to the station below. The Barnstormer is meant for the younger set Reopened, the ride is still as gentle as ever, perfect for young ones to try their very first rollercoaster since you can sit right next to them. It closed for several years as this portion of the Magic Kingdom was re-imagined as Storybook Circus. When Toontown opened in Fantasyland in the late 1990s, the Barnstormer was one element that attracted visitors to this far corner of the park, a gentle runaway-train style ride themed as Goofy’s flying school. Camping on a backwater planetĪfter the Space Shuttle program ended, a 747 carried Space Shuttle Endeavor on a low flyover of Space Mountain as the shuttle headed for a California museum, an homage to the connection between space dreams and space reality. A moving walkway challenges your post-ride balance, sweeping you past vignettes of travel on foreign planets. Coming back down to Earth, the shuttle slows down in a tunnel of flashing red lights before stopping for you to disembark. While it’s tough to brace yourself for the sudden twists and turns if you’re in the lead car, the ride never exceeds 27 miles per hour. You catch glimpses of the other coaster, leaving the opposite station, at different points in the ride. ![]() ![]() With a sudden glimpse of planets and asteroids rushing past, the coaster plunges into sharp twists and turns along a wild mouse-style track in the dark. Making a quick turn out of the station, you’re blasting off up a corridor of flashing blue lights meant to simulate liftoff. Time spent standing in line – or walking up the long, angular corridors, if you have a Fastpass – immerses you in the science fiction surroundings before you get to the queue to get on board. I took this spin with my sweetie, who spent his career working on the Space Shuttle we both had fond memories of the ride as kids. It’s the oldest coaster at Walt Disney World, and has been replicated in all of the Disney theme parks around the world. Thematically, nearly 40 years after it opened to a wowed audience, the sets in Space Mountain are still more futuristic than anything you’ll see around the operations at Kennedy Space Center. It’s no surprise that astronaut Gordon Cooper was on the team that helped bring Walt Disney’s dream of a space-themed rollercoaster ride – based on the 1950s Matterhorn bobsleds at Disneyland – to reality. As it turned out, it would be a Space Shuttle. In the heavens above, the Apollo program was ending, with no idea what would come next. Shuttle preparing for launch.” In 1975, the year Space Mountain opened, my sisters and I – kids, then – waited for more than an hour for the thrill of zooming into the Space Age on a brand-new rollercoaster. Slipping into the skinny seat of the shuttlecraft at Space Mountain, I kept hearing the voice echoing throughout the noisy room. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |