Spring with all its vibrant colors arrived a week before Groundhog Day at the Disneyland Resort. Southern California's signature theme parks are getting ready for a busy 2011 that will include, among several other attractions, the first all-new ride since "Toy Story Mania" in 2007. Disneyland's "it's a small world" ride was the first out of the gate with a nightly lights-and-animation show that debuted Jan. 27.
"The Magic, the Memories and You!" features animation and film clips from Disneyland's history as well as more than 500 pictures of guests at the park taken daily and integrated into the show through a sophisticated computer program. "Every show will be a one-of-a-kind premiere," Disneyland Resort president George A. Kalogridis said.
The ride gets colored with crayons, ripples like a brook and vanishes outright through images carefully calibrated to the contours of the ride's façade. Director Alan Bruun said one of his favorite moments in the 10-minute show is when the clock tower blasts into space with Buzz Lightyear.
The day after the lights and animation show was unveiled, Disney California Adventure reopened its Walt Disney Imagineering Blue Sky Cellar with a new video and display that promotes the upcoming "Little Mermaid" ride, "Ariel's Undersea Adventure."
Show producer Lisa Girolami and "imagineer" Alex Grayman were on hand to augment the information presented in the video. Among tidbits they revealed: The Ariel ride will be about 6 ½ minutes long. Guests will ride in vehicles similar to those in Disneyland's "Haunted Mansion," but shaped like colorful clam shells.
The replica of San Francisco's The Palace of Fine Arts will be adapted as the exterior of "Ariel's Undersea Adventure" and feature a hand-crafted glass mosaic. The loading area of the ride will feature an 86-foot, hand-painted mural of Ariel and her friends. Much of the scenery already has been installed. One of the highlights will be a black-light scene with the villainess Ursula.
Disney officials, however, are playing it close to the vest about the other animatronic figures that will populate the ride. And they are keeping mum about when the attraction will open, although Disneyland Resort spokesman John McClintock said it will be ready for summer.
The Blue Sky Cellar also shows off attraction posters created for California Adventure in the style of Disneyland's; dramatizes California Adventure's expansion through animation projected on a painting; and previews "Goofy's Sky School," a makeover of "Mulholland Madness" coming this summer.
Also on the horizon at the Disneyland Resort: The makeover of the "Star Tours" motion-simulation attraction in Tomorrowland with updated technology and 3-D imagery.