The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Places on Earth (107 page)

Within
about five minutes, barring the occasional traffic jam or breakdown, you’ll head back into the loading area, your hair a bit wild from the open-air journey.  Ride the gas pedal very gently, as it can get congested, bumper-to-bumper, in the unloading queue.  Keep your eyes on the Cast Members posted along the unloading zone and follow their verbal instructions and gestures to the letter.  If unsure of anything, just ask.  This is the trickiest part of the drive, slowly pulling up next to a loading gate without bumping the car ahead of you.

Once you’re safely parked, you and your child unbuckle the seat belts and disembark.  Head west, up the exit staircase and then down the exit ramp.  Stop at the license kiosks
on the final landing if you want a souvenir license with your photo.  High-five your little ones–you’re seasoned
Autopia
drivers now! 
Did You Know?
  Today’s
Autopia
has three different types of cars. 
Suzy
resembles a VW beetle,
Sparky
is the sports car, and
Dusty
is an off-road vehicle.  All Guests who dare the freeways of
Autopia
are given an honorary cardboard
Autopia
license with a sketch of either
Suzy
,
Sparky
, or
Dusty
on it.  Guests who want a more elaborate
Autopia
license with their photo on it can purchase one at the draped kiosks near the end of the exit queue.
Did You Also Know?
  On November 24, 1955, the
Mickey Mouse Club Circus
opened northeast of
Fantasyland
, in the area that would later become
Junior Autopia
.  There were elephants, lions, and tigers.  Trapeze artists and acrobats in sparkly,
Tinker Bell
-like costumes.  A ringmaster.  Clowns.  Parades down
Main Street
.  A seal balancing a ball on its nose. Plumed, prancing ponies.  And, of course,
Mouseketeers
.  Under two giant, red-and-white-striped big tops, the
Mickey Mouse Club Circus
delivered the classic circus thrills that
Walt
had adored as a boy. But Guests seemed more interested in
Disneyland
’s unique, signature attractions than in its traditional circus.  Light attendance meant the circus folded its tents after only six weeks, but not before images
magical
and surreal (like runaway llamas racing down
Main Street
) had been indelibly cemented in the minds and hearts of Guests.  The
Mickey Mouse Club Circus
’ wagons were used in the 1960
Disney
film
Toby Tyler
.  Based on the book by James Otis Kaler,
Toby Tyler
was
Walt
’s tribute to the traveling circus of yesteryear. 
Night Vision:
  You see more of
Autopia
’s landscape when you drive the course in the daylight, but driving it at night has its own charms.  The miniature streetlamps along the route help to light your way, and you can take in views of the
Matterhorn
with its eerily lit blue-purple ice caverns and the colorful phosphorescence of the
Tomorrowland Lagoon
.
FastPass:
  Yes.  This is a popular and sometimes slow-loading attraction, so it’s linked to
Disneyland
’s
FastPass
system. On crowded days, lines can reach and exceed 45 minutes, so if you’re schedule is tight, a
FastPass
is recommended.
FastPasses
are dispensed on the northeast side of the
Innoventions
building, near the
Autopia Winner’s Circle
.
Kid’s Eye View:
  I really like
Autopia
, but you have to be 54” tall to drive it alone.  But you really are driving, and it’s fun to ride with someone else.  And at the end you can get your picture taken for your license.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters

[
FastView:
 
Live-action videogame fun for the whole family.
]

This popular
Tomorrowland
attraction debuted in 2005, ten years after the release of
Toy Story
, the movie that launched the
Disney-Pixar
CGI film empire and introduced the world to ultra-confident
Space Ranger
action figure
Buzz Lightyear
.  The
Buzz
character, like the movie, was a great success, and appeared in the even more popular sequels
Toy Story 2
(1999),
Toy Story 3
(2010), and on television.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
is housed in the former location of now-defunct attractions
Circarama
,
Circle-Vision 360
, and
Rocket Rods
in the eastern section of
Tomorrowland
, next to
Astro Orbitor
and across from
Star Tours
.

Controversy was stirred when this building’s
Mary Blair
murals were covered during the 1998 revamp of
Tomorrowland
, and then replaced by fresh murals that crisply and imaginatively portray cosmic scenes such as a series of
Space Mountain
-like space stations.  The new
Scot Drake
murals have a lovely palette of cool blues and whites, and a style that combines photo-realism with high space-fantasy.

Some Guests love the new look, which links thematically to the mural on the
Star Tours
building opposite.  Others deeply miss
Mary Blair
’s now-vanished murals which were trippy, colorful abstracts.  Fans of
Blair
’s unique style can still view her work and influence at attractions like
Alice in Wonderland
,
“it’s a small world,”
and
Peter Pan’s Flight
.  They might also want to visit the ground floor of the
Fantasy Tower
at the
Disneyland Hotel
, where the carpet designs are direct tributes to
Blair
’s
“it’s a small world”
designs.

If you have children or teens, odds are good that they’ll want to experience
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
.  Given its popularity, try to queue early in the morning, on a weekday or on an off-season day.  This attraction no longer offers
FastPasses
, although standard wait times can reach 60 minutes and the outside queue is mostly without shade rather bare.  It can be awfully dull waiting more than a half hour in the hot sun, with nothing to do but watch the
Astro Orbitor
rockets whirl around and around (and around); you’ll wish you could leap into the
Pixie Hollow
pond when you (slowly) wend past it.

Once you get inside,
however, the
Astro Blasters
’ interior queue is fun and fast-moving, as well as air-conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter.  Decorated with illustrations of
Toy Story
’s
Little Green Men
(cute little aliens), evil
Emperor Zurg
, space vehicles, and maps of
Buzz
’s intergalactic world, the inner queue’s highlight is an impressively fluid
Audio-Animatronic
Buzz Lightyear
who uses a giant
Etch-a-Sketch
to deliver the details of your mission.  Once you see
Buzz
, you know you’re only minutes from boarding!

The attraction’s premise is simple and designed to appeal t
o Guests living in the videogame era:  Guests temporarily serve as
Space Rangers
, trying to stop
Buzz
’s nemesis, evil
Emperor Zurg
, from stealing all the
fusion cells
(i.e., batteries; toys need batteries, right?).  Guests do this by boarding a two-person
Star Cruiser
and blasting every moving and stationary target in sight with their
Astro Blasters
.

Try
to hit as many targets as you can as often as possible, especially those that are distant, moving, or tucked away at odd angles.  Your
Star Cruiser
is on a perpetually rolling
Omnimover
track, à la the
Haunted Mansion
’s
Doom Buggies
, and can spin 360 degrees, like the
Roger Rabbit
taxis.

Gliding and spinning through
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
is like having been shrunk to toy size and rolling through an actual videogame.  The show building is dark, the targets and
Audio-Animatronic
figures painted in the rich cartoon colors of the
Toy Story
films, vibrant reds and yellows, greens and purples.  Just as in a video arcade, when you hit a target it lights up.

An onboard computer tracks your score
in real time. Many Guests want to do more than beat their personal best; they want to score higher than their riding companion, whether a spouse, pal, parent, or sibling!  Your adventure takes a good four to five minutes, and then the computer tallies your score. Your
Space Ranger
rank is determined based on the posted criteria:

0 – 1,000 =
Star Cadet

1,001 – 10,000 =
Space Ace

10,001 – 100,000 =
Planetary Pilot

100,001 – 300,000 =
Space Scout

300,001 – 600,000 –
1
st
Class Hero

600,001
– 999,999 =
Cosmic Commando

1,000,000+ =
Galactic Hero

999,999 is the maximum score that the
Star Cruiser
computers will display.  Higher scores can be e-mailed to Guests who provide an e-mail address after their ride concludes.

How can anyone possibly rack up hundreds of thousands of points?  Some Guests are
extremely dexterous videogamers, with calm, sure aim, strong tactical instincts, and excellent hand-eye coordination.  My eldest nephew, a talented life-long gamer, is one of these extraordinary souls.  He picked up a game controller when he was four and never put it down again.  He’s earning a degree in game design.  Those who don’t consider gaming a useful skill haven’t yet grasped how many business, entertainment, industrial, military, and medical applications are now run virtually and remotely.

Astro Blaster
high scorers, though, don’t have to be genius gamers.  Many are local
Annual Passholders
who ride constantly to sharpen their aim and raise their score.  The chance to improve and compete with friends and family is a big incentive for repeat rides on
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
, and is part of the secret of the attraction’s success.

It helps to know which targets are most valuable.  Lit targets, for example, are worth more than unlit targets.  Triangular targets are a hundred times more valuable than round targets.  According to the
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
section of the “Disneyland Linkage” website, if you hit a small round target on the
Emperor Zurg
figure, it’s worth a staggering 50,000 points.

Once you’re journey is complete you disembark carefully–remember, this is a constantly moving
Omnimover
track–and make sure your little ones step out safely.  The exit corridors leads you to an area where you can e-mail your score and your photo to yourself or friends or family.

You then have the option of leaving the building or continuing into the
Little Green Men Store Command
, a shop rich with a wide assortment of
Disney pins
, and, naturally, galaxies of
Toy Story
and
Buzz
-themed action figures, blasters, clothing, etc.  Your kids and teens might want to ride
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
again, immediately, and you might want to as well.  Yes, it’s
that
fun!  And if the line is short, why not?

Bottom line: 
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
is well-imagined entertainment for the whole family with a cute storyline and an entertaining, amiable competitive edge.  If you can work it into your visit and avoid a broiling queue, you should see it.  If you’re pressed for time, however, keep in mind that this is not one of the
magical
, can’t-miss
Disneyland
attractions that will leave you empty inside if you skip it. 
Did You Know?
  Voiced by actor
Tim Allen
in the film series,
Buzz
is voiced by
Patrick Warburton
in the television series.  Older Guests will remember
Allen
from the “Home Improvement” TV series, and he later starred in the
ABC
sitcom
Last Man Standing
. 
Warburton
portrayed Elaine’s boyfriend David Puddy on “Seinfeld”.  Both actors have strong ties to
Disney
, too.  Younger Guests will recognize
Allen
as
Santa
in
Disney
’s live-action
Santa Clause
trilogy, and
Warburton
as the voice of lunk-headed but oddly endearing
Kronk
in
Disney
’s
Emperor’s New Groove
films and television show.
Warburton
also never fails to get chuckles as he delivers safety instructions in the pre-boarding video for
Soarin’ Over California
at
Disney California Adventure
.
Did You Also Know?
  That’s all very well, but is it
Allen
or
Warburton
that provides
Buzz
’s voice for
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
?  Neither.  At the
Buzz Lightyear
attraction,
Buzz
is voiced by
Corey Burton
, a prolific voice actor whose numerous other roles for
Disney
include
Captain Hook
in
Return to Never Land
.
Interactive Vision:
  Can’t get to
Disneyland
?  Experience this attraction online from anywhere in the world by going to disneyland.com,
Disneyland Park
,
Attractions
, and
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
and then downloading the online application.  Zapping online targets marked with “Z”s purportedly links to Guests at the
Disneyland
attraction
and
helps their scores.
FastPass:
  No.  Except during very slow off-season periods, this popular attraction
used
to be linked to the park
FastPass
system, but in June 2011 its
FastPass Dispensers
were linked to the insanely popular
Star Tours
reboot across the road.  If you visit in the early morning hours or on off-season days, lines can be as short as five to ten minutes and you won’t need a
FastPass
.  On crowded days, however, wait times can reach an hour. 
Kid’s Eye View:
  This is a really cool attraction.  It’s all dark, and you have to blast the targets.  It’s really fun but there’s a long line.