To Fantasyland and Beyond! (Thoughts on Disneyland Part 2)

     Hey friends! Last week, I really intended to talk about all of Disneyland, at least what I saw, but it ended up being a much larger order of business than I thought it would be! I'm not giving each individual land its own part this time, like I did with Magic Kingdom, but I do at least need to make it two different posts capturing all of the cool stuff that I saw while I was there. Today I'm continuing my writings about Disneyland with a walk around Fantasyland and Mickey's Toontown. I didn't see everything there was to see in either of these areas, but I rode a lot of the attractions from both of these areas. There's always more time to talk about Disney Parks, especially since I haven't been to one since 2019, so let's get back to it today.

Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy(land)?

    Fantasyland was really interesting here at Disneyland, especially comparing it to the one in Magic Kingdom, which I'm much more familiar with. I've always heard stories of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Snow White's Scary Adventures, and other old rides like that, which have not been in the Orlando parks for a long time. Other than the excellent nod to Mr. Toad on the Winnie the Pooh ride (which replaced it), this IP has been something of a mystery to me. I'm happy to report that I have now ridden quite a few more rides in that vein, and I was surprised at how well they've held up. They have undergone quite a few periods of maintenance over their many years of operation, but it's cool how well they've been preserved for the most part. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was probably the longest line that we waited in all day (though it still wasn't incredibly long), though the ride itself felt like it lasted for about 20 seconds or so, though I'm sure it was closer to two minutes. It was a very simple ride where you drove a car through Toad Hall and out into the streets of London, then into the swamp, and then into... Hell? Maybe? It was a weird ride, and it seemed to end with Toad getting hit by a train while driving and then going to Hell. I haven't seen the movie that this ride was based on, so I'm not sure what the context of any of this stuff was, but boy, we had a lot to talk about after stepping off of that one. 

    In the camp of weird and creepy rides, no ride was creepier than Pinocchio's Daring Journey. If you've seen this movie (the original one, not the new live-action one with Tom Hanks as Gepetto), you know why the ride is creepy. It follows the plot of the movie, including when Pinocchio gets shoved into a birdcage (and the ride vehicle is also shoved into a giant birdcage), going through Pleasure Island, complete with creepy clowns and evil looking faces everywhere you look, and of course, children being turned into donkeys and crying for their moms and dads. There was a part that I think was meant to scare you where Monstro popped out from behind a big rock and looked like he was about to swallow you, but that was one of the less frightening moments of this ride, I thought. Of course, in the end, Pinocchio makes it home and is happy with Gepetto and Jiminy, though for some reason, in the end of this ride, he's still a puppet, he doesn't become a real boy, but Jiminy still gets his official conscience badge. The whole ride was just so, again, weird and creepy, I'm not sure how it has survived all this time.

    Speaking of rides that have changed a little bit with time, Snow White's Enchanted Wish was next, formerly known as Snow White's Scary Adventures. This was a much more pleasant ride than the two that I mentioned previously, and really I don't know what was changed about it, though I've read a lot about several scenes being removed that were responsible for scaring children, and apparently Snow White and the Prince never appeared in the original ride, which seems a bit strange. We all thought this ride was really nice, clearly adding some inspiration from the Diamond Mine scene in Seven Dwarves Mine Train at the Magic Kingdom, among a few others from that same attraction. This ride was a good time, and was one of my mom's favorites from the whole day. In that vein, we don't have the Alice in Wonderland ride in the Florida park, so I was excited to see what that would be. I always like it when a ride has elements both in and outside the track, and Alice in Wonderland actually starts outside, goes in, comes out, and then goes back in before the end of the ride. It's pretty cool how the Croquet scene and the Queen of Hearts yelling "Off with her head" coincides with the outside section of the ride, as if you're running away through the Queen's garden. This was probably my favorite ride of the older attractions that we don't have in Orlando.

    There are a few other rides that we don't have at Walt Disney World, there's the Storybook Land Canal Boats and the Matterhorn Bobsleds, as well as a bigger version of "it's a small world," which was shut down for maintenance while we were there, but we could at least see the big clock tower. Storybook Land was pretty cool, just a short boat ride past a bunch of little castles and houses from different Disney movies, the most recent being an addition of Arendelle, complete with Elsa's Ice Palace up on the North Mountain, which was really cool to see. According to the tour guide, this ride was one of Walt's favorites, which is part of why it's stood the test of time, I think. It was also cool to be able to see the Casey Jr. train (another ride) going on the bridge over us while we were going in our boat. We didn't ride the Matterhorn, though I definitely thought about it. It doesn't seem too bad, though it's hard to tell exactly how fast it will go from a ride through video, especially when there are long sections in the dark, which happens to be the case on the Matterhorn. I would like to ride it if I ever get a chance to go back there, just to say that I've done it, but I feel like our time was very well spent. My brother and mom went on Peter Pan's Flight while my dad and I booked it over to Indiana Jones Adventure at the end of the day, so I wasn't able to ride that one, but they said it was a good time, though fairly similar to the version that's in Orlando.

    Along with all these rides, of course, there were the rides that they also have at Walt Disney World, such as the Mad Tea Party and the King Arthur Carrousel (referred to as the Prince Charming Royal Carousel in Orlando). The Mad Tea Party was slightly different, I think it was bigger, and it wasn't covered up like its Florida cousin, but it also didn't have the giant teapot in the middle with the Dormouse popping out.

    Mickey's Toontown was really cool, though we spent very little time there. We basically just went there for Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, which was the first ride of the day, and then didn't made it back over there. It's a shame, because it is really cool area, and I especially love the transition from Fantasyland to Toontown. There's a dip in the path, so you have to go down under a bridge, so you really can't see anything on the other side, but then you get on the other side, and it really does seem like a big cartoon landscape, complete with a fountain with Mickey and Minnie on top of it. Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railroad was definitely one of the two rides that I was most looking forward to riding, and it was a really cool experience. The line was full of different memorabilia from Mickey's long history of cartoon appearances, ranging from the beginning, to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and even the current style of Mickey Mouse cartoons, which is what this ride is based on. You're attending a world premiere for a new cartoon short, and then during the show, Goofy accidentally crashes into the train station, and makes a hole in the screen, inviting everyone inside the cartoon to join in the fun on Goofy's Train. Unfortunately, Mickey and Minnie run into a lever which detaches all of the train cars from Goofy's train itself, leading you through a bunch of mayhem, hence "runaway railway." It's a trackless ride, meaning that all of the different cars have a slightly different route to take, and it was just a very fun time going through the chaos of the cartoon world before finally joining Mickey and Minnie at the park for their picnic. I definitely have to recommend riding it, though it was a bit more jerky than I thought it would be, it's still not bad at all for folks who aren't sure if they can handle it. Also in Mickey's Toontown are Chip n' Dale's GADGETcoaster and Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin, but unfortunately we didn't have time to ride any of those before the end of the day.

    I think I'm going to have to close this post out here, friends! I had a lot more to say about Fantasyland than I thought, so next week will most likely be the grand finale of my posts about Disneyland, covering Tomorrowland and some closing thoughts about the park as a whole, so I really hope you'll read that one as well. I really liked this park, if for no other reason than just getting to see where the parks began, and how it compares to the parks that I'm more familiar with. Thanks so much for reading and all of your support over the years, it's so exciting for me to be able to share some recent thoughts on a theme park, since this is the first one I've been to since I started this blog! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Disney fan, and I'll see ya real soon!