Late night at Disneyland
Posted by marshall Thu, 12 Aug 2004 21:19:00 GMT
I finally got to ride a Segway last night.
Lara and I decided that we hadn't been to Disneyland in a while, so after work we drove down to Anaheim, stopping for dinner at In-N-Out along the way. The Innoventions attraction in Disneyland has a Segway HT up on the third floor where people can take rides; Lara and I waited in line, signed release forms acknowledging that riding the Segway at its low-speed setting in a small controlled area may result in paralysis, dismemberment, and/or death, and finally got each got the chance to take a Segway for a spin. Well, sort of.
A ride on the Segway at Innoventions basically involves standing on it, turning in a circle, going forward and back a little bit, and finally winding around a couple of dots on the floor at a slow speed. The Disneyland cast members are incredibly helpful and patient in explaining how it works and teaching basic usage, which is great for first-timers. Sadly, the demonstration is very short, and there's no opportunity to really get it moving at a decent speed. I imagine that this is largely due to the time it takes for each person; even with the short demo time, the wait to ride it is very long. I'm told that the park is far less populous in the off-season (specifically in October and November), so perhaps we'll have to visit the Segway exhibit then to see if we can get longer rides on it when there's nobody waiting.
Riding the Segway has reduced a good deal of my bitterness towards Innoventions. The last time we were there, the speaker for computer technology was demoing Tablet PCs and a set-top MP3 player, all blatantly sponsored by Hewlett-Compaqard. He asked who downloaded music off the Internet, then followed up with, "legally?" When my hand remained up, he screamed, "LIAR!", and continued on before I could say anything. Most of the crowd found it humorous, and understandably so; the common perception is that all downloaded music is illegal. The great irony in this case is that HP is pre-installing iTunes on their consumer hardware, promoting the iTunes Music Store (now with over a million downloadable tracks) on their site, and coming out with an HP-branded iPod next month. This would have been a perfect opportunity for the speaker to explain legal downloads and promote HP products, but instead he mocked a visitor and perpetuated a myth. So I wasn't very happy with Innoventions after that. But I'm better now. Mostly. ;-)
Anyway, after our Segway ride, we walked around the park a bit more, listened to the band at Club Buzz for a bit (there's something vaguely disturbing about seeing Mickey and Minnie, Pluto, and Goofy dancing to "Love Shack"), rode the Pirates of the Caribbean, caught the end of the Fantasmic! presentation, and grabbed a bit of dessert from the bakery on Main Street. We didn't realize until we got back to the car that we'd stayed until a quarter past midnight. We got home just after 1 AM...a little bit late for a weeknight. So I've been feeling kinda tired today.
