A trip to Disneyland

by Philip Greenspun; created 1999

Here I am riding the aerial tram over the lovely "wimp" rides. About to punch through the Matterhorn, it is worth recalling that a woman was allegedly decapitated on this ride a few years ago. She was not properly seat belted in, rode up a bit in her seat and her head landed in the lap of the person behind her. My cousin Douglas, a Disney animator, told me this story just as we were getting on the ride. Apparently Disney's influence sufficed to keep the newspapers from going crazy over this one, although it was mentioned in the LA Times. I was pregnant with my camera vest; Douglas and I were sitting on top of each other. The seat belts were like what we had in our 1970 Chevelle station wagon and not on a retractor.
The ride attendants weren't too concerned about getting us strapped in and, in fact, started our car moving before I'd managed to clip the belt closed. I managed to get the belt connected just as the overhangs were zooming a few inches over my head. I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.

But I'll take that up with my therapist... Anyway, the tram punches right through the Matterhorn ....

then it goes over a submarine ride...

Then I got off and watched the famous Disney parade before sitting down for a snack and catching a few Z's in preparation for the ultimate photographic challenge

Links

• An, er, uplifting look at the Splash Mountain ride

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You may wish to check out my Web books:

• Travels with Samantha, an account of a journey from Boston to Alaska and back (winner of Best of the Web '94)
• Berlin and Prague: Nazis, Jews, stamp collectors, and beautiful women, illustrated with photos of those cities.
• Heather has Two Mommies, the naughtiest exhibit of zoo photos on the Internet.

Top photo: is from the Disney corporate headquarters in Burbank. That's where Michael Eisner works and earns $200 million/year. The average American worker would have to labor continuously through the year 10,266 A.D. to earn this much. Of course, Eisner is a pauper compared to Bill Gates.