by David Smith
The line straightened out before it turned left as they walked through a small opened door that resembled some sort of spacecraft hatchway; a lighted sign above the door read: ‘AIR LOCK.’
As soon as the girls turned through the door, their jaws almost dropped; the room that opened up before them was the huge loading and unloading area of the ride. But the area looked more like a futuristic spaceport, something that could have been in the movies Star Wars or Star Trek. As the girls leaned over the railing that overlooked the ‘launching platform’ below them, they saw the activity going on below. They watched sleek gray-blue and dark green ‘Launch Vehicles’ move along rails, each car loaded with twelve passengers. The loaded vehicles would roll down the track, stop, and then proceed moving on before eventually curving to the right into some mysterious tunnel. The girls continued following the line of guests as it moved quickly down and along the exterior walls of the room, sloping towards the loading area. They could feel their hearts racing as they got closer to the bottom, especially as they watched each ride vehicle come streaking out of a final tunnel, then suddenly braking, with the guests aboard each car clapping and laughing.
“Well, it seems that everyone enjoys the ride when it is done!” Malaysia said, leaning over the railing to see the track and the constant movement of the cast members and people getting in and out of the cars that moved with an animated rhythm; a pulse that struck Malaysia as an urban, almost postmodern musical score.
“I’m going to have to write a song about this experience,” Malaysia whispered leaning into Laura’s ear as they continued to walk down a ramp that led to the loading platform. It was the first time that either of them had even thought about music, shows, or performing.
“You think you could make a melody out of this noise?” Laura asked.
“Listen to the cadence, Laura,” Malaysia said. There was indeed a defined syncopated pulse to the otherwise strident sound filling the room.
They reached the loading dock and Laura said, “Two,” when asked how many in her party. The good-looking ride operator whose nametag read ‘Rob’ smiled at the girls, and then said, “Please move to Zone One and have a nice flight.” The ride operator, the girls noticed, had little yellow earplugs in each ear. Rob pointed to the front of the dock where the girls saw a number “1” in a circle on the floor in front of the loading gate. Laura, seeing the man’s earplugs and listening to the constant drone within the building realized that indeed such reverberation—rhythmic or otherwise, as Malaysia described it—would become monotonous if not outright irritating after a while.
“That isn’t the front row, is it?” Malaysia said hesitantly to her sister as they walked to the spot.
“Yes, sis. I do believe we are in the front.”
Malaysia suddenly grabbed her sister’s arm, squeezing it with both hands. “I’m not sure about this.”
Laura laughed. “This can’t be any scarier than singing in front of fifteen thousand people, Mal, which you just did last night!”
“Yeah, but there, I’m in control. Here….” Malaysia didn’t finish her sentence. The next car had arrived and the loading gate opened as the excited passengers in the car stood up and exited to the right, giving way to the two side-by-side seats that Laura stepped in and pulled on Malaysia’s hand to join her.
“If I die, my death is going to be on your hands,” Malaysia said as she sat back in the contoured seat and pulled the safety bar down over her legs to her waist, double and triple checking the security of the padded bar.
“If you die, I die,” Laura said matter-of-factly. There was a delayed moment when the girls, safely seated, waited anxiously for the ride to begin. It was that moment of suspense that continued to build up the level of anticipation in both girls. Suddenly the car lurched forward and they were rolling smoothly along the steel track beneath the vehicle. They were looking directly ahead of them where windows of a ‘control tower’ were facing them. Two Space Mountain dispatch personnel were in the tower looking very busy with head sets and pushing buttons on some control panel in front of them. Their car came to an abrupt halt in front of the tower, presumably for a final safety check as another ride operator walked along the car checking their safety bars one final time. Malaysia glanced back up at the control tower where the two men, illuminated by some unseen lighting in front of them, their faces almost glowing in the unnatural light, sat inside looking very serious. One of the two workers looked at the front of the ride-vehicle stopped in front of the control tower and suddenly smiled at the front-seated girls. He then saluted the front seat of Laura and Malaysia’s car. The two girls gave small, tentative waves at the two workers just as the brakes under the vehicle released followed by a hiss of escaped air being heard below the track and their car began rolling forward, then taking a hard right turn as it entered a dark, ominous looking tunnel.
“At least we will die together!” Laura suddenly said; now she was grabbing Malaysia’s hand tightly as their car moved first into a near pitch-black tunnel.
Everything seemed to be moving at double speed. Even though the car was rolling slowly along what seemed to be a preliminary section of the ride, music started playing behind their heads in hidden speakers located in their headrests; lights moving along the tunnel went speeding by as if the car itself was accelerating quickly. If this was slow, Laura and Malaysia could only guess as to what the rest of the ride had in store for them.
The car unexpectedly turned again and immediately started up a steep incline; a chain engaged and started pulling the car up inside a tunnel that seemed to shrink around them as they climbed higher and higher creating an added illusion of going much further up. Holding each other’s hands, their other hands on the handlebar inside the vehicle, the girls clenched both hands tighter and tighter as the climb seemed to go on forever. Anticipating a drop at the top of the climb, the usual event on the few roller-coasters the girls had seen in Switzerland, they were relieved to see that the track flattened out and curved to the left. But then they saw that they were going up yet another incline, this one in near-total darkness. In the speakers behind their heads, a cosmic voice started counting down from ten in a slow, synthetic-sounding cadence. The climb brought them up closer to the star-filled blackness that covered the interior upper limit of the Space Mountain building giving them the impression the ride was now taking place in the vacuum of space itself.
From the speakers behind them, the slow countdown continued, building tension and anticipation for both sisters. The girl’s car hit the apex of their climb just as the countdown reached zero. In the near total darkness, their car began accelerating; though the girls were in the front seat, they could hardly see where they were going in the starry darkness. Music now played in the speakers adding a thrilling, futuristic stereophonic auditory sensation to that of the acceleration of the vehicle. The track, barely visible as a streaking ribbon of tubular metal ahead of them, curved to the left and tilted on a steeply banked bend and a slightly downward trajectory. The sensation was one of being released into space; not exactly free floating, but it was a fluid transition from gravity to near-weightlessness and an added sense of being launched literally into some celestial unknown. Their speed picked up with a faster, swooping right-hand turn that then led them into faster and faster curves and drops; each turn building from the previous turn with unsuspecting drops where Laura and Malaysia felt their bodies momentarily lift off their seats. Panic-mixed joy was exuberantly and unconsciously screamed by the girls as well as others behind them in their vehicle.
When the final turn led them into a simulated “reentry” followed by a dazzling explosion of light and sound climaxing the end of the ride, the brakes on the track slowed the barreling car suddenly as most everyone aboard began clapping. A guy behind the girls yelled out “Again!” as their vehicle slowly rolled around another curve and entered the loading area again, with hundreds of people in line now watching their car of happy and excited “space travelers.” The ri
de’s intention was certainly felt by both Malaysia and her sister.
“That was awesome!” Malaysia shouted over the now-familiar hum of the loading-unloading zone where the ride had begun. Their car came to a stop and their lap bars automatically released as a cast member in the signature blue and orange Space Mountain costume said, ‘Welcome back to earth. Please exit to your right.’
As the girls exited the ride along with the other riders from their car, there was an excited bounce to their step.
“We have to go on that again!” Laura said, slipping on her sunglasses as they left the darkened corridor that led from the Space Mountain exit and back into Tomorrowland.
“A couple times,” Malaysia agreed.
The girls stood in Tomorrowland near a giant, polished, perfectly round granite ball that was in the middle of a futuristic fountain where youngsters played in sporadic, sprouting shoots of water coming from small jets in the rubber-coated foundation. The giant ball was spinning upon its pedestal under a layer of water that gave the six-foot diameter ball a near frictionless base on which to spin. Kids and even some adults worked together to get the ball rotating faster and faster.
Malaysia and Laura were looking over their Park map again.
“Let’s come back and do some of these rides later,” Laura said, looking around at the increased size of the number of people within the vicinity of Tomorrowland.
“Oooh, look at that!” Malaysia said, pointing at the map. “There is that Haunted Mansion attraction we were talking about. Let’s go on it,” she continued, seeing a picture of the mansion with a ghost coming out the front door on the Park map.
“Sounds like a plan, Sis,” Laura said. Before leaving the giant ball, the pair had a passing guest snap a picture of the two of them posing with dozens of kids behind them.
12:10pm
About the same time Malaysia and Laura were exiting Space Mountain, Blain Walters stepped out of the back of the canoe he was in and onto the dock. He pulled hard on the rear rope of the canoe, helping bring the boat to a stop so the guests who had just taken their trip could take their wet bodies off of the ride.
Marcus Sakamoto came up from behind Blain and took the rope from his hand.
“Your lunch, Blain-O,” Marcus said, putting his foot against the gunwale of the canoe to keep it steady as the guests were stepping out. Blain took his foot off the same area of the canoe.
“Thanks Marc,” Blain said, arching his head, trying to get a kink out of his neck. “How many trips did I take, anyway? Sixteen?” Blain asked Marcus.
“You did your six trips, just like everyone else…ya big wimp.”
“Man, if felt like at least seventeen.”
Marcus waved off Blain. “Have a good lunch!”
Instead of heading to the “Pit” as he often did for lunch, Blain grabbed a paperback book and a brown sack from the dock box under the foreman’s work counter located at the far end of the canoe dock. Drew Gregory the ride foreman was recording the hourly count on a clipboard, as Blain shut the door to the dock box.
“Hey, Blain-O, see you in thirty,” Gregory said as Blain headed up the exit of the ride.
“Yep,” Blain said, saluting his Lead with his paperback book.
Blain exited the shade at the end of the canoe dock. Trees growing on the back side of Fowler’s Harbor, the hill that separated the canoe ride from the flume of Splash Mountain, where the logs came screaming down the climactic waterfall, created natural shade from the sun as it set in the west.
Instead of heading to the left out of Critter Country, Blain headed in the opposite direction. Passing under the patio of the Hungry Bear Restaurant and past tables of guests eating lunch themselves, Blain smiled at the many families enjoying hamburgers and chicken sandwiches among other menu items. The restaurant was the last remnant off-shoot of the original “Bear Country” theme area that existed before the vicinity was renamed Critter Country to coincide with the opening of Splash Mountain.
Blain reached the end of the patio and opened the “Cast Members Only” door in the back of the lower patio of the Hungry Bear Restaurant. From this Back Stage area, Blain opened a second, unmarked door to his right, entering a seldom used area that at one time was going to be a second, bottom-floor kitchen for the Hungry Bear restaurant. It was only half built when it was found that the restaurant seldom had as high of a demand as was anticipated when the Park first built the area in the early 1970’s.
Blain had been shown by ‘lifer’ Matt Segura, an old trail that left through a long-forgotten back entrance door to the never-finished kitchen area. Matt, who had worked at Disneyland for at least twenty years, was a good looking dark-haired man in his late forties. To Blain, Matt looked to be part Hispanic and part Indian; his dark skin and hair made Matt look like he would never age.
“Originally, a road was going to be cut through these trees,” Matt had told Blain the day they took a break together about six months earlier, during the two-week Christmas season rush. “Instead, the landscapers just left this area alone to become a natural jungle.”
Remembering Matt describing the area as a “Forbidden Jungle,” Blain walked through the unmarked, almost hidden door within the unfinished kitchen and entered the exotic expanse. He followed a lone, narrow path through the so-called jungle; it was the one remaining, truly uninhabited area of Disneyland—unimproved and unspoiled by progress or expansion. The path stretched for several hundred yards until it emerged behind the old Indian village on the backside of the river which circumnavigated Tom Sawyer Island.
Blain loved the completely private path; he was not sure if old Matt had revealed it to anyone else. In the six months since being shown the path, Blain had never seen anyone else on it. Nor had he seen much in the way of footprints left in the few spots of clean dirt that wasn’t covered by leaves or meandering vines of ivy.
The path ended on the back side of the tall teepees in the Indian Village. Statuesque mannequins with early audio-animatronics motion, such as an arm moving up and down by the chief of the tribe who stood between the set of four teepees, or a squaw’s arm moving around the top of a pot, depicting stirring, were still in operation. However, except for just a few, most of the vintage robotic mannequins were now still, their motion stopped long ago and cost-saving measures let the now-still Indians remain frozen, making the Indian Village more of a monument than a life-depicting scene of existence.
Most of the mannequins had costume jewelry, such as beaded necklaces, bracelets, and other accessories that had long since tarnished. From a distance, such as from the canoes, the Mark Twain riverboat or the large sailing ship, Columbia—all of which traversed the river in front of the antiquated village approximately every ten to twenty-five minutes—the aging details of the village was not recognizable to the guests. Only to the maintenance crew who, every six months or so, would sew up or replace aging leather outfits, repaint the teepees, or clear out debris that would sometimes accumulate around the logs, teepees and fake fire pit, did the aged look of the village and its inhabitants be acknowledged.
Blain made his way back behind the first teepee. The canvas-looking material covering the teepee was actually fiberglass, contoured to look exactly like the typical covering you would find on a teepee. Years ago, an opening in the back of this first teepee was cut, probably by a adventurous cast member who wanted to be able to get into the teepee without having to enter from the front—where he could be spotted by guests on the various water craft that went around the island or by guests who, from the northeast side of the island, could view the village.
During lunch breaks, Blain often came down to the village to read. It was extremely hard to read a book in any of the typical break areas or the Pit. With hundreds of Cast Members coming and going, distractions always made it nearly impossible to get through more than a page or two during a twenty minute break or a thirty minute lunch. As Blain had discovered, the village was really the only place in all of Disneyland, on-stage or o
ff, that he could find absolute solitude.
Inside the teepee, Blain had smuggled a couple of folding chairs from one of the break rooms. He brought in a big blanket he got from his band’s keyboard player’s wife—a blanket that had “Delta” stitched on one corner. Grant Downing’s wife, Tish, was now a scheduler for Delta Air Lines flight attendants, having been one herself for a number of years. Grant, who had been playing keyboard in Blain’s band, SECOND EXIT for over a year, lived in the apartment above Blain’s for the past six months. Also inside the teepee was a small wooden barrel that someone had put in one of the backstage break areas, probably an old prop from the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. Blain had pilfered that into the teepee to serve as an impromptu table next to the chairs he had placed inside. Upon the barrel were two other books Blain had put inside, in case he forgot to bring a book to work.
Ducking inside the teepee’s low improvisational back door, he settled himself in a chair, putting his feet up on the other chair in the rounded center area of the space. The translucent fiberglass material making up the exterior of the teepee let enough light in to create a warm, yellow glow inside. Even though a black drape hung over the front opening of the teepee, a slight breeze blew through, making the room comfortable even on a hot day. The open top, where the wooden poles holding up the teepee were joined together by metal wire, allowed for cross ventilation within the space.
The paperback book, a Clive Cussler novel that Blain had brought with him, had a playing card as a bookmark sticking out near the middle of the book. Holding the book open, Blain turned over his left wrist and checked his watch, mentally noting the time he would have to return to the canoe dock. Reaching down on side of the seat for the brown lunch bag he had brought, Blain pulled out a sandwich and took a bite out of it as he began to read.